Can you help us?

Coventry Women’s Voices and the TUC are planning a toolkit for unions, voluntary organisations, civil society groups and others who want to analyse the likely impact of the spending cuts on women in their area.

This toolkit will be based on the experience of producing Unravelling Equality? A Human Rights and Equality Impact Assessment of the Public Spending Cuts on Women in Coventry, published by Coventry Women’s Voices and the Centre for Human Rights in Practice at the University of Warwick in May this year. (See Human Rights Impact Assessment for more information)

Unravelling Equality details the impact that the cuts, both local and national, are likely to have on gender equality and women’s human rights in one city. We want to help other groups do something similar in other parts of the country.

Our toolkit will summarise the main cuts taking place, give an over-view of what different academic researchers, voluntary groups and others have warned is likely to happen as a result of these cuts and show how to find out what this will mean in a particular area. It will also explain how groups can use an equality and human rights impact assessment to campaign locally against the cuts. Although the toolkit focuses on the impact of the cuts on women it can be used by anyone wanting to look at the equality or human rights impact of the cuts on other groups.

We want to include as many examples as possible of local campaigns against cuts and any assessments other groups have done of the impact of the cuts in their area. If you have any examples you would be happy for us to use please email maryann@maryannstephenson.co.uk

The toolkit will be available on line, with links to other toolkits, research reports and resources that might be of interest to groups challenging the cuts. If you have produced a report, or know of one that you think we should link to, please send us the link.