Hansard

It is a privilege to open this debate. I will talk shortly about what international women’s day means for us here in Scotland, but this is also an opportunity to show solidarity with women and girls around the globe, not least those on the front line of conflict and war.

Today in particular, I know that all our thoughts are with the women and girls of Ukraine. Ukraine is one of the countries around the world that marks international women’s day with a public holiday. This time last year, thousands marched through the streets of its capital city, Kyiv, to demand gender equality. Today, the reality could not be more different. Kyiv and cities across Ukraine are under brutal Russian bombardment. Far from participating in peaceful democratic protest, Ukrainians are now fighting and fleeing for their lives.

Today, from our national Parliament here in Edinburgh, Kyiv’s twin city, let us send the women and girls, men and boys of Ukraine our love, solidarity and support, but let us also send this message. In the face of the horror that is engulfing Ukraine, words are not enough. In the past 10 days alone, more than 2 million people have already fled the horrors of war, and that number is rising rapidly. The majority of those who are seeking refuge are women and children.

So far, the United Kingdom’s response has fallen short. Today, on international women’s day, I appeal to the UK Government to follow the example of Ireland and other European Union countries, putting refuge and sanctuary first and bureaucracy second. Let us let people in and do the paperwork afterwards. Let us open not just our hearts but our doors. Our common humanity demands it.

The theme of this year’s international women’s day is “break the bias”—three short words that mask the scale of the task that we face if we are to ensure that there is equality for women and girls here at home and around the globe. The bias that we seek to break is ingrained. Its roots are deeply historic—I will reflect on that point later—but its impacts are very current, and all women experience it in some way, shape or form. Of course, for minority ethnic women, disabled women, trans women and lesbians, the impact is compounded.

The bias that we must break encapsulates prejudice and discrimination, outdated gender stereotypes, sexism and misogyny—attitudes that have no place in modern society but which still shape and limit women’s lives daily. Those attitudes result in the systematic underrepresentation of women, in the undervaluing of the contribution that women make to our society, and in too many women living in perennial fear of harassment, abuse, domestic and sexual violence and, in too many cases, murder.

Breaking the bias must mean changing all that, or it will mean nothing at all. Let us be clear that it is not women who need to change. What must change is a culture in which prejudice, sexism and misogyny still thrive.

International women’s day is a time to take stock of progress, and progress has been made. I stand here as the first woman to hold the office of First Minister and I lead a gender-balanced Cabinet. Forty-five per cent of this Parliament’s members are women and, albeit very belatedly, we now count among our number women of colour. All that is progress, and it is helping to drive deeper change.

The world’s first comprehensive women’s health plan, free period products, which remove for women and girls the financial cost and stigma of periods, reform of the law on domestic abuse, the doubling of early years education and childcare, and the new child payment are tangible examples of policies that are making the lives of women and girls better.

We should celebrate the progress that has been made, but we must not let it mask the deep inequalities that still exist across society or distract us from the work that there is still to do. Better representation is not yet equal representation in Parliament, in our council chambers, or on company boards or decision-making bodies throughout the country. Women still bear the biggest responsibility for childcare and unpaid care more generally, they are still much more likely to work in occupations that are underpaid and undervalued and, of course, the lives of women are still blighted each and every day by an epidemic of harassment, abuse, threats and violence.

That epidemic seems to be getting worse, not better. The problem is real and very current, but the misogyny that motivates it is age old. That is why I want to focus the remainder of my remarks on two issues, one of which is deeply historic and one of which is contemporary. However, they are linked by the common thread of misogyny.

There is a petition before the Parliament that demands a pardon for the more than 4,000 people in Scotland—the vast majority of them were women—accused of, and in many cases convicted and executed for, being witches under the Witchcraft Act 1563. Those who met that fate were not witches; they were people, and they were overwhelmingly women. At a time when women were not even allowed to speak as a witness in a courtroom, they were accused and killed because they were poor, different or vulnerable or, in many cases, just because they were women. That was injustice on a colossal scale that was driven, at least in part, by misogyny in its most literal sense: hatred of women.

The pardon that the petition calls for would require the Parliament to legislate and, in future, it may choose to do so. In the meantime, the petition also calls for an apology—after all, those accusations and executions were instigated and perpetrated by the state. Therefore, today, on international women’s day, as First Minister on behalf of the Scottish Government, I am choosing to acknowledge that egregious historic injustice and to extend a formal posthumous apology to all those who were accused, convicted, vilified or executed under the Witchcraft Act 1563.

Some will ask why this generation should say sorry for something that happened centuries ago, although it might be more pertinent to ask why that has taken so long. For me, there are three reasons for that.

First, acknowledging injustice—no matter how historic—is important. The Parliament has rightly issued formal apologies and pardons for the more recent historic injustices suffered by gay men and miners. We are currently considering a request for a formal apology to women whose children were forcibly adopted. Reckoning with historic injustice is a vital part of building a better country and so, too, is recognising and writing into history what has been erased for too long: the experiences and achievements of women.

Secondly, for some, the issue is not yet historic. There are parts of our world in which, even today, women and girls face persecution and sometimes death because they have been accused of witchcraft.

Thirdly, although in Scotland the Witchcraft Act 1563 may have been consigned to history a long time ago, the deep misogyny that motivated it has fundamentally not been. We live with that still. Today, it expresses itself not in claims of witchcraft but in everyday harassment, online rape threats and sexual violence. All that is intensified by an increasingly polarised and toxic public discourse and amplified each and every day by social media. It is no wonder that more women than ever before—certainly in my lifetime—are now questioning whether politics and public life are safe environments for women, and it is no wonder that so many still feel scared to walk the streets.

In recent days, we have marked the anniversary of the horrific murder of Sarah Everard, whose death sparked outrage and a demand for change. However, in the year since Sarah was killed, dozens more women have been murdered across Britain.

Just last week, I chaired the Cabinet’s annual meeting with the Scottish Children’s Parliament and the Scottish Youth Parliament. One of the trustees of the Youth Parliament, Sophie Reid, gave a powerful presentation about the experiences of young women today. She spoke of the ways in which women are forced to adapt their own behaviours and restrict their own lives to protect themselves, as far as possible, from harassment, abuse and violence by men. Those experiences are heartbreaking, but they are not new. They are also the experiences of my generation, and of my mother’s and grandmother’s generations. If they are not to become the experiences of the next generation, too, a line in the sand must be drawn.

It is no longer acceptable to expect women and girls to adapt and accommodate. It is time to challenge unacceptable male behaviour and better protect women from it. We must change for good the culture of misogyny that has normalised such behaviour for far too long. It is in that context that Baroness Helena Kennedy’s working group on misogyny and criminal justice published its groundbreaking report this morning. I thank Baroness Kennedy and the working group, which included the late and sadly missed Emma Ritch, for producing such a powerful and compelling report. Its recommendations are bold and far reaching. It proposes a new misogyny and criminal justice act and recommends that that act include a statutory misogyny aggravation.

It is important to stress, in anticipation of concerns about freedom of thought and speech, that that would not criminalise misogyny per se, but it would allow crimes—assault, for example—that are motivated by misogyny to be treated more seriously in sentencing. Importantly, it would not apply to crimes such as rape, which are inherently misogynistic.

The report also recommends three new criminal offences to reflect and better address the daily lived experience of too many women. Those offences would be stirring up hatred against women and girls; public misogynistic harassment; and issuing threats of, or invoking, rape or sexual assault or disfigurement of women and girls, whether online or offline. The Scottish Government welcomes those recommendations in principle. We will now give full consideration to the detail, and we will respond formally as soon as possible.

However, in my view, the report matters beyond the detail of the specific recommendations that it makes. It matters because it acknowledges, and gives powerful voice to, the stark realities of everyday life for women. It recognises that misogyny is endemic and that it blights the lives of women every single day. It rightly points out that not all men are misogynist but all women experience misogyny. It also recognises the power of the law to drive social and cultural change and concedes that, for women and girls, our law is currently failing.

Perhaps most important of all, it articulates a fundamental truth on which, on this international women’s day, we must all reflect: a society in which women do not feel safe is not one in which we can ever be truly equal. On international women’s day, let us in this Parliament rededicate ourselves to building a society in which women and girls are safe and in which they feel safe. Let us acknowledge and reckon with historic injustice, and in doing so, let us redouble our work now to consign age-old misogyny to the history books, once and for all.

Let that then be the foundation on which we build a truly gender-equal Scotland and offer it as an example to women and girls across the globe. On this international women’s day, at a time of real darkness for our world, let us today send a message of hope and light to women and girls everywhere.

I move,

That the Parliament unites to mark International Women’s Day 2022; welcomes this year’s theme of #BreakTheBias, which recognises that “whether deliberate or unconscious, bias makes it difficult for women to move ahead”, and that intersecting characteristics such as disability and race can compound bias and discrimination; recognises that it is the responsibility of everyone to end the discrimination that women and girls face; acknowledges that, while much progress towards achieving equality has been made, it has not yet been achieved in Scotland or around the world; recognises the steps forward that the Scottish Parliament has taken to improve equal representation, and the record number of women elected, and acknowledges that there is more to do, especially for the representation of disabled, BAME and LGBT women and women from other minority groups; further recognises the tireless work of organisations and communities across Scotland to promote equality and support women, and agrees that equality is necessary for society and the economy to thrive, and that everyone should work together to break the bias on, and beyond, International Women’s Day.