Minority ethnic women's experiences in Scotland 2024: intersectional evidence review

1. Executive Summary

This Evidence Review explores the experiences of minority ethnic women living in Scotland as a route to examining the importance of intersectional analysis, plus the opportunities and challenges of taking an intersectional approach in data collection, analysis and reporting. This review is structured using the National Performance Framework (NPF) and Scotland’s Gender Equality Index (GEI) to link in with wider work around equality outcome monitoring. This Review also refers to the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls' (NACWG) 2020 Race Equality report to highlight recent improvements to intersectional equality data for minority ethnic women.

This Evidence Review aims to answer the following twofold research questions:

1. According to evidence, where do women from minority ethnic backgrounds encounter inequitable outcomes and experiences, or barriers to accessing services?^[1] And where are there gaps in evidence?

2. By undertaking this Evidence Review, what lessons can we learn about analysis and publication of intersectional evidence?

The inclusion criteria for eligible qualitative and quantitative data were:

• Scottish Government statistics that have data broken down by sex and ethnicity (either analysed individually or intersectionally) based on indicators or topic areas used by the NPF and GEI.
• Studies that focused on the experiences of minority ethnic women in Scotland and evidence based in the UK or other devolved nations, to expand understanding of key issues beyond limitations of Scottish evidence.
• Studies published in the last five years, with consideration for earlier studies when more recent evidence was not available.
• Studies that provided an update to information included in the previous NACWG Race Equality publication in 2020.

Some considerations and limitations should be taken into account when reading this Review.

• The evidence reviewed for this report does not reflect all research conducted on this topic area and some information or data were not available for the publication of this review (for example, upcoming Scotland’s 2022 Census publications).
• In some cases, statistics on individual minority ethnic groups were aggregated into a ‘minority ethnic’ group due to small sample sizes. This limits the extents to which analysis can capture the nuanced experiences of different ethnic groups, thereby masking key issues for particular groups.
• Limitations related to sampling and sample size may limit the detection of statistically significant differences between groups, where other qualitative evidence suggests differences do occur.
• Evidence gathered for this Evidence Review was variable and did not always allow for consistent intersectional comparisons across groups. Thus, some evidence draws on ethnicity data only, or gender and sex data only. In some areas, it is unclear what minority ethnic women experience specifically in comparison to minority ethnic men or white women and men.
• The focus of the evidence used in this Review is predominantly on women, but where possible, evidence on girls was also included.

The following evidence was found to provide some explanation of where women from minority ethnic backgrounds encounter inequitable outcomes and experiences, or barriers to services:

• Education statistics indicate that women/girls from minority ethnic groups may perform equally to, or better than, comparison groups in certain areas of primary and secondary education^[2]. Despite this, they are underrepresented in areas of education such as Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics^[3].
• Evidence examined suggests that minority ethnic women earn less^[4] and face intersectional forms of discrimination and challenges to fair work and participation in the labour market^[5].
• Minority ethnic women are more likely to experience a double pay penalty when becoming a mother as they earn less than other comparative groups, including white women, in addition to being unable to work full-time or flexibly due to caring commitments, which further limits financial prosperity or freedom^[6].
• Some research suggests that minority ethnic women were more likely to experience financial hardships during the COVID-19 pandemic^[7] and the cost-of-living crisis^[8] when compared to other ethnic groups of the population^[9].
• Qualitative research highlighted that women from minority ethnic groups have negative experiences in accessing healthcare due to racial and sex microaggressions, discrimination, and lack of knowledge about health conditions presenting in or on people from minority ethnic backgrounds. However, evidence used in this report suggest other intersecting characteristics also have an influence, such as language, age, migrant status, religion and nationality, which highlights the layers of complexity when assessing the impact of ethnicity on health outcomes.
• Limited statistical evidence demonstrated no significant differences between minority ethnic women and white Scottish or British women^[10], when assessing for general mental health and wellbeing. However, qualitative evidence shows that minority ethnic women’s’ experience of discrimination and racism impacts mental wellbeing negatively.
• According to data, people from minority ethnic backgrounds may feel less connected to their community than white Scottish or British women and men. Minority ethnic women were also less represented in, and thus have less influence on, political and social decisions within society^[11].
• Evidence in this report highlights that there are differences in experiences of violence and safety. Minority ethnic women are generally more likely to be targeted by harassment and discrimination than white Scottish/British women. Also, domestic abuse appears to include legal and social issues specific to some minority ethnic women.^[12]

The following evidence gaps were identified across the topics explored for this Review:

• There were limited intersectional quantitative data in certain areas, such as Education and Health. Available data in these areas were only largely able to show ethnicity breakdowns, or gender and sex breakdowns only. This made it unclear what women from minority ethnic backgrounds experience at a population level and limited comparisons with minority ethnic men or white women and men. However, it is important to note that understanding of key issues may still have been possible without both qualitative and quantitative evidence and not all possible intersectional data were available in time for this publication, such Scotland’s Census 2022 data and the Scottish Health Survey data.
• Some areas would benefit from more qualitative evidence, such as in Education and Community and Power, to provide more detailed understanding of experiences for minority ethnic women.
• Improvements to the availability of both qualitative and quantitative evidence in areas such as Poverty would be beneficial to understand key issues for minority ethnic women at population and local levels specifically.
• Some evidence acknowledged that additional intersecting characteristics may also have an influence, such as language, age, migrant status, religion and nationality and so results may not be based on intersections of sex and gender with ethnicity alone. These issues are important to consider and highlight the layers of complexities when assessing the impact of ethnicity and gender on equality outcomes

This Review made a number of conclusions which should be taken into account in relation to analysis and publication of intersectional evidence.

• Explore what intersectional breakdowns may already be available: Analysts were able to produce new intersectional analyses from existing statistical publications for this Review. Therefore, there may be an opportunity for Scottish Government statistical datasets to increase their publication of intersectional breakdowns where sample size allows.
• Consider different approaches to data collection and research: Consideration of adopting alternative strategies, such as sampling boosts in surveys or looking more widely at a range of existing evidence, should be made to increase the representation among sample sizes and draw out key issues faced by particular groups.
• Utilise both quantitative and qualitative evidence: Often key issues for minority ethnic women were better understood using a mix of both qualitative and quantitative evidence together, thus strengthening the overall evidence-base and the narrative formed around topic areas.
• Further considerations for analysts specifically: key learnings were taken from evidence examined for this Review about how to set parameters and purpose when conducting intersectional research, analysis or evidence reviews. This includes what intersections to examine and why, what comparisons to make and why, assessing additional influences on results, using a range of evidence to understand key issues, and ensuring research and analysis is impactful.

Some of these points are already being explored in the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023 – 2025, which outlines work related to improving equality and intersectional breakdowns within Scottish Government data and publications.

Overall, this Evidence Review provides an insight into the range of evidence currently available that has the ability to inform policy-making and public service design improvements to tackle inequality experienced by minority ethnic women. Although it was not a key focus of this Review, the evidence presented in all chapters highlight a number of data improvements that aid understanding of minority ethnic women’s experiences since the NACWG Race Equality report. However, this Review shows that more disaggregated and intersectional evidence (both qualitative and quantitative) would be beneficial in certain areas to understand key issues for women from specific minority ethnic groups.