How are the UK and Scottish Governments responding to CEDAW’s recommendations?

Date: 1st October 2021
Category: UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)

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The Committee of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) made several recommendations to the UK Government to improve women's equality and rights. Engender has created both a Scottish and four-nations report, offering an accurate picture to CEDAW of what women’s equality and rights look like within the UK.

Within these reports, Engender also makes a number of recommendations to both the UK and Scottish governments.

To the UK Government:

• Review the effectiveness of gender mainstreaming, and invest in strengthened data collection.
• Undertake a rigorous and gender-sensitive analysis of the impact of Brexit, including for future trade deals, and review post-Brexit measures regularly.
• Establish an independent, transparent accountable mechanism to ensure women and women’s organisations, reflecting regionality, diversity and representation across the UK can meaningfully engage with policy making.
• Implement urgent policies to meet the disproportionate impacts on women, especially young, disabled, Black and minority ethnic women and LGBTQI+ people, alongside Covid-19 recovery plans.
• Make free childcare available to all parents from birth and invest in the childcare and early years sectors.
• Ensure gendered, strategic approaches to ending all forms of VAWG, including abolishing the no recourse to public funds policy.

To the Scottish Government

• Implement the full recommendations from the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls.
• Develop a social care workforce strategy to reposition care as highly-skilled and appropriately remunerated work.
• Set out how its proposals to ‘keep pace’ with EU law in devolved areas will impact women.
• Work collaboratively with the women’s sector and civil society to maximise the benefits of CEDAW incorporation, including creating clear processes that enable public bodies to fulfil their legal obligations to women’s equality.
• Work with violence against women services to ensure a sustainable funding model.

Read the full reports here:

• Scotland Report
• 4 Nations Report