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Plenary, 09 Nov 2006

09 Nov 2006 · S2 · Plenary

Item of business

Violence Against Women

Macmillan, Maureen Lab Highlands and Islands Watch on SPTV

I refer members to my entry in the register of members' interests.

The motion is partly a tribute to the work done by local women's groups over the years to provide support for abused women and to raise awareness of this grievous cancer in society. Male violence against women is still ingrained in our culture. Women are still presenting at casualty, in surgeries, to the police and to Women's Aid and other support organisations because of male violence.

It has been more than 25 years since Ross-Shire Women's Aid was set up. I want to celebrate that band of stroppy women and to reiterate the reasons why women felt the need to set up women's aid groups. Women knew that male violence against them was widespread, that it was serious, that it was often fatal and that it was largely ignored by society. They knew that from their own experience, from that of their friends or from that of women whom they came across in the course of their work. Yet the police, the health service, local authorities and the churches would not admit that domestic violence was of any real significance. They persisted in the attitude that it happened only among the rougher elements of society, that it was caused by drink—which is wrong—that women asked for it anyway and that, if it was so bad, why did the women not just leave.

Can you imagine the challenge that a newly set up women's aid group faced in a small Highland town 25 years ago in trying to persuade the council and a horrified public that there was a need for a local women's refuge? Can you imagine the disbelief, the denial, the hostility and the accusations that we were besmirching the good name of the Highlands? "It doesn't happen here," people thought. Think of the insinuations, the names that we were called, the persistence with which the volunteers had to argue their case and the work that lay ahead of them once the refuge was finally set up.

Volunteers and paid women have picked up women from police stations in the middle of the night. They have taken women to casualty in the early hours of the morning. They have met them off trains, buses and boats. They have picked them up in their nightclothes from phone boxes and the roadside. They have sat and talked with them all night, either face to face or over the phone. They have wiped the blood from their faces. They have sat with them in the waiting rooms of courts and general practitioners. They have even been the birth partners to some women when their babies were born. We have also supported the women's children, although we did not know then the profound effect that domestic violence has on children. Volunteers have given presentations in schools. They have helped to train the police, social workers and health workers. They have been on local radio. They have given interviews to local papers. They have lobbied and they have challenged. We supported women because we saw that there was a need for that. We realised that if women did not do that for their sister women, nobody else would.

We have come a long way in the Highlands in 25 years, mostly in the past eight, thanks to the Executive and the Parliament. We now have purpose-built refuges, children's workers and outreach workers in the most distant parts of the west Highlands, and we have follow-on services for women who have left the refuge. Not all women wish to come into refuges nowadays. Often, they prefer to be supported in the community, and we provide that support.

We now have full commitment from the Highland Council, the police and NHS Highland. Only this week, I was talking with a long-time women's aid volunteer who works for NHS Highland about the training schemes that are now being put in place by the health board so that practitioners can recognise and deal with cases of domestic abuse. She has long campaigned for such schemes and it has given her immense satisfaction that they are now going ahead.

It is significant that an increasing number of men recognise that male violence against women must be dealt with at its source. What causes men to be violent towards women? Why do they feel that they have to exert power through rape or beatings? As has been said many times, it is important that men who are not violent challenge those who are, even down to the man who makes the passing remark in the pub that his wife could do with a good slap. Men's silence can be deafening. They must speak up and more are doing so. Only the other week in the Highlands, more men than ever before attended the Highland well-being alliance's annual conference on domestic violence. That was a good sign. As Amnesty International says, violence against women will not stop unless men are part of the campaign to stop it.

A relatively small number of women in Scotland made their voices heard, yet they effected great changes. Labour members did that particularly through the labour and trade union movement, but others had different routes. Those women and their successors, whether as volunteers or paid workers, still support women and children. The need is still out there and we continue to campaign for provision, prevention and protection.

I am proud of what we have done, but I recognise that some male attitudes towards women can be progressed only through societal change. That is not an easy task, but we must persevere with it. Until then, all power to volunteers and workers past and present and especially to those who were there at the beginning in Ross-shire—Rhona, Ann, Eileen, Marilyn, Karen and Kathleen—and the many others since.

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Plenary, 09 Nov 2006

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