Gender Equality Centre
We’ve been commissioned by Inspiring Scotland to develop a strategy and approach for a new gender equality centre. Working with the Scottish Government over the next 18 months, we’re taking an emergent and iterative approach to working with folk all over the country and beyond about what we need, in this moment, right now.
We’ll use this page to update you.
Our Team
Ellie Hutchinson. Co-project Manager.
Megan McHaney. Co-project Manager.
Heather Williams. Co-project Manager
Rhianna Mallia. Participatory lead and team member
Mansi Panjwani. Peace builder and team member
What we're doing now
Summer 2026
To help develop a strategy that would support a Gender Equality Centre, we’re first spending time understanding what is happening right now; how the system of gender inequality is working, what new ideas are emerging, and what we know about how and why behaviour changes. To do this, we’re running three things at the same time. Participatory action research, stakeholder engagement and a desk review. The core values underpinning our work are collaboration, centering voice, wellbeing and intersectionality. Part of what we want to do is experiment with the process of doing this work; we want the experience to be intersectional, complex, human and humane.
Our line in the sand is that gender inequality exists, it is bad and that it’s time to do things differently. Business as usual cannot continue.
Participatory action research
We’ve recruited ten people accross Scotland who can help us to understand what is happening in their community around gender equality. We’re asking them to find out are people’s behaviour changing around gender inequality? Why? Why not? What helps? What doesn’t? They will be asking these questions using the tools that work best for their communities; it could be informal chats, it could be zine making, it could be surveys.
This is being led by Rhianna and supported by Ellie
Literature review
We’re also interested in what the literature tells us about where Scotland is now, and what is the landscape of gender equality in the UK, Europe and Globally. We want to know what is beginning to emerge, particularly about what helps to change behaviour. Using feminist approaches to knowledge gathering, we’ll be looking at traditional academic papers as well as grey literature, popular cultural texts, podcasts, films, stories and social media posts.
This is being led by Ellie and supported by Mansi and Rhianna.
Stakeholder engagement
We’re hosting focus groups and interviews with people working for equality. This includes anti-racism groups, LGBTQ groups, violence against women organisations, disability groups, health organisations, activists, front line workers, policy makers and storytellers.
This is being led by Heather and Megan and supported by the team.
