Hansard

International women’s day should be a day of celebration and empowerment. We take stock and mark the immense achievements of women in the face of systemic barriers to those achievements. However, I am not in a celebratory mood.

Undoubtedly, there has been much progress, and the very notion that feminist ideals have become mainstream in our discourse is testament to that. In taking that wider view, I understand the case for optimism; however, there is no room for complacency.

We should think of the brave women in Iran who are systemically subjugated and denied equity of status and basic rights such as access to education. I thank Meghan Gallacher for raising the case of Mahsa Zhina Amini, whose death last year fomented a wave of rebellions from women and the wider population, who are rising up against tyranny in that country.

Women around the world remain subject to profound inequity and, in some cases, state-sanctioned barbarism. We, in western Europe, can become all too complacent in this discussion. Many in liberal democracies blithely assume that women’s equality is a fact. What started as a rights movement has become an accepted normative principle, but belief in that principle can be a grievous mistake, because illiberal and populist thinking is rising in countries across Europe.

Only yesterday in the chamber, a debate was held on the safety of women and girls on public transport. Tomorrow’s debate focuses on reforming the criminal law to address misogyny. Every woman we meet will have experienced misogyny. Prejudice and misogynistic attitudes are thriving. Some men on social media parade their toxicity, safe in the knowledge that those behaviours still enjoy a level of social acceptability. Harassment, sexual assault and rape remain commonplace.

I thank Beatrice Wishart for mentioning Scottish Women’s Aid. My office has helped a number of constituents dealing with domestic abuse and we regularly work with our local Motherwell and District Women’s Aid group. Its vital specialist support services are experiencing unprecedented demand and its finances are strained almost to breaking point.

If we are truly to embrace equity, we must recognise that it is not a static fact but a shifting ideal that demands our vigilance and protection if we are to make any progress.

The aim of the 2023 #EmbraceEquity campaign is to get the world thinking about why equal opportunities are not enough. People start from vastly different circumstances, so true inclusion and true progress demand equitable action. That often means positive intervention.

I thank Gillian Martin for highlighting the gender pay gap statistics. In my office, I have a “Mind the Gap” poster that states:

“Prepare your daughter for working life. Give her less pocket money than her brother”.

Every single young person who visits my office is perturbed and annoyed by that. “Well, that’s not fair,” they cry. What happens, from primary school age to adolescence to adulthood, that blinds us to that simple injustice?

The UN is calling for more action to highlight and solve the persistent gender pay gap, the gap in digital access, the underrepresentation of women, girls and other marginalised groups in STEM, both in education and in careers, and the threat of online gender-based violence. It also calls for action to highlight the achievements of women in science and technology. Those are all things that we should be doing.

We have outstanding leaders in Scotland. Dr Silvia Paracchini, Professor Dame Anne Glover, Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Professor Dame Muffy Calder, and Professor Lesley Yellowlees are all pioneers in their field, as is Professor Sheila Rowan, who is leading the way on experimentation with gravitational waves. In my field of computing science, Gillian Docherty is the chief commercial officer at the University of Strathclyde and a former chief executive officer of the Data Lab.

There are also outstanding companies, including Antibody Analytics in my Motherwell and Wishaw constituency, that are co-founded by women and succeeding in initiatives to address gender imbalance in their company.

The First Minister is an inspiration to many of us, not least in her love of literature. I am reminded of one of my literary heroes, Ursula K Le Guin. On being asked to write the foreword to a collection of new fantasy short stories, she wrote:

“I cannot imagine myself blurbing a book, the first of a new series and hence presumably exemplary of the series ... the tone of which is so self-contentedly, exclusively male, like a club, or a locker room. That would not be magnanimity, but foolishness. Gentlemen, I just don’t belong here.”

She said that in 1987. As the First Minister said, Ursula K Le Guin did belong. All young women deserve to belong in their endeavours in life.

I used to think that the dystopian novels of Le Guin and Margaret Atwood that shaped my perceptions of the world were just fiction and not portents of what my life experience might be. However, for too many women, what is set out in “The Handmaid’s Tale” is close to their reality.

Last year, I read “The Shining Girls” by Lauren Buekes. Part of the book is set around the underground network supporting women who were exercising their reproductive rights in the 1960s. The chapter ends whimsically with a message that people should not worry because a court case is coming that will enshrine those rights “forever”. The book was published in 2013. At that time, Roe v Wade seemed unassailable, but look at what is happening in the USA today.

On this international women’s day, it is more important than ever to recognise where we are failing and, together, to resolve to achieve not just equality for women but equity for women across the world.