After a year’s hard work, we were proud to announce the release last month of our second MK Fawcett Discussion Paper of 2020 entitled ‘Women’s participation in local politics’. The project began over a year ago with the observation of three meetings in the MK Council chamber - the last being in January 2020, just before the lockdown saw all Council meetings transferred online. We wanted to see whether women had an equal opportunity to participate in Council discussion and, if not, why not. This in turn prompted us to seek out all the information we could find on how women came to get elected as councillors in the first place, as well as the roles they were appointed to on Council committees. We quickly realised that we couldn’t get a full picture of the decision-making processes that underly all these outcomes without consulting all the different kinds of people involved at different stages, whether Council officers, councillors or local party members. We made sure that all the key p...

Gender equality in Milton Keynes? We think it’s time to turn up the volume on the conversation, promote the issues and work for system change. We thought you might like to hear about a new partnership approach. Women’s groups in Milton Keynes have been increasingly concerned about the fragile and fragmented nature of available support for specialist services.  The pandemic has now impacted heavily on all women, highlighting disadvantage and exclusion and putting those at risk of violence in even greater danger. A strong infrastructure is needed to provide a safety net where no one is lost. Back in January 2020, several women’s groups worked in partnership at a conference which included survivors of assault and abuse. We heard accounts of women being passed across different services and of being immersed in a male dominated justice system. The need for an infrastructure was clear, and following on from the conference a working group, facilitated by Community Action:MK, has beg...