Our Inspiring Women meeting this week on welfare reform was pretty sobering.  Maggie Kelly from the Scottish Campaign on Welfare Reform (SCoWR) talked us through some of the changes and referred to the new House of Commons Library research following the Chancellors Autumn Statement last week which found that women would lose almost 3 times as much as men as a result of pay, tax and benefit changes .  Read more  

Engender are preparing a paper on welfare reform and women which will be available via our website soon.

The International women's Media Foundation have published the first ever report on women in the global media.  Reseach which covered 59 nations found that only 27% of top management positions were held by women and that 36% of reporters were women.  In Western Europe women are nearing parity in newsrooms at junior and senior professional categories that include the major news gathering, editorial and production jobs. 

Read the Report

On a related note, Kira Cochranes 'unscientific' survey of the UK press found that in an average month 78% of articles are written by men.  Read more

A Scottish Government presentation on Forced Marriage is now available on the National Training Resource on violence against women.  The presentation covers the prevelance and consequences of forced marriage and outlines the new legislation.  The government will issue Statutory and Practitioners guidance in due course.  Read more

The Women's Resource Centre reports on a new organisation which is being set up to encourage women to stand for election on a women's rights platform.  Women's Right to Equality Now (WREN) is hoping to recruit women to stand in the Greater London Authority elections next year, raising awareness of  issues around the public spending cuts,  women’s working conditions, violence against women, minority women’s rights, carers' rights, women using public transport and child poverty.    Read more

Figures announced by the Lord Advocate last week showed that the first year of the Sexual Offences Act, which widened the definition of rape, had resulted in an increase in convictions for rape by 30%.  Read more.    This week comes the analysis of the figures and it's not so clear cut with concerns raised over extrapolating such figures based on such a small number of cases.  Read more  

Risk analysts Maplecroft,have published their 5th annual Human Rights Atlas which includes a Women's and Girls' Rights Index.   It found that the risk of human rights abuses, such as sexual violence, discrimination, trafficking and sexual exploitation, are at ‘extreme’ levels in just over 40% of the 197 countries studied.  It's hoped the atlas will be used by multinationals to monitor the potential risks to human rights in their operations such as the conduct of state and private security forces that are used by companies to protect assets like oil drilling operations, mines and plantations. Read more

Glasgow Women's Library have published the stories of women who have come to live in Scotland from all over the world.  'She Settles in the Shields' is the experience of women in thier own words.  Find out more and buy online from GWA