Nici, member of Agenda Alliance's Women's Advisory Network"Policymakers need a kick up the butt. They need to do something, and they need to do it fast otherwise there are going to be so many more disadvantaged women; more suicides, homelessness, child removal. It needs acting on and it needs acting on fast."
This General Election, we’re calling SOS on the crisis facing women and girls across Britain.
We want the next government to create a dedicated Secretary of State for Women and Girls.
Agenda Alliance champions women and girls who are at the sharpest end of inequality – experiencing what women with lived experience call multiple unmet needs.
Multiple unmet needs are often interconnected, complex and gender-specific. They may include contact with the criminal justice system, experience of poverty and abuse, using substances to cope, having no recourse to public funds and no safe place to call home.
Public services don’t work in joined-up ways to address these problems and can cause further harm – so women and girls’ challenges just end up getting worse.
This General Election, we need to commit to boldly reimagining what this support should look like, rather than papering over the cracks, to stop completely preventable issues causing lifelong cycles of harm to women and girls.
Our General Election Manifesto and policy recommendations set out a plan to get us there.
And over 60 organisations have signed our open letter to the four main political parties, demanding this role is created in the next Cabinet.
Use our email template to contact your local candidate's to ask them to support our campaign.
Women and girls deserve someone at the highest level of government to champion their needs, matching the seriousness of multiple unmet needs with serious political resource. They deserve someone who can work across systems and siloes to design preventative, holistic and gendered interventions.
A Secretary of State for Women and Girls should:
- Centre prioritisation and prevention. A cross-cutting, Cabinet level women and girls’ representative will work across government departments to embed early intervention and hold them accountable for ensuring that all policy responds to gender, age, culture and trauma as a matter of course.
- Share their power. Women and girls with lived experience have the answers to so many persistent policy problems – but they are so rarely included. This role should hold a core focus on designing future solutions alongside women and girls with lived experience, from consultation to legislation, service delivery to service evaluation.
- Champion the sector. After decades of declining investment in vital services, women and girls need high level political advocacy to bring departments together and address the distinct issues the specialist sector supporting them faces. We need funding models which embed full-cost recovery and articulate the cost-savings of prevention, and provide ring-fenced resource for by-and-for organisations.
Are you an organisation willing to support our call for a Secretary of State for Women and Girls? Get in touch with policy@agenda.org.uk to sign our open letter to the four main party leaders.
