WHEN the Women’s Equality (WE) party turned out yesterday in Edinburgh, some were dressed as statues that were never made, historic figures never commemorated in stone or bronze, in a bid to highlight inequalities. In Scotland’s capital, there are more statues of animals than women.

You can rub the nose of Greyfriars Bobby, but not touch the hem of suffragette and doctor Elsie Inglis or novelist Muriel Spark. But it was not these glaring historic inequalities the WEP were there to address, but current ones, as they launched their first Scottish manifesto: one that includes policies for equal pay, equal childcare, ending violence against women, creating a Gender Equality Bill and an inquiry into representation of women in the media.

WE, founded by Catherine Mayer and comedian Sandi Toksvig, fights its first election at a time when we have a woman First Minister, a 50:50 cabinet and female leaders of the three main parties. Some might question what it is fighting for. But Anne Beetham, a founder of the party in Scotland, has a swift,sarcastic retort: “It’s wonderful that people are taken in by that smokescreen. Because, in fact, we only have 34 per cent of MSPs and only 24 per cent of councillors across Scotland are women, and out of 32 councils in Scotland only three are led by women. Out of 1,223 councillors across Scotland only four are black and minority ethnic women. That’s not good for our society.”

The last year has brought progress in representation of women in Scotland, though how much depends what you take for comparison.

Do we measure against 2003, when female representation reached 40 per cent, or against 2011, when it had slipped to less than 35 per cent? Should we judge Holyrood against Westminster, where women number a mere 29 per cent, or against Rwanda where women, at 63 per cent, dominate the lower house?

Edinburgh list candidate Lee Chalmers says that “left to the current rate of pace of change we would have equality in the UK parliament in the same time it would take a snail to walk the Great Wall of China”. She doesn’t think Scotland’s doing much better. “I’m 44 years old,” she says. “I’m not prepared to wait any more.”

Most predict this election will indeed be an improvement on 2011. University of Edinburgh politics lecturer Dr Meryl Kenny says that after having “fallen off the radar”, gender representation has become a political issue again. This is “the result of changes particularly within the SNP from the top, from Nicola Sturgeon, but also from the bottom, with the entry of lots of women from grass-roots politics into big “P” politics. Women for Independence members have made a difference.”

However, not all of this new energy rising from the grass roots is set to surface just yet, says Jeane Freeman, the co-founder of Women for Independence now standing as an SNP candidate. “I think you will see more women coming forward for the local council elections next year, and certainly looking to get involved in community-based work. So gradually all of that will feed through.”

Anne Beetham is a former member of Women for Independence, and credits it with giving her the confidence and compulsion to put herself forwards as a WE candidate. “They have made a lot of women realise that not only do they have voices but those voices deserve to be heard.” One aspect of the WE manifesto she is excited about is the creation of a Minister for Women and Equality.

Chalmers, Edinburgh list candidate for WE, joined the party because she had “never found a party that put gender equality high enough up the agenda for me”. She runs a non-profit organisation called the Parliament Project which is “about training, mentoring and inspiring women to run for political office”.

She confesses to having shed a tear when she first saw the WE manifesto. “I’ve been working in this area for a long time and you see lots of different policies all over the place. But here all of it came together in one document, the future I wanted to see.”

However, WE isn’t just for women. It is also chasing men’s votes – and has male campaigners. Chalmers recounts a discussion on pay gaps she had with one man and his daughter in Edinburgh. The daughter asked “Daddy, what’s the pay gap?” To which the father replied: “Well, how about if you were in the playground and a boy got given five biscuits and you were only given three biscuits.’”

There is some scepticism about the party. Frequently, the reason given is that other forms of inequality needed to be tackled too. However, WE party leader Sophie Walker points out: “The absolute aim of the Women’s Equality party is to focus on equality right from the top to the bottom, for all women.” Walker believes WE is “part of a global movement”. Already, similar parties exist in other countries, for instance the Feminist Initiative parties in Sweden and Norway.

Some suggest that this party could do for gender equality what the Green Party has done for the environment. Notably, WE has no policies other than those relating to equality. One of their key messages is that people can vote for them this May using their second vote. “Women’s equality can sit alongside people’s main party vote,” says Chalmers. “We’re non-partisan. We’ll work with anybody willing to work towards gender equality.”

But research often shows female voters are, broadly speaking, interested in the same issues as men: the economy, health, taxation. There is also a question around whether the public is in favour of quotas. However, as pollster Meryl Kenny observes, currently “women’s representation and quotas have caught on across the main parties: the SNP, Labour and also the Greens”.

“We’re going to see gains in women’s representation in this election,” she says.“But what history tells us is that gains are often contingent and we can see backslidings. That’s going to continue to be the case if there are only some parties who take women’s representation seriously.”

An answer, she suggests, is “statutory measures ... because when we leave it to the parties, some parties take action on it, some don’t, and that means we’re still a long way off 50:50.”