Hansard

I begin by recognising, as others have done, that this is, I think, the last debate in the chamber that the First Minister will take part in as First Minister. It is appropriate that that is happening on international women’s day. I thank the First Minister for her leadership, especially on the issue that is before us today. Although we still have work to do, Scotland is better able than it might otherwise have been without Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership to tackle the various issues of gender inequity that we face—so thank you.

I also thank the women across Scotland who work hard to support other women, through paid or unpaid work, as family members or friends, as colleagues or as strangers, and I thank the community groups and organisations that work every day to further gender equality and to support women. I know some such organisations very well—I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests.

Under this year’s international women’s day theme, we are told to embrace equity. This afternoon, we have the opportunity to ask ourselves exactly what that means. Equity is not just a synonym for equality or a way to ring the changes on a well-worn tune; equity is something different that asks more of us and that offers more to those for whom we speak.

In some legal traditions, equity has long been understood and recognised. It is a fairness that goes beyond the common law, addressing the ways in which simply adhering to standard practice does not bring about justice.

Equity is about situations in which equality is not enough. That is illustrated by the familiar drawing of children behind a fence. To see what is happening on the other side of the fence, the littlest need the largest boxes to stand on.

Equity is about situations when we do not know exactly what justice requires. It is no coincidence that we speak not of intergenerational equality but of intergenerational equity. The needs of future generations—the women and girls of the future—depend on the decisions that we make now.

We know, as ActionAid and Oxfam reminded us this week, that our overlapping crises—of cost and climate, food and fuel, housing and habitats—all carry brutally gendered impacts. Unless our choices now are informed by equity, those disparities will widen into unbridgeable gulfs of suffering and despair.

Equity is demanding of everyone involved. It demands honesty, integrity and attention to nuance and granular detail. Whoever comes to equity, says the old legal adage, must come with clean hands. It is not an easy option. It is not a weapon for playing political games or constructing moral panics. If we are, indeed, to embrace equity, as feminists, we must be clear about what it requires from us and from the communities that we help to build.

First of all, equity needs to be intersectional. We must remember the visceral force of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s original metaphor. For the women who stand in those junctions, heavy traffic thundering towards them from all sides—misogyny, racism and transphobia—equity is not a nice idea but a life-saving necessity.

There are many intersections that we do not know enough about. Age Scotland has highlighted, for example, the lack of data about older disabled women, older women of colour and older LGBTQIA+ women. Unless we know who we are talking about, where they are and what they need, our strategies will be mere well-meaning hopes.

Secondly, equity must be grounded in the particular, and it must be recognised that no woman’s experience is the same as another’s and that each bears her unique story. Hearing those stories must not be an afterthought—a colourful illustration of the narrative that we have already decided to tell. As representatives, policy makers and legislators, we must listen, not merely hear.

Thirdly, equity must also be collective. We must recognise our shared experiences of the particular and stand in solidarity as allies for as long as it takes. Our equity cannot come from the top down; it must be nurtured and grown by those who need it most. Processes of equity must be truly participatory and truly iterative. We will not always succeed, but we can definitely fail better.

Fourthly and finally, the equity that we seek to embrace is inclusive. We must build on the best of all that has gone before. It does not need to choose between justice and care. Indeed, it must not choose between them but be deeply imbued with the ethics of both. The giving of care is central to the daily lives of thousands of women in Scotland and millions across the world, but so is the experience of injustice. There is no incongruity between recognising the deep human value of the care—paid or unpaid—that many women give and saying that they, their daughters and their granddaughters deserve better.

We can do better and do differently, not just in Scotland but, as we take our place on the global stage, in developing and enacting a genuinely feminist foreign policy. War, climate change, conflict and forced migration exacerbate all oppressions, precarities and social and gender disparities. Only the most meticulous care and the most radical justice can address them. We embrace those. We embrace equity.

To close, I share Rebekah Bastian’s words on gender equity, with due apologies for what some might consider to be an inappropriate word:

“Race, religion”,

identity,

“and nationality
Age, ability and sexuality
There is no one size fits all strategy
To empowering woman equitably ...

We need to remember women’s many identities
And then create systems that work towards equity
This is more than a list or some boxes to check
We have multi-dimensional matrices to inspect

To break down the 50 percent into stories
And understand women in all of their glory
But the hard work is worth it, without a doubt
We have too much untapped talent just waiting to come out

We’re all here right now because we give a shit
About gender equity. And this is it.”