Hansard

International women’s day is just as important now as ever, and I am sure that this year’s awareness day will help to progress the cause of true gender equality.

When I look around this chamber, I am proud to see many strong women beside me. Each and every day, my female colleagues across the political divide show that politics is now very much the business of women. However, when I look back at political representation in the UK throughout history, I find it staggering that, since 1918, only 489 women have been elected as members of the House of Commons. Let me put that into context: until December 2016, there had been fewer women MPs ever than there had been men elected to the House of Commons at any one time.

We sit in a Parliament whose composition is now 35 per cent female. Although that demonstrates that things are moving in the right direction, we are still far from achieving gender parity. People look to our Parliament as an example. Therefore, I look forward to a future in which it better reflects Scotland’s wider society.

Women of my age and younger have been afforded greater opportunities in their lives than our predecessors were, be that in education, in the workplace or elsewhere. That is thanks to the generations of women and men before us who advocated and fought for gender equality and parity of opportunity. In his message marking international women’s day two years ago, the former secretary general to the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, said that, as a society,

“We have shattered so many glass ceilings we created a carpet of shards.”

He continued:

“Now we are sweeping away the assumptions and bias of the past, so women can advance across new frontiers.”

As an MSP, I see it as my role—indeed, my duty—to continue fighting the fight of our mothers and grandmothers before us and to address current inequalities for the benefit of women and girls in the future. Society might now be fairer and more equal than ever before, but the progress has not moved swiftly enough, and women still face a number of injustices. As my colleague Gillian Martin noted, movingly, we continue to be subjected to sexism and sexual harassment; as Alison Johnstone mentioned, we are adversely affected by welfare reforms; and we continue to face massive barriers at work.

Notwithstanding pregnancy and maternity discrimination, sexual harassment in the workplace and the fact that women are more than three times as likely as men to be working part time, women who work are often paid less than men. Last year was the year of the BBC gender pay gap controversy, which revealed stark differences in the salaries of public figures. However, that issue is not unique to the media or the celebrity world, as the gender pay gap impacts on almost every workforce across the UK. More women than ever before are working in professional, high-ranking jobs, but what use is that when their pay is often less than that of their equivalent male counterparts?

According to research by the opportunity now campaign, in the UK, for every £1 that a man earns, a woman takes home 81p. As I am a committed trade unionist—I duly refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which states that I am a member of Unison—it continues to be a real source of personal frustration to me that women continue to lose out in the workplace. Since 1997, the gender pay gap in Scotland has narrowed considerably, from 26.5 per cent in 1997 to 16.1 per cent in 2017. However, 16.1 per cent is 16.1 per cent too much.

An Ipsos MORI poll that was conducted recently asked respondents when they thought that pay and economic equality would be achieved. The average of the participants’ answers was 2035. Nevertheless, members will not be surprised to hear that 2035 is a bit on the optimistic side, with the World Economic Forum suggesting that, at the current rate, women are not likely to reach economic parity with men until 2234. I doubt very much that I will be here to see that.

There are many drivers of the gender pay gap but, sadly, there is no one solution to the challenge of closing it. As with many of the injustices that women face, some barriers are systematic and cultural and will take generations to unravel. Nonetheless, many of the proactive measures that have been taken by the Scottish Government will go some way towards making Scotland more equal for our young women. For example, as a result of recent changes to the Equality Act 2010, public authorities are now forced to report their gender pay gap and publish equal pay statements if they employ more than 20 people—the figure is down from 150 employees previously. Furthermore, through the implementation of the developing the young workforce strategy, which is Scotland’s youth employment strategy, we will address gender imbalances in young people’s career choices and opportunities.

The Scottish Government is continuing to push employers to become living wage accredited. It is not right that more than 100,000 more women than men earn less than the living wage in Scotland, although the Government has ensured that Scotland has the highest proportion of employees who are paid the living wage of any country in the UK. International women’s day should give us all a renewed impetus. We must continue to work together to close the gender pay gap not only for ourselves but for the generations to follow.

Today, just over 100 years on from women getting the right to vote, women not having the right to vote is viewed as a ludicrous idea. It is viewed as old fashioned and belonging to history. I look forward to the day when gender inequality is seen as something that happened “in the olden days”, as my kids would say—an outdated concept that is consigned to the history books.

The motion alludes to the fact that this is Scotland’s year of young people, and we owe it to Scotland’s young people to do all that we can to create a fairer and more equal society. As has been evidenced in other speeches, through the #MeToo campaign and the time’s up movement we are witnessing profound changes in our world, and, for the most part, women are leading the way.