Interviews

All the interviews for this project were semi structured. Structured interviews have the limitation of restricting consideration of issues that were not considered when the questions were written (Savin-Baden and Howell Major p359). This point was made by Sayer who notes:

‘with a less formal, less standardised and more interactive type of interview the researcher has a much better chance of learning from the respondents what the different significances of circumstances are for them. The

respondents are not forced into an artificial one way mode of communication in which they can only answer in terms of the conceptual grid given to them by the researcher (Sayer 1989 p245)

At the same time there were certain areas that I wanted to be sure to cover, and questions that I wanted to ask of all interviewees (or all interviewees in a particular group). I had a series of pre-set questions but responded to comments made by interviewees with follow up questions where new issues were raised or to explore an issue that appeared to be important to the interviewee in greater depth. I followed Cockburn’s ‘rule of thumb: “go with the material”’ (Cockburn 1991 p6) allowing time if an interviewee appeared to have something important to add. I started with a list of questions, and some prompts to guide follow up (see Appendix). Early interviews tended to follow the order of questions as originally set out. As the interviews progressed this list was used more as a prompt to ensure that nothing was forgotten and the interviews became more conversational in style

Two of the interviews with equality officers from authorities outside the case study area were conducted over the telephone but other interviews were face to face. This allowed me to observe the facial expressions and body language of the interviewees, which I recorded as soon as possible after the interviews in field notes.

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I allowed an hour for each interview. Most lasted around an hour, the shortest was forty minutes when an interviewee arrived late and had to go to another meeting. Several lasted over an hour and a half. I deliberately did not arrange more than four interviews in a day, to allow for delayed starts if the interviewee was running late, interviews running over time and to ensure I had energy at the end of the day to write up field notes.

The majority of interviews took place in the interviewees’ offices, or meeting rooms in the authority for those people who worked in open plan offices. This had the advantage that I was able to observe interviewees in their professional setting but could have had the disadvantage that respondents might be less willing to share any critical thoughts about their organisation within that organisation’s office space. One interviewee did request that we met outside the office, as she was between meetings in another part of the City and it was notable that she was openly critical of many aspects of her organisation’s policy and practice. However my experience was similar to that of Halford et al who found that ‘many respondents treated the interview as an opportunity to ‘let off steam’ in a ‘safe’ encounter that they knew would not get back to anyone in the organisation’ (Halford et al 1997 p61). As they point out interviews ‘do not allow any privileged or unmediated access to people’s thoughts and feelings, but rather produce specific accounts designed to meet the needs of the particular situation’ (p60). Most respondents appeared to see the interview as an opportunity to reflect critically on their own practice and share frustrations about the pressures of their role. At the same time for all of the staff working in equalities part of their role was to promote the value of the work of the equalities team both internally within the organisation and in contact with external groups and their answers also reflected this professional role.

With agreement from the interviewees the interviews were all recorded and then transcribed by me. Transcription was an important part of the analysis process (see below for more details). I did not use video recording which is often perceived as more intrusive than audio taping (Savin-Baden and Howell Major 2013 p 351), but made notes after each interview about significant facial expressions and other body language during the interview.

79 3.5.10 Equality Documents

Documents can reveal what people value as well as providing a record of what they do or did (Savin-Baden and Howell Major 2013 p410). For case study research they can be used to corroborate other sources of evidence or suggest areas for further investigation if they contradict other sources of evidence (Yin 2014 p107). At the same time Yin warns against assuming that documents are accurate or unbiased stressing that ‘important in reviewing any document is to understand that it was written for some specific purpose and some specific audience other than the case study being done’ and that when reviewing documents researchers should always question the objectives of those who produced the document and how this might affect the document itself (Yin 2014 p108). The equality documentation from each case study authority included policies, strategies, plans and impact assessments. These were all public documents, published on the authority website so represented official council policy, although, with Yin’s warning in mind they were read as evidence of what the authorities’ official policies were, but not as evidence of actual practice. They were used to analyse the way in which equality was framed in each authority and how that compared to the way it was understood by individuals working on equality in the authority drawing from the conclusions of the literature review that the framing of equality is a key factor influencing outcomes (Woodward 2003, Verloo 2005, McBride and Mazur 2010, Walby 2011).

The documents provided evidence of the authorities’ equality strategies, which again were compared with the way in which these strategies were described by the officers. Analysis of equality documents also provided information about the comprehensiveness of equality policies, whether they included a meaningful

assessment of gender equality, whether they considered how gender intersected with other structures of inequality, what issues they appeared to prioritise and what were absent.

Each authority produced different equality documents. For each authority I analysed the main strategy documents relating to equality, other strategy documents that the authority named as relevant to each authority’s equality strategy in their main strategy document, equality web-pages and the guidance produced by the authority on carrying out impact assessments. These documents are set out in the table below.

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In order to ensure the anonymity of respondents (see section on ethics below) I have changed the names of the documents where they might allow the individual council to be identifiable.

Table 2: Equality documents analysed

County Council City Council London Borough Primary documents Equalities Strategy Equality Diversity and Community Cohesion Action Plan Equalities and Community Cohesion Policy Equality Plan Equality and Diversity Policy Single Equalities Scheme Secondary document named in primary document Carers Strategy Family Poverty Strategy Staff equality Strategy City Plan Child Poverty Strategy Strategy against violence and abuse of women and girls Charter for Fairness and Equality Report on equalities within the borough

Webpages yes yes yes

Guides to impact assessment

EIA guidance EIA pre questionnaire Full EIA form

EIA Form EIA guidance

Impact assessment guidance and template

All of these documents were available via the local authority website with the exception of the Impact assessment guidance from London Borough, which I was sent by one of the equality officers.

Alongside these documents I analysed Equality Impact Assessments of budget proposals produced by each authority over the past three years since these would be likely to have a significant gender impact. My initial plan had been to compare published EIAs for the same policy areas, identifying a series of policy areas which might be expected to have a significant impact on gender equality. Unfortunately this did not prove possible. All three authorities had a page on their website where

impact assessments were listed, but the number of assessments published varied significantly. London Borough had only thirteen Impact Assessments listed on their website. During interviews with staff I learned that there were older EIAs available

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via the website, but that they were published on the pages containing documentation for council meetings. This means that anyone searching for an impact assessment would need to know the committee that considered the policy it related to and the date of the committee meeting, then search the council website to find the relevant page for papers for that meeting. In contrast County Council published over 170 impact assessments carried out since 2010 on their website, while City Council published over 60. I decided to review impact assessments over the last three years and identify a sample of five from each authority, selecting those relating to policies which might be expected to have at least some gender impact. I looked to see whether there was any acknowledgement of gender impact and whether there were recommendations for a change to the policy as a result of the assessment.

In order to investigate the background to the introduction of the PSED and analyse the way in which equality was framed by national Government I analysed the most significant Government documents produced as part of the consultation process around the Equality Bill. These were Fairness and Freedom: the final report of the equalities review, (Equality Review 2007), the Discrimination Law Review: A Framework for Fairness; Proposals for a Single Equality Bill for Great Britain, (DCLG 2007), the Government Response to the Consultation on the Discrimination Law Review (GOE 2008) and the Government guide to the Equality Bill, A Fairer Future: the Equality Bill and other action to make equality a reality, published when the Bill was introduced in Parliament (2009). To understand how the approach to equality had changed under the 2010-2015 Coalition government I analysed the Coalition Agreement, Equalities Strategy and speeches by various Government Ministers. I also examined EHRC business plans from 2009 to 2015 and the guidance the Commission produced on the PSED.