Hansard

Today is international women’s day: a global day to celebrate women’s achievements and to call for accelerated action towards gender parity. This year’s theme is press for progress.

Presiding Officer, 2018 is historically significant. A hundred years ago, some women got the right to vote and the right to stand for election to Parliament. It is also Scotland’s year of young people: a year when we celebrate young people’s achievements and contributions and create new opportunities for them to shine locally, nationally and globally.

On international women’s day in this, Scotland’s year of young people, I want to talk about equality from the perspective of young women and girls. What does it feel like, a century since some women got the vote, to be a girl growing up in Scotland today?

I also want to pay tribute to the young women activists who are taking change into their own hands. They are speaking out against sexual harassment, fighting for equal rights and opportunities, challenging societal norms and saying unequivocally that they want equality for women and girls, and that they want it not in another 100 years’ time, but now.

On Tuesday, alongside the First Minister, the Minister for Childcare and Early Years and the rest of the Cabinet, I was really delighted to meet 14 children and young people from the Children’s Parliament and the Scottish Youth Parliament, who ranged in age from nine to their early 20s. The second such Cabinet meeting, it was an opportunity for our children and young people to raise directly with the Scottish Government issues that matter to them and a chance for us to really listen, discuss and collectively agree what we can do about them. Equality was right up there as one of the topics that children wanted to raise.

We know that some aspects of the women’s inequality that we talk about, such as the gender pay gap, have their roots in the early years. The types of toys and clothes that are marketed at girls and boys—when something as a simple as a colour becomes identified with a gender—the fact that children’s clothes aisles are divided into princesses and heroes, and the character traits that are considered appropriate for each gender can carry through to subject choice at school and to career choices.

Every year, the charity Girlguiding UK does a survey of girls’ attitudes, which is a snapshot of what girls and young women think on a wide range of issues and an insight into the pressures that young women and girls today face. The impact of gender stereotypes is clear. Fifty-six per cent of 7 to 10-year-old girls who were surveyed thought that boys were better at understanding difficult things, and 52 per cent thought that girls were better at doing their chores at home. In the week that the survey was carried out, 47 per cent of girls aged 11 to 21 had seen stereotypical images of men and women in the media that made them feel less confident. Thirty-seven per cent of girls saw gender stereotypes used on social media every day. However, 84 per cent of girls aged 11 to 21 said that they expected equal opportunities with men in the future and thought that childcare should be shared equally between parents, so there is a strong sense that young women and girls will not accept gender inequality as inevitable.

Last year, the #MeToo movement erupted in the aftermath of allegations about the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The hashtag has been used literally millions of times on Twitter by women of all ages, and by men, to share their own experiences of sexual harassment.

The origins of the #MeToo movement go back to 1996 when activist Tarana Burke, who is now a director of the Brooklyn-based organisation Girls for Gender Equity, was a youth camp director. A young girl confided in her about the sexual abuse that she was experiencing and Tarana said that, at that time, she did not feel equipped to help. Describing the experience of her interaction with the young woman, she said:

“I couldn’t help her release her shame, or impress upon her that nothing that happened to her was her fault. I could not find the strength to say out loud the words that were ringing in my head over and over again as she tried to tell me what she had endured. I watched her walk away from me as she tried to recapture her secrets and tuck them back into their hiding place. I watched her put her mask back on and go back into the world like she was all alone and I couldn’t even bring myself to whisper, ‘Me, too’.”

As a result of the young girl’s story, Tarana went on to start the #MeToo movement and to help young women of colour who had survived sexual abuse, assault and exploitation. It is an emotive and powerful story—that is how change is made. It brings to mind the well-known quotation by the American anthropologist Margaret Mead, who said:

“A small group of thoughtful ... people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

In 2005, seven young friends from Drumchapel high school in Glasgow started another movement, of which you will be well aware, Presiding Officer. One of their number, 15-year-old Agnesa Murselaj, was dawn raided and detained with her family by United Kingdom immigration authorities. Agnesa and her family had been settled in Scotland for five years; they were seeking asylum, having fled from Kosovo where their Roma ethnicity put their lives in danger.

Agnesa’s friends, some of whom were also seeking asylum, were concerned by her sudden disappearance and decided to do something. They set up the Glasgow girls group and started campaigning against Agnesa’s deportation and for an end to dawn raids on families with children. They started a petition, held candlelit vigils to prevent other families from being raided and secured cross-party support from this Parliament. With the support of charities and community groups, they kept the issue firmly on the political agenda until, ultimately, the UK Government announced an end to the detention of children for immigration purposes in 2010.

In September 2008, the Murselaj family were granted indefinite leave to remain, and the story of the Glasgow girls—Amal Azzudin, Roza Salih, Agnesa Murselaj, Ewelina Siwak, Toni-Lee Henderson, Jennifer McCarron and Emma Clifford—has inspired TV documentaries, dramas and even a musical.

There are many more such stories, testimonies and experiences. In 2015, the girls against campaign was founded by a group of teenage girls in Scotland who were just fed up at being sexually harassed and assaulted at gigs and live music venues. They now have thousands of supporters and work with bands, festivals and venues across the country.

In Kenya, five teenage girls from Kisumu girls high school have created an app that connects girls affected by female genital mutilation to legal and medical assistance. It also has a panic button for girls to alert the authorities.

Malala Yousafzai needs no introduction: she is a young woman from Pakistan who campaigns for girls’ right to an education and is, of course, the youngest Nobel prize laureate.

In England, Amika George, an A-level student, has started the #FreePeriods campaign for every student receiving free school meals to receive free sanitary products. More than 80,000 people have added their name to Amika’s petition. I am pleased that, in Scotland, we have already committed to fighting period poverty by providing access to sanitary products for students in schools, colleges and universities, and we have recently decided to continue to provide sanitary products to more than 1,000 women who participated in our Aberdeen pilot project while we evaluate the project’s outcomes.

I could go on, but the point is that young women and girls in Scotland, across the UK and around the world are speaking out against social injustice and inequality, just like the suffragettes 100 years before them.

I also note that today, another Scottish woman—Mary Barbour—is being honoured for, among other things, her pivotal role in leading the revolt against rent increases in Glasgow during the first world war. In 1915, with men at the front line, an influx of workers to Glasgow’s shipyards and munitions factories resulted in overcrowded tenements, and landlords, taking advantage of the situation, hiked rents up by as much as 23 per cent. By November that year, as many as 20,000 tenants were on rent strike. In his 1936 book, “Revolt on the Clyde”, the socialist leader Willie Gallacher remembers them as “Mrs Barbour’s Army”. He wrote:

“In Govan, Mrs Barbour, a typical working-class housewife, became the leader of a movement such as had never been seen before, or since for that matter. Street meetings, back-court meetings, drums, bells, trumpets—every method was used to bring the women out.”

Within a month, the Minister for Munitions, David Lloyd George, changed the law to reduce rents to pre-war levels across the country. Today, a bronze statue of Mary and her army, by sculptor Andrew Brown, is being unveiled at Govan Cross in Glasgow.

The methods may have changed, with social media perhaps replacing back-court meetings, but just like Mary Barbour, young women are standing up for what they believe is right, and we need to support, encourage and, above all, listen to what they are telling us. One of the findings from the Girlguiding survey that I mentioned was that 57 per cent of the 11 to 21-year-old girls surveyed did not think that politicians understood the issues that they face today. That is simply not good enough, and we should all respond to that loudly and clearly.

Indeed, that is why, among other things, meetings such as the one that the Cabinet had on Tuesday with children and young people are so important. The First Minister’s national advisory council on women and girls deliberately has three young women members—15-year-old Amina Ahmed, 17-year-old Katie Horsburgh and 21-year-old Suki Wan. The council’s second meeting also took place on Tuesday and focused on attitudes and culture change.

It is in all our interests to keep pressing for progress towards gender parity, because equality for women and girls is good for all of us, good for our economy and good for our society That does not mean that achieving gender equality is easy; it is not, but every step forward and every step that takes us closer to that goal is a step worth taking.

I am proud of the steps that the Scottish Government is taking. Already this year, we have passed legislation on domestic abuse and women’s representation on public boards. Our science, technology, engineering and mathematics—or STEM—strategy is prioritising challenging gender stereotypes and encouraging girls to get excited about STEM and the rewards of a career in STEM sectors.

On Tuesday, Skills Development Scotland organised an event in Glasgow that was targeted at young people from underrepresented groups who are interested in finding out more about modern apprenticeships, including young women considering STEM careers, and care-experienced, black and minority ethnic and disabled young people.

The equally safe strategy—our strategy to tackle all forms of violence against women and girls—sets out our commitment to piloting a whole-school approach to tackling gender-based violence, in partnership with Zero Tolerance, Rape Crisis Scotland and Education Scotland. The school years are formative ones for young people, and we want to ensure that we are helping them to develop a good understanding of what healthy relationships are and of consent. However, we can—and must—always do more.

Today, the First Minister announced that she will once again run the first mentor initiative, offering another young woman the chance to be mentored by her for a year. She has called on other women to join her, by offering a little bit of their time to and sharing their experience with another woman or girl to help them reach their goals and fulfil their potential. Later this year, in recognition of the centenary of women’s suffrage, the Scottish Government will hold an event with young women to talk about what we can do to get more women into political office.

Much has changed over the course of a century—much of it for the better in terms of women’s rights and equality. However, we need to be vigilant in terms of the good progress that has been made, and we need to keep taking those steps forward. We can and we should all play a part in pressing for progress, and we must never for a minute take our foot off the pedal.

I move,

That the Parliament unites on International Women’s Day to reaffirm its commitment to upholding and protecting the rights of women and girls, which are fundamental human rights; welcomes Scotland’s Year of Young People 2018, which aims to inspire Scotland through its young people, celebrating their achievements, valuing their contribution to communities and creating new opportunities for them to shine locally, nationally and globally; further welcomes the opportunity to reflect on young women and girls’ experience of gender inequality and what they would like to see change in the future; notes the Scottish Government’s commitment and ongoing activity to tackle gender inequality; pays tribute to the many and valued contributions of young women and girls, in Scotland, across the UK and around the world, who are advocating for, and in some cases making, change towards gender parity in their communities, and acknowledges organisations, such as Girl guiding Scotland, Young Scot and YWCA Scotland – the Young Women’s Movement, which play a vital role in ensuring that the voices of young women and girls are heard and acted on.