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

11. Conclusion

The purpose of this report is to draw together new and existing quantitative and qualitative evidence from Scottish Government, other public sector organisations, third sector organisations, and academia to highlight learnings in relation to analysis and publication of intersectional equalities data.

The findings below provide answers to the research questions underpinning this Evidence Review as well as outline the opportunities and challenges of working with intersectional data.

11.1. Research question one: According to evidence, where do women from minority ethnic backgrounds encounter inequitable outcomes and experiences, or barriers to accessing services? And where are there gaps in evidence?

The evidence, based on NPF and GEI indicators, examined demonstrated detailed information of where minority ethnic women’s encounter inequitable outcomes and experiences, and barriers to accessing services across all topic areas explored in this report. Some evidence showed similar outcomes for minority ethnic women and comparative groups in certain areas such as early education, health and indicators that measure connections to local community. However, intersectional evidence did show inequitable outcomes and experiences in STEM; participation in the labour market; poverty in relation to COVID-19 and cost-of-living; access to health services and quality of care; political and social power; experience of discrimination, harassment, or unfair treatment; accessing support for Violence Against Women and Girls; and domestic abuse.

However, evidence based on NPF and GEI indicators gathered for this Evidence Review was variable and did not always allow for consistent intersectional comparisons across groups. The following evidence gaps were identified across the topic areas:

• 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.
• 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.

It is important to note that not all intersectional data were available in time for this publication and may have influenced some of the evidence gaps outlined above. At the time of writing this report, some of Scotland’s Census 2022 intersectional data was not yet available: demography and migration, housing, education, labour market and travel to work, health, disability and unpaid care statistics were still to be published, or to be made available for crosstabulation^[77]. In addition, data from the Scottish Health Survey was not available for this report. This highlights the need to consider the detail provided by upcoming datasets and evidence to understand particular issues before commissioning research to fill potential intersectional data gaps. Further information about data sources can be found throughout this report and Annex 2.

Although it was not a key focus, the findings of this Evidence Review highlight what data improvements there have been since the NACWG Race Equality publication (2020). New data and evidence were found for all areas of this report: Education, Work, Poverty, Health, Community and Power, and Safety and Violence Against Women and Girls. This demonstrates, there has been some improvement in available qualitative and quantitative evidence reporting generally on minority ethnic women’s experiences in Scotland since 2020.

11.2. Research question two: By undertaking this Evidence Review, what lessons can we learn about analysis and publication of intersectional evidence?

Lesson 1: Explore what breakdowns are available. In the development of this Evidence Review, analysts were able to produce new intersectional analyses from existing datasets. With this in mind, it may be possible to extract intersectional data from current Scottish Government datasets and for statistical publications to increase their use of intersectional breakdowns in reporting. Where datasets allow, analysts should explore what intersectional breakdowns can be made available in their existing datasets, as part of their routine analysis and publication processes or explain what intersectional data may be available on request.

Lesson 2: Consider different approaches. There are cases where producing intersectional data from existing UK and Scottish Government’s population household datasets is not possible due to small sample sizes. As seen in this Evidence Review, analysts were unable to analyse and compare findings for individual ethnic groups without risking identification of survey participants or producing statistically unreliability results^[78]. Instead, there were a number of instances where data had been aggregated, bringing all minority ethnic groups into a single ‘minority ethnic’ group. For intersectional analysis, this is a significant challenge, because it limits understanding of nuanced experiences of the intersectional group being examined and masks key issues. Alternative methods to draw out key issues faced by particular groups should be considered. This may include improving data collection methods^[79], and sampling boosts in surveys, or looking more widely at the quantitative and qualitative evidence that can be gathered and using existing evidence in a more meaningful way, such as evidence reviews.

Lesson 3: Utilise both quantitative and qualitative evidence. Using both quantitative and qualitative evidence is often considered important in research exploring inequalities, however considering and utilising both types of evidence is even more essential in intersectional research and analysis. As demonstrated throughout this Evidence Review, both quantitative and qualitative research must be considered due to the limitations of both which impact intersectional analysis specifically. In addition to the sample size issue discussed above, quantitative data sources do not often explain the reasons behind trends and cannot capture details of differing experiences/outcomes across groups, which are both often essential within intersectional analysis. This Review found that in many cases qualitative evidence was able to explore issues related to ethnic groups in detail, especially where no statistically significant differences were found between intersectional ethnic groups in quantitative data. However, qualitative research is also not without its own limitations. For instance, qualitative evidence usually only explores experiences of a small sample of participants, meaning results are unlikely to represent population groups fully and comparisons with other groups and across studies may be limited. Therefore, when undertaking intersectional research, analysts will need to be mindful of using both qualitative and quantitative sources of data and evidence to ensure a deep understanding of intersectional issues and triangulation of results.

Further considerations

Finally, 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. Analysts should consider:

• What intersectional characteristics to examine and why? This may be guided by engagement with external stakeholders, existing research, or may be to link in with wider outcoming monitoring frameworks, bring value to policymaking or support more finessed monitoring and evaluation of existing policies.
• What comparisons to make and why? This may be dependent on what additional data is available but it is important to know where issues are intersectional or may just be influenced by one characteristic alone. However, it should be noted that comparisons are not always required to understand that particular groups face inequitable outcomes or experiences, for example qualitative research on experiences of an intersectional group in a particular area.
• In addition to the main intersection you are examining, are there additional characteristics or factors influencing outcomes or experiences? For example, in multiple domains examined in this Evidence Review, language and migrant status were suggested to be compounding the effects of the intersection being examined.
• Whether research results are representative of the most significant issues and inequalities particular intersectional groups face? Analysts may draw on the conclusions above and consider additional analysis of existing datasets, use of both qualitative and quantitative evidence, and sampling boosts.
• What the intended impact of conducting intersectional research and analysis is? Analysts may have produced intersectional analysis for the purposes of improving policymaking, therefore strengthening connections with relevant policy colleagues and stakeholders in this area to engage with the output is essential.

Findings from a Scottish Government evidence synthesis on using intersectionality in analytical and policy processes align well with these conclusions.

11.3. Future Work

The findings related to the experiences of Minority Ethnic Women will be disseminated to relevant policy teams, stakeholders and networks.

Ongoing work related to the actions outlined in the Equality Evidence Strategy 2023 – 2025 are driving progress to improving equality and intersectional breakdowns within Scottish Government data and publications. This includes updates to the Equality Evidence Finder website and exploring ways to automate processes to produce and present intersectional data and evidence. Important next steps will include sharing the lessons, set out above, with analysts across Scottish Government.

Furthermore, ongoing exploration of other approaches to putting intersectionality into practice, will enable best practices to be developed and support the wider agenda of embedding equality, inclusion and human rights considerations and practices.