Hansard

I, too, take the opportunity to welcome the minister to her role.

On behalf of Scottish Labour, I welcome the opportunity to have this debate and to welcome international women’s day 2024 and its key theme of “Inspire Inclusion”.

It is only right that, at the start of my contribution, I focus on the global context in which we have the debate. Around the world, women face significant challenges, and some of the examples of that this year feel particularly heinous. As is noted in the motion, just over two years ago, Russia began a violent full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the impacts of that on Ukrainian women have been devastating. We know the impact that that has had on the Ukrainian people, who continue to stand so strongly in the face of significant adversity.

We know that the impact on women, in particular, is disproportionate: Ukrainian women have been displaced internally and have had to seek refuge in countries such as our own to protect their, and, in many cases, their children’s safety. These women will always be welcome here for as long as they wish to make Scotland their home, and I hope that, in good time, the option will be there for a safe return to Ukraine for those women who desire it. Scotland and the UK should always be ready to provide safe haven to those people who are fleeing horrific war.

That brings me to the suffering of women in Palestine and Israel. The attacks on 7 October and the reported treatment of Israeli women were deplorable and wholly unacceptable and have rightly been met with widespread condemnation across the world. Following that, we have witnessed all-out war on the Gaza strip and the mass killing of tens of thousands of people, with many more currently starving to death as a result of the bombardment and limited access to aid.

I have raised this many times previously—and the minister mentioned, too—that there are currently around 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza. Of that number, 40 per cent are considered to be at high risk, which is extremely concerning. Humanitarian aid must be allowed in to provide those women with the support that they so desperately need.

Just yesterday, MSPs and staff had the opportunity to hear from Medical Aid for Palestinians and Oxfam about their experiences from the ground. Of all the points that were raised, the most harrowing was that women in Gaza are giving birth in unsterile conditions, which is extremely dangerous for the mother and the baby. However, substantive issues do not seem to be being taken on and work does not seem to be being done in that area. We must work harder to get women the aid that they need for childbirth. As we mark international women’s day, we cannot forget those women, and we must redouble our efforts to ensure that they receive the support that they need before it is too late. At this stage, I fear that it might already be too late for so many women and their children.

Closer to home, I absolutely agree with the points that were set out in the motion about the fact that “achieving gender equality” is more important now than perhaps ever before. The challenges that we face remain significant. Violence against women and girls remains at a disturbingly high level, and we have seen in recent times how misogyny is ingrained in some of our largest public bodies. Our fight is by no means over, and we must continue to fight with determination to achieve the equality that we so deeply want.

Women who live in areas of higher levels of deprivation in Scotland perhaps experience inequality more than others, and that is particularly the case in the health sector. In women’s health services, we have inequalities in the uptake of human papillomavirus vaccination and screening programmes. People live longer in good health in the most affluent areas of Scotland compared with those people who live in deprived areas—for women, that gap is quite stark, at 25.7 years. That is unacceptable, and we must all strive to change it.

There is undoubtedly a need for a global approach to protecting human rights, supporting marginalised groups and amplifying the voices of women. However, it would be wrong to have this debate without recognising the challenges that we face on our own doorstep, which we must always think of.

For far too long, women’s health services have not delivered for those women in our most vulnerable communities. That creates inequality between women, which in itself is a challenge that we must work tirelessly to overcome. Without community-based provision of women’s health services that go to the individual rather than depend on the individual going to them, we will never achieve the equality that we speak about today.

International women’s day is an excellent opportunity to unite around a common purpose and to reiterate the calls that we have been making for so many years to encourage men to speak up, be accountable and be part of the fight. However, it also requires us, in this Parliament, to recognise how our decisions can impact equality and to be realistic about the experiences of people in our own country.

I look forward to listening to the contributions to the debate. There are many different angles from which we could all have approached the subject, but it is right that we take the opportunity to discuss the global context, given the extremely concerning events that are unfolding in Ukraine and the middle east.

It is important that we also look closer to home, to our more domestic position, and it is right that we look to progress as much as we can in this country in politics, in education, in the workplace and in other places. The fight ahead for women in Scotland and across the world is not an easy one. It requires the efforts of us all to achieve the equality that is so long overdue. I commit my party to doing what it can to play its role across Parliament to take that fight on.