Just how fair is Scotland?

Last month the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published the most comprehensive review to date of Scotland’s equality and human rights progress. Is Scotland Fairer? sets out key equality and human rights challenges in Scotland, measures progress over the last five years and identifies priority areas for action. So how can the report benefit colleagues across the third sector? Firstly, it offers a wealth of statistics across 10 topics:

• education
• standard of living
• productive and valued activities
• health
• life
• physical security
• legal security
• individual family and social life
• identity, expression and self-respect
• participation influence and voice.

For many, conditions have become fairer, suicide rates are falling, fewer households live in accommodation falling below the Scottish Housing Quality Standard, and fewer adults reported being the victim of violent crime. Interestingly, the report also highlights that levels of political activity increased from 54.4% in 2009 to 60.9% in 2013, perhaps suggesting an upward trend prior to the Scottish independence referendum. Despite this, much of the report makes for dismal reading:

• 52% of working age adults in poverty are in paid employment
• Disabled people are nearly twice as likely as non-disabled people to be unemployed
• The pay gap between men and women narrowed slightly, from 17.7% to 17.5%, but (wait for it ladies), only because men’s average pay declined slightly

As Susan Smith put it so eloquently in Third Force News, Scotland is fairer, just not if you are female, poor or disabled. Other statistics were frankly shocking:

• Police-recorded hate crime in relation to disability and sexual orientation increased
• One in five people said they would not be willing to interact in any way with a person with schizophrenia

Progress in many areas, it seems, is slow and more must be done. The evidence presented in the report may be useful to colleagues across the sector who are striving to share solutions to many of the challenges highlighted. I hope that for others it may offer some pleasant surprises. On a more positive note, I have noticed that equality and fairness is the key focus of many of the manifestos I have had the opportunity to read over the last few weeks. Many colleagues are increasingly utilising a human rights-based approach to realise their objectives. Alzheimer Scotland, for example, are campaigning to ensure that all policies affecting people living with dementia are underpinned by human rights. Similarly, Engender are encouraging the Scottish Parliament to take a rights-based approach to gender equality. Here at SCVO we are gearing up to take forward some new work on human rights. Our work will focus upon how a human rights narrative can be effectively utilised by organisations within our sector.  We would be delighted to hear from both colleagues who have experience of using this approach and colleagues interested in learning more about how human rights could be related to their work. For more on this topic you may also be interested in joining us at a special event - What might human rights look like in a fairer Scotland? - at the Gathering on Wednesday 17 February.