Hansard

I found preparing for the debate interesting. As most members know, I like to look at the evidence and to bring before the chamber a lot of facts and figures. In the end, all that I could do today was come up with many thoughts that I have on the subject.

It is more than 40 years since I became involved in party politics. As a 16-year-old, 41 years ago, I identified as a nationalist, a socialist and a feminist. Reflecting on that and thinking about today’s debate, I came to the debate an hour and a half ago quite pessimistic. Why, after all those years, are we still living in a society and a world in which there is violence against and abuse of women?

We have heard the stats from the minister and from many members and we are having the debate. An hour and a half ago, I wondered why, 40 years on, we are still having to have the debate. Having listened to the speeches so far, I am feeling more positive than I was at the beginning of the debate. I still do not think that I have the answers and I am still not sure that society has the answers. For me, there is still a question to ask.

Violence against and abuse of women is a question not of violence per se but of inequality. As long as we have gender inequality, we will have a power imbalance in our society. That is not just our society here in Scotland but, as we have heard from other members, societies around the world.

I fear that that power imbalance will always lead to an acceptance—or if not an acceptance, at least a debate about acceptable levels—of violence against women. Nanette Milne talked about the survey that Girlguiding Scotland carried out. That reminded me that in my first term in Parliament, 16 years ago, I was at a meeting—I know that there are members in the chamber who were with me then—at which we heard the results of research into young men’s attitudes towards young women and whether violence and sexual coercion are acceptable.

All those years ago, we sat there and were horrified when we heard the results of that research. It found that 20 per cent of young men said that it was acceptable to coerce a partner into having a sexual relationship and that something like 40 per cent of young men thought that it was acceptable to give her a wee slap if she was out of line. We have heard those facts and figures again from more recent research. That is where my pessimism comes in.

The minister and other members have talked about zero tolerance of domestic abuse. From its first days in 1999, the Parliament has taken a strong stand about that, which it should rightly be proud of. We talk about zero tolerance and the minister talked about the stigma that men who are involved in domestic abuse now feel. I am not sure that that stigma is felt across all our society.

Elaine Murray talked about media images of young women. While our media present such images, how can people who are violent towards or who in any way abuse young women understand the stigma and shame that such behaviour brings?

Over breakfast this morning, I was reading the Sunday papers—that takes me until Tuesday. I was having a wee read of the agony aunt column in the back of the Observer magazine—it was breakfast time and my brain was not ready to engage in hard stuff. My goodness, let me quote what Mariella Frostrup said:

“Only this week I sat in a women’s networking event as a roomful of mature working women, from their 20s to their 50s, complained about the level of misogyny they have to deal with”

at work. She went on:

“I was shocked at how much a fabric of these women’s lives sexist abuse appeared to be and how many of them, otherwise able, robust and independent, felt intimidated about bringing it up with their HR department ... to be dealt with appropriately. The politics of the playground—bawdy humour, jostling for attention and elevated testosterone levels—appear still to be rife in the workplace”.

I think that we can all accept that such behaviour is still rife in the workplace, but I take exception to the phrase “politics of the playground”, because such behaviour is not acceptable at any age or in any situation. As Alison McInnes said, we must educate our young people at the earliest stage.

When we talk about zero tolerance, we should include zero tolerance of the attitude that requires little girls to wear pink and little boys to wear blue. Did members see how much time “Reporting Scotland” spent last night on the Scotland football team’s away strip, just because it is pink? The item took up six minutes of a national news programme, because people think that pink is for girls and not for our national football team.

The news item reminded me of a day when I was at Glasgow airport, after being re-elected to the Parliament in 2011. I was waiting to pick up my husband when my son, who was a young teenager at the time, said, “Oh mum, come and see this; you’ll love this.” Tesco was selling dummies for little children: the ones for little boys were blue and said, “My little hero”, and the ones for little girls were pink and said, “Little flirt”. “Little flirt” on a dummy for a baby? Being me, I got all angry and wrote to Tesco. I got an apology and Tesco said that it would never use that supplier again.

This is about zero tolerance right from the beginning. It is about saying that there is no gender inequality and about bringing up young children to believe that we are all equal and that we are all equally due respect.

As well as zero tolerance of violence against women, there should be zero tolerance of violence towards children. If we can smack our kids, what message are we giving them? Are we saying that when they get older they can just give their girlfriend or wife a wee tap?

I had loads more to say, but I will finish by telling members that I went to see the new film in the series “The Hunger Games” the other night—I wonder whether other members have been to see it yet. The audience was full of young women, which was quite an experience. I explain that I always go to the pictures with my young adult son, so I am not often in an audience of young women. The character Katniss Everdeen is a heroine for all those 13 and 14-year-old women. It was brilliant that, before the film started, there was an advert about getting young women into jobs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. That was amazing. Let us hope that it has an effect.

Stewart Stevenson talked about changing men’s minds, which is something that we must do. My generation of feminists talked about empowering young women, but we must never forget that we must not alienate and disempower young men so that they think that they can secure their rights only by using physical strength and violence.

I could have given lots of examples from my constituency, but I must finish. I came to the debate feeling fairly pessimistic and wondering whether the fight will ever end—and there are only four months to go in this parliamentary session. However, having listened to the debate, I see that although the fight has not ended, we will keep taking the battle out to the public, to make something happen.