Parly must lead by example
SCOTLAND likes to think of itself as a country which is quickly making its way towards gender equality.
Certainly with three women leading political parties in Scotland it may look like that.
It would be easy to congratulate ourselves on how far we’ve come this International Women’s Day.
But scratch the surface and it’s obvious there’s a long way to go.
This week, findings by Engender show how much work is still to be done to see real action when it comes to women’s equality in the workplace.
The Parliament is culpable in this.
The closest we had to gender parity in Holyrood was in 2003 when just under 40 per cent of MSPs were female.
But in this current Parliament, only 35 per cent of MSPs are female – the same proportion as in 2011 – so things have gone backwards and are now stagnating.
We are trying to change that – Scottish Labour went into last year’s elections with gender equality among our candidates, but not all other parties could say the same.
The Parliament as a whole needs to lead by example so we can show other public bodies and businesses how and why gender equality is vital to the way that we run our country and our economy.
And we also need more women in Parliament because so many of the spending decisions made there affect women disproportionately.
Engender’s report says that there are 703 women missing from leadership roles across politics, the public sector, media, culture and business in Scotland.
These missing women must be found, and encouraged and supported, or Scotland will not be the equal country we all want it to be.