Meeting of the Parliament 19 June 2025
I am pleased to open the debate on behalf of Scottish Labour. We, of course, welcome any and all action to improve the position of women and girls in society.
Although we have seen advances towards gender equality in many areas in recent years, some of the threats that women and girls have grown to cope with have become more insidious. Today’s debate, reflecting on the first annual report from the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls, is an opportunity to take stock of the constraints and challenges that women and girls continue to face.
We know that sexism, misogyny and, indeed, violence and threats against girls and female staff in our schools are not being adequately tackled. We believe that there is a particular need for more focus in that area. We support a cross-campus strategy to address sexism and misogyny in our schools. Our young people are our future, and tackling sexist attitudes and behaviour in our schools is key to creating a more equal Scotland. The cabinet secretary confirmed the importance of the younger generation in her response to Alex Cole-Hamilton earlier in the debate, when she spoke about the importance of the norms in our society.
On accountability, the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls calls for change in society’s attitudes towards sexual violence and domestic abuse, including evaluation of the cultural landscape around gender power dynamics.
Where are we? In 2023-24, Police Scotland recorded more than 63,000 incidents of domestic abuse, which was an increase of 3 per cent on the previous year, reversing the downward trend that had been observed since the start of the decade. The overwhelming majority of incidents involved a female victim and a male suspected perpetrator. The number of recorded sexual crimes has also risen significantly in the past decade.
Transport Scotland has reported that nearly all women very often or always feel unsafe on public transport, where they feel at risk of harassment, antisocial behaviour and unwanted comments. I have spoken with many women transport workers who have been assaulted or threatened. Indeed, members of the women’s committee of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers in Scotland were in the Parliament last week and spoke about some of their personal experiences.
We have heard multiple times in the chamber about alarming incidents of abuse and violence against female teachers in our schools and against pupils, as well as concerns about many boys’ idolisation of sexist social media personalities.
Scottish Women’s Aid and other groups have highlighted that any law that is not designed with misogyny in mind and does not have ensuring women’s safety at its core is limited in how it can be used to respond to the realities of life for women. I am therefore very disappointed that the Government decided to drop its proposed misogyny bill in its latest programme for government, because that would have been an opportunity for legislators to grasp the seriousness and complexity of the issue. However, let us be clear: misogyny should have been included in the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill from the outset.
Our justice system is not adequately equipped to protect women from the behaviour of men. In 2021, more than 7,000 domestic violence cases were stuck in court backlogs, with almost 70 per cent of the cases awaiting trial being sexual offence cases. The conviction rate for rape remains far lower than the rate for other crimes, with survivors often speaking of their experience of the justice system as retraumatising. Even our police force has admitted to having institutional and persistent problems with sexist bullying. We know that there is underreporting of sexual crimes and that victims simply do not have confidence in the justice system.
I highlight the advisory council’s calls for trauma-informed forensic medical examination, independent sexual advocacy and privacy for complainers to be embedded across the justice system. I very much hope that changes that might be introduced through the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill will enable some of that to happen.
We need to look more closely at how women can be affected by multiple disadvantages due to factors such as race, sexuality and disability. I was pleased by what the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice said in relation to that. Ultimately, if we are to move towards gender equality, that means giving women more—