Hansard

I fully agree with Clare Haughey that we are surrounded by strong women today. I am lucky enough to have the same at home, with my wife and three daughters.

I welcome the opportunity to speak as we celebrate women and girls around the world on international women’s day. Although it is a day for celebrating accomplishments and the progress that has been made, it is also a day for recognising the progress that is still left to be made.

Globally, the female population continues to face inequality and injustices in nearly all aspects of life, from health and education to career opportunities and domestic abuse. Inequality issues in the workplace, lack of political representation, gender biases and sexual harassment continue to persist in society.

Over the past 40 years, we have come a long way from when I worked in the cotton mills in Paisley, where women mill workers were not allowed to wear trousers. If they became engaged to be married, they had to leave the company. Gosh! What an improvement there is today.

Campaigns such as the #MeToo and time’s up campaigns, which have been mentioned, have added momentum to the push for equality, which women deserve. Women now feel more empowered to speak about their experiences of inequality. We must take the opportunity to listen to women and girls in order to understand the injustices that they face and find solutions to achieve equality.

We all know that there are areas of Scottish society in which we must improve. In education and training, there has been a 47 per cent decline in the number of women enrolled in colleges. Over the same period, the fall in the number of men enrolled in colleges has been only 25 per cent. In addition, only 5 per cent of those who started STEM apprenticeships in 2016-17 were female.

Women make up 50 per cent of the population but, in the political world, they make up only 35 per cent of MSPs and 24 per cent of local councillors. The Scottish Conservatives have recognised that we need to improve in that area, which is why my colleague Annie Wells launched the Women2Win Scotland campaign last year. She did so in order that women in the Conservative Party can receive the campaign training, networking and financial support that they need to run a successful campaign. In the past week, we have also launched a new diversity commission under the direction of Baroness Mobarik MEP to increase the number of women and minority candidates running under the Conservative banner for seats in the next Parliament.

Over the past 10 years or more, more women have taken up front-line operational roles in the armed forces on land and sea and in the air. Furthermore, they are achieving more senior command roles, which is only to be commended.

Let me move on to the slightly different topic of the Commonwealth women parliamentarians group, which was set up in the late 1980s. The CWP is a network of women members of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s Parliaments and legislatures. As an integral part of the CPA, the CWP works for better representation of women in legislatures and the furtherance of gender equality across the Commonwealth. The CWP network provides a means of building the capacity of women who have been elected to Parliament to be effective in their roles; improving the awareness and ability of all parliamentarians—male and female—and encouraging them to include a gender perspective in all aspects of their role in legislation, oversight and representation; and helping overseas and Commonwealth Governments to become gender-sensitive institutions.

The Scotland branch of the CPA chaired the first meeting of the British islands and Mediterranean region CWP steering committee, in September 2013, and held the first regional CWP conference, in March 2014. My colleague Margaret Mitchell is the CPA Scotland branch representative on the CWP regional steering committee.

The CWP has recognised that, traditionally, women have been the main drivers of change on gender equality. However, although women are by far the strongest advocates for gender equality, all parliamentarians and Parliaments, as institutions, have a role, and the CWP has appealed to branches in the CPA to appoint male champions. The CWP requested that CPA branches nominate a male parliamentarian to act as CWP male champion, and I recently volunteered for that role—to be truthful, it was with the strong encouragement of my wife and my daughters.

That initiative is in its infancy. However, I am looking forward to developing the role in the future for this Parliament and working in that role with other members from all sides of the chamber and with other CWP male champions within the region and elsewhere. As I was coming to the debate this afternoon, I was told that this Parliament is the first in the European Union to appoint a CWP male champion.

This year’s theme for international women’s day is press for progress, and I urge everyone to do just that: to press for progress in education, encouraging women to go to college and pursue careers in STEM, and to press for progress in the workplace, to close the wage gap and to end stigmas that suggest that women cannot hold executive positions.

We also need to press for progress in government, empower women to run for office and listen to their ideas and experiences, which will bring about real, productive change in creating equality for women. The experiences of women must be at the forefront of this equality movement; therefore, they need to be present and active in the forums in which change will be enacted.

Although international women’s day is only a single day in the year, the sentiment lasts all year round and we must continue to make progress in achieving equality for all. I wish you all a happy international women’s day.