Are you a designer or artist or know someone who is?  We want to create 'Engender Woman', a character who will appear on our campaign material to deliver the Engender message and are looking for a talented member who would be willing to donate some time to 'creating' her.  If you're up for the challenge, please give me a call - Karen on 0131 558 9596 -  and we can discuss ideas.   

I'm sure you've all been following the unedifying sight of the UK Justice Secretary Ken Clarke refusing to apologise for his comments in an interview which saw him make a distiction between date rape and 'serious' rape.  (See full transcript of the interview ).  In promoting the governments plans to reduce sentencing by 50% if a defendant enters a guilty plea early on, Clarke went on to make matters worse by claiming that campaigners had only singled out rape because it injected a degree of "sexual excitement" into the argument.  The sentencing proposals would not affect Scotland, Clarkes attitudes do.  End Violence Against Women have released a statement accusing Clarke of trivialising the seriousness of rape.

Warwick School of Law's Centre for Human Rights in Practice has published a report into how the public spending cuts will affect women.  The report is a titled Unravelling Equality? A Human Rights and Equality Impact Assessment of the Public Spending Cuts on Women in Coventry and it concludes that the findings, although based on women in Coventry is applicable to the rest of the UK.  The report concluded that women would be hardest hit by the cuts and that the gender pay gap would widen.  Read the report and summary   

Edinburgh's Reclaim the Night March will take place on Saturday 28th May.  The march will leave from the Usher Hall, Lothian Road at 8.30 and walk to Teviot Row House in Bistro Square, where there will be an after march party from 10pm til 3pm featuring speakers and live music.  All Welcome

Separate Sphere: Men and Women in 18th Centrury Portraiture - 2nd June, 6pm - 9pm -  A chance to hear Nel Whiting talk about the 18th century belief in a public role for men and a private one for women and how the portraits of the time support this.  See full details           

Engender Inspiring Women - Has the time come for Quotas - 8th June, 5.30-7pm - With 45 women out of our 129 newly elected MSPs, we're in for another 5 years of male dominated discourse.  As the number of female candidates fell and more women were elected from the regional lists than to constituency seats, is it time for quotas to deliver equal representation?  Come along and discuss our election report 

Both events are in the Engender Office, 1a Haddington Place, Edinburgh and please RSVP: karen@engender.org.uk for both