Booking now open for Buying Social Justice project collaborative workshops in Cardiff, Birmingham and Edinburgh
The project is holding three collaborative workshops for practitioners in Wales, England and Scotland to present the initial findings of the research and to develop the recommendations. The workshops are aimed at: The aims of each half-day workshop are to: Each workshop will provide a unique opportunity for practitioners to meet with and learn from […]
Survey closing on 31st January
Last chance to participate in the Buying Social Justice survey of procurement specialists If you work in procurement for a local authority, a housing association or a university and haven’t completed our short survey – you still have a couple of days to participate. The survey will only take 10 to 15 minutes of your […]
Where are gender and race equality in the Fair Work agenda?
Project researcher Dr Joyce Mamode presented a paper exploring the place of gender and race equality in the ‘Fair Work’ agendas in Scotland and Wales, at the University of Manchester’s fifth Fairness at Work conference, that took place on 23-24 January 2023. The paper presented some early findings from the Buying Social Justice project research, […]
Buying Social Justice project launches blog
The Buying Social Justice project has published its first blog piece on the project website. In A three-nations perspective on creating ‘social value’, Professor Hazel Conley argues that seeking social value through public procurement is even more important in times of public sector spending cuts, in order to minimise the impact of austerity policies that […]
Procurement officers’ survey – still time to respond!
The Buying Social Justice survey of how procurement officers are including social and equality criteria in their work remains open to responses. If you work in procurement in local government, higher education or in a housing association and haven’t yet completed the survey, we would really appreciate if you can take just 10-15 minutes to complete […]
Deadline extended for procurement survey
The deadline for completion of the Buying Social Justice survey of how procurement officers are including social and equality criteria in their work has been extended to Sunday 16 October 2022. The survey has been distributed to procurement officers in local government, housing associations and universities throughout England, Scotland and Wales, and we are very […]
Paper on social value and equality presented at conference in Finland
The Buying Social Justice project team presented its first international conference paper at the biennial meeting of the Research Network on Gender relations in the labour market and the welfare state at Tampere University, Finland in September 2022. The Network is part of the European Sociological Association, bringing together researchers interested in gender issues in […]
Buying Social Justice project launches major survey of procurement officers
A survey of thousands of procurement officers in local government, housing associations and universities has been launched by the Buying Social Justice project. The survey will provide new data on what procurement officers are doing to include social and equality criteria in their procurement practices throughout England, Scotland and Wales. Public authorities in England and […]
New video explains how public procurement can advance equality in construction
In this short video Professor Tessa Wright sets out why she believes that public procurement can be an effective tool for increasing employment opportunities for groups that are under-represented in the UK construction sector. Only 12% of those working in the construction industry in the UK are women and only 5-7% are from ethnic minority […]
Building bridges across the Atlantic
A delegation of tradeswomen from North America were introduced to the Buying Social Justice project at a research forum hosted by the University of Westminster on 14 June 2022. The purpose of the event was to share research on how to increase the numbers of tradeswomen, including sessions on female leadership and climate literacy and […]