I'd like to follow up on Ailsa's comment about number counting. I think this is a problem we have in a mainstreaming approach. While we argue for the importance of quality data, there is a problem around how the data are utilized. It has to do with interpretation rather than statistics, simply counting numbers. This is one of the problems in the analysis of the modern apprenticeship scheme that Ailsa referred to.
In my introductory remarks, I made a comment about the backdrop against which we try to promote gender-aware policy. In Scotland, the U.K., and across Europe, we are increasingly in a policy context that wishes to talk about equalities from a broad perspective. Driving this are a range of groups pushing for increased legislative and rights protection under policy recognition. One of the more negative consequences of this is the assumption that women “have been done”, that women are no longer relevant to policy or legislative development, that it's old hat, unnecessary, and unprogressive to focus on women.
I don't think I'm overstating the case. I think it is one of the key challenges we face and one of the key reasons why the Scottish Women’s Budget Group is called what we are. That is, in a sense, our focus. It's difficult to conduct a gender analysis that breaks the policy-speak cycle. If you talk about women, then you have to talk about men in equivalent terms, and that is neither women-focused analysis nor gender analysis.
That's what we mean when we say there's a lack of understanding in gender. More broadly, as a student of public policy, I think the public policy process itself does not regard gender as a core variable. This is demonstrated by our various countries' attempts to follow Beijing in implementing gender mainstreaming. The public policy process continues to treat gender as an external variable relegated to the literature on women's networks.