First Minister's National Advisory Council on Women and Girls First Phase Two Report: Scottish Government Response

Gender Policy Coherence

Under the theme of Gender Policy Coherence, the NACWG makes the following Calls to Action for the Scottish Government to consider.

Calls to Action: Twin track approach to mainstreaming/Gender equality strategy

8. In line with international good practice, Scottish Government should adopt a twin track approach to its mainstreaming work.

9. To enable this approach, a national gender equality strategy should be produced which captures existing work on women’s and girls’ equality and includes new targeted policy and programmes to address the gaps. The strategy should be intersectional, prioritising women who experience compounding, multiple inequalities, and should complement wider mainstreaming work.

The Scottish Government accepts these Calls to Action.

Subject to this government being returned after the upcoming Scottish Parliament election we will publish an equality strategy for women and girls that will be underpinned by the measurement framework set out in the NACWG Calls to Action 4 and 5. We will continue our important work to mainstream gender equality across the Scottish Government, supported by development of the Mainstreaming Strategy, amongst other actions. The development of an equality strategy for women and girls, along with the publication of the Mainstreaming Strategy, the Action Plan, and the associated toolkit will further deliver on the twin-track approach called for by the NACWG.

The Scottish Government already utilises a dual, or ‘twin-track’ approach to gender equality, which the European Institute for Gender Equality defines as “complementarity between gender mainstreaming and specific gender equality policy and measures, including positive measures.” This commitment to developing an equality strategy for women and girls will continue to build on this twin track approach.

Specific gender equality measures taken by the Scottish Government include:

• the introduction of the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018, to help ensure the equal representation of women on Scotland’s public boards;
• two iterations of the Women’s Health Plan in 2021-24 and 2026-29.
• and the Equally Safe Strategy for preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls, which the NACWG has recognised as an example of good practice of gender competent policy-making.

In addition to these and other targeted measures, the Scottish Government seeks to mainstream gender equality throughout policy-making and in the development of new legislation; one way in which this is done is by ensuring the Scottish Government not just meets the legal obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), and the Scottish Specific Duties but uses these requirements to ensure the highest standards. This includes producing Equality Impact Assessments to assess the potential impact of applying proposed new legislation, funding or polices on groups with protected characteristics, which enables better policy decisions to be made.

The PSED is one of the levers by which equality mainstreaming is advanced; with reports on progress in mainstreaming the PSED produced and published on a regular basis. In the case of the Scottish Government the last report was published in April 2025. We have also developed a systematic approach to assessing budget decisions for their impact on equality groups, publishing an Strategic Integrated Impact Assessment alongside the Scottish Draft Budget. This includes the results of a pilot exercise gathering evidence on intersectional gender impacts.

But we acknowledge that the NACWG has raised concerns about how effectively our twin track approach is delivering for women and girls at present. We know that the NACWG want to see improvements to our leadership, culture, capability, and capacity to drive forward real change for women and girls. In securing these improvements, we will be able to ensure greater policy coherence across government, which the NACWG has also consistently called for.

As outlined earlier, our approach to mainstreaming has been strengthened, with, in late 2025 the publication of:

• The Equality and Human Rights Mainstreaming Strategy
• The Equality and Human Rights Mainstreaming Action Plan
• The Mainstreaming Toolkit

Again, as set out earlier, to further strengthen our current approach, we accepted the NACWG’s call for the creation of an equality strategy for women and girls to complement our wider mainstreaming work and address gaps in existing targeted measures to reduce gender inequality.

Much of the work to develop the strategy is already underway thanks to the efforts of the NACWG and EWP. This has included conducting evidence reviews, peer research and online and in person roundtables, to gather the necessary evidence and information from women and girls across Scotland to guarantee it is a strategy fit for all.

It is our intention that the strategy will set out a high-level vision for gender equality in Scotland, supported by gender equality goals to achieve this vision. It is our intention that when the strategy is published, we will look to develop a delivery plan which will include tangible actions to drive forward the ambition of the strategy and a measurement framework to track progress. Current thinking about developing the delivery plan, subject to the decisions of the next administration, includes consulting and working with NACWG, gender equality stakeholders, lived experience groups and public bodies to ensure there is an agreed, holistic approach to achieving intersectional gender equality across Scotland.