Four women from Renfrewshire (Margo Kirkwood, Steph Mayo, Julie Tate and Nancy Gallagher) are set to travel to Europe's corridors of power to demand a fairer deal for women across the continent.

They are members of Paisley's Beechwood Women and Arts Group and all four have experienced poverty in their lives. They are part of a group of 33 women from across Europe who are travelling to Brussels this week (Tuesday 16 March) to take part in the GenderWorks Conference and tell Europe's powerbrokers of their experiences of living in poverty or working to tackle women-specific poverty in Europe.

GenderWorks is a project run jointly by Oxfam and partners, funded by the European Commission, to investigate women's experiences of poverty and social exclusion in Europe. GenderWorks demonstrates that poor women are the experts on the experience of poverty.

In many areas the disadvantage women experience is hidden from the attention of policy makers and the general public by statistics that fail to differentiate between men and women.

The right to a voice is central to tackling poverty and social exclusion, and one way of giving women a voice is by providing women-only spaces such as the Beechwood Women and Arts Group.

The conference will make three key recommendations to the European Parliament and European Commission next week.

* More focus on women's economic independence - including proper access to childcare, training and fair pay for women in work.

* Recognition for the importance of women only spaces - including safe physical spaces for women as well as space for women's voices in policy making.

* Dedicated services for women - Social protection must be delivered in a way that reflects needs and does not exclude women by mode of delivery, but instead encourages women to access their rights and raises their confidence to participate.

Margo Kirkwood said:

"The Beechwood Women and Arts Group was set up as a place for women to get together and talk about the issues surrounding poverty.

"I'd never been in a women's only space before and it quickly became a precious place to me. It's a safe haven for me and the other women who come here.

"I ended up living in poverty for the same reasons that thousands of women in Scotland do.

"What little money I was earning as a youth worker at the time was nullified by what I was having to spend on childcare. The pressure was immense and there was a lingering feeling that I had become a total failure.

"It's a horrible situation to be in and you feel totally helpless. When you end up in debt you are at the mercy of people who can come and take your furniture away or leave you with nothing.

"They have power over you and they call the shots. All I wanted was the chance to take part in normal life but when you're in poverty you can't.

"It was only when I got involved with the Beechwood group that I started to become more politically aware and I realised that I wasn't the only one.

"I became aware that it wasn't entirely my fault and that actually it was impossible to get by in those circumstances. There was more going out than was coming in.

"It was an important moment for me because I knew then that I had the right to stand up for myself. Okay, I found myself in this position but that didn't make it okay for people to speak to me like I was a piece of dirt on the sole of their shoe.

"Oxfam's GenderWorks project is so important because its aim is to take the message to the policy makers in Europe. There is nobody more qualified to tell them what it's like being a woman living in poverty than those women themselves.

"We'll go there, make our point and hopefully convince the European Parliament and the policy makers to take these issues more seriously and to do something about it."