Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 04 March 2021
Equality is one of the four founding principles of the Scottish Parliament and it should be at the core of everything that we do here, yet more than 20 years into the Parliament, many challenges remain. We undoubtedly still have work to do.
In November, we spoke about problems around violence against women and life-ruining crimes and hideous harassment, which are problems that must be addressed globally and closer to home. I choose to challenge domestic abuse and gender-based violence against women and girls, and I do so frequently.
Of course, those are not the only challenges that women face. Many have said that the pandemic has turned back the clock on gender equality. It is true that negative impacts have fallen disproportionately on women. Job losses and income reductions have been widespread. An International Monetary Fund report highlighted that women are more likely than men to work in social sectors, including retail, tourism and hospitality, where lockdown has been most acutely felt.
The true value of care has come into the limelight, professionally and domestically, and the responsibility to manage schooling at home has, without question, hit women harder. Many people found themselves between a rock and a hard place, juggling impossible burdens and unrealistic expectations. These problems are not new; there is nothing unfamiliar in what I have described. The relationship between women and work has always been fragile, often because of where caring responsibilities naturally fall.
As we have just seen during the course of the pandemic, those extra expectations are just supposed to be absorbed, but the working world is full of rigid expectations and counter-productive policies such as those being fought by the women against state pension inequality.
According to a Trades Union Congress survey that was published in January, more than seven in 10 women who applied for furlough after the latest school closures had their requests turned down. That forces women to sacrifice pursuing progression—evidence bears that out. Research by Engender found that representation in positions of power is still dominated by men. Women make up 52 per cent of the Scottish population, but we account for only 36 per cent of public body chief executives, 13 per cent of senior police officers and 6 per cent of major newspaper editors, and there are no women as chief executive officers of Scotland-based FTSE 100 or 250 companies.
Politics sees much of the same. There are concerns, which I feel are valid, that the gender balance in politics might be going in the wrong direction. Too many women have made the decision to step down, explicitly because sitting in Holyrood is incompatible with family life and attracts undue and insufferable abuse. Before the pandemic, a family-friendly Parliament amounted to a commitment to avoiding formal business running on into the evenings and to having a crèche on site for staff. That follows an exodus of women from public office in the run-up to the 2019 general election, which was largely motivated by disgraceful online vitriol that reinforced the clear and urgent need for more to be done to tackle misogynistic harassment.
Perhaps this week more than most, it seems as though the political world is not doing enough to ensure that a woman’s place is in Parliament. This is where we make laws and set examples. Taking inspiration from this year’s international women’s day theme, we can choose to challenge the Parliament to be better than that: to learn the lessons of the past 12 months; make hybrid operation a long-term reality, which lets women in rural and non-central-belt communities take part and balance family life; and take the opportunity to make things better for the future. This is a moment to change things and we should grasp it.
Finally, as others have done, to all the members who are standing down, I express my good wishes for whatever the future holds for them.
16:31