Hansard

International women’s day has been observed for more than a century. In many parts of the world, much has changed for women since the early 1900s, from enfranchisement to the #MeToo movement. In other parts, progress has slowed significantly or has even reversed, sometimes drastically.

So, although today is a celebration of the remarkable achievements of women around the world, it is also a protest at the persistent gender inequality and discrimination that women continue to experience every day. It is a day of reflection, frustration, anger and sadness.

As we come together to mark international women’s day 2022 against a background of violence and conflict in Ukraine, we do so with particularly sombre hearts. We know that women and girls are disproportionately impacted by war: one former UN peacekeeping commander believes that it has become more dangerous to be a woman in an armed conflict than it is to be a soldier.

Too often, women bear the humanitarian cost of war, but their acts of bravery, heroism and kindness also demonstrate that there is humanity in adversity. Since Russia’s unprovoked invasion almost two weeks ago, we have seen and heard harrowing accounts of how that appalling conflict has collided with the lives of the Ukrainian people.

In just a matter of days, daily commutes to work and to the school gates have been replaced by desperate journeys in search of safety. Two million people, mostly women and children, have been displaced as they flee the violence. They have left everything behind. As fathers are called up to fight and families are separated, courageous mothers have walked dozens of kilometres with their frightened children in frigid winter temperatures as the threat of Russian attack spurs them on into the unknown.

Polish mothers left prams, buggies, blankets and baby bags on a station platform for weary Ukrainian refugees crossing into Poland by train—a deeply touching gesture of solidarity and support.

The bravery and resilience of women across Ukraine humbles us all. Female doctors stayed behind in hospital basements to care for their patients as the sound of Russian shelling reverberated through the buildings. Women resisted by making Molotov cocktails and took up arms to defend their country’s sovereignty from an irredentist dictatorship. The director of the Save Wild sanctuary, Natalia Popova, stayed with a lorry evacuating animals to Poland as Russian tanks advanced just 80 m away and Ukrainian partisan women secured safe passage for them. A volunteer medic lost her life helping injured Ukrainian soldiers on the front line. A grandmother pleaded with Russian forces for the lives of her grandchildren—a six-year-old girl called Sofia and a six-week-old baby boy called Ivan—as they fled the conflict. They were shot to death.

We cannot possibly know what it is like to walk in the shoes of women in Ukraine during that senseless violence, but we want those women, and women in conflict zones around the world or who are experiencing the aftermath of war, to know this: we are with you, shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm.

Last week marked one year since 33-year-old Sarah Everard was kidnapped, raped and murdered by police officer Wayne Couzens, who pretended to arrest her as she walked home from a friend’s house. He was a predator hiding in plain sight, cloaked in pretence and deceit. The brutality of Sarah’s death shook our country to its core.

Other members and I were humbled to join the Sarah Everard memorial protest in Edinburgh last Thursday. But, as campaigner and founder of Strut Safe, Rachel Chung, said during the protest, “nothing has changed”. In the year since Sarah was killed, 125 more women are reported to have lost their lives across the UK.

In Scotland, the number of domestic abuse incidents has increased for the fifth year in a row. On average, 180 domestic abuse cases are reported to Police Scotland every day. Dundee City, in my region, has recorded the worst rates of domestic abuse in Scotland. Nine out of ten cases took place in the home, supposedly a place of sanctuary but the least safe place for far too many women. The number of sexual crimes recorded across Scotland increased by 13 per cent last year; the number of rapes increased by 12 per cent.

The majority of the correspondence that I receive at the moment relates to women’s safety. I know that women want to be able to wear what they want, without the threat of sexual harassment and violence. I know that women are hoping for the day when they can walk home from a friend’s house or a night out without clutching their keys in one hand and their mobile phone in the other. I know that women the length and breadth of the country are asking what it will take for the status quo to change.

The reality is that, for change to take place, we must see a change in attitudes and belief systems. There was widespread outrage when footballer David Goodwillie, who was ruled to be a rapist in civil court proceedings, was signed by Raith Rovers in January. The Raith Rovers women’s team cut ties to the club in opposition to the decision. The women’s captain, Tyler Rattray, stepped down and said that she wanted “nothing to do” with the signing.

Public outrage was compounded by a disgracefully tin-eared statement from the club to defend the decision. It highlighted Goodwillie’s “footballing ability” and emphasised that that was the community club’s “foremost consideration” in taking him on. What kind of message does that send not just to women and girls but to men and boys?

A poll by Ipsos and the global institute for women’s leadership at King’s College London that was published last week revealed that almost one in five men across the UK do not believe that gender inequality really exists. Almost a third of men think that traditional masculinity is under threat, and almost a third again think that feminism does more harm than good. Such regressive attitudes need to change to break the bias.

No longer do we want to hear statements like, “Over my dead body will you play in my boys football team—girls don’t play football”, as Rachel Pavlou was told by her headmaster when she was seven years old. She is now the Football Association’s development manager for diversity and inclusion.

I started my career in human resources in the 1980s and, in working with some truly inspirational women, I have seen at first hand how transformative diversity and inclusion policies can be in the workplace. I remember challenging male employees about the pornographic calendars in their workplaces long before The Sun stopped publishing page 3 photos in 2015.

Slowly we have chipped away at the casual misogyny that has characterised workplaces for decades. For too long, employers have expected women to minimise their differences and adapt to the workplace, rather than adapting the workplace to women. So much female talent has been lost because of that draconian mindset. From pregnancy to parental leave, childcare to the menopause, we must do better at responding to the issues.

The Economist’s glass-ceiling index—the annual measure of the role and influence of women in the workforce across 29 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries—ranks Great Britain well below average at number 22. That is simply not good enough.

The World Economic Forum estimates that it will now take 135.6 years to reach gender equality, as the Covid-19 pandemic set progress back by about 36 years. Without measurement there is no improvement, and I cannot emphasise enough how pivotal Theresa May’s drive to compel companies to publish their gender pay gap data was in helping to improve workplace equality.

As life increasingly returns to normal and the threat of the pandemic recedes, Governments and businesses must work collaboratively to nurture female talent and find other innovative ways to promote equality in the workplace. That is not about positive discrimination; it is about fairness.

I am proud to be in a Parliament that is made up of 45 per cent women, but I do not take that for granted, and we in the Parliament have much more to do to achieve equality in Scotland and in the world.

I move amendment S6M-03485.1, to insert at end:

“; recognises that this global day in 2022 takes place against a background of conflict and bloodshed in Ukraine and other countries blighted by violence, and that women and girls are disproportionately affected by war, and believes that more must be done to tackle the scourge of violence against women and girls in Scotland and around the world.”