Ten ways to make Scotland equal for women

This Friday, as Engender holds its 'Scotland's Feminist Future' conference, the think-tank will also unveil the Gender Matters Roadmap – a ten point plan that promises to deliver full equality by 2030 for girls - and women - who just wanna have fun-damental human rights. Here, we highlight the key recommendations.

1. Political party quotas: a 50:50 gender split

We have a female FM and PM. So it's done and dusted –“talented women” can find their way to positions of power without quotas, right? Wrong. Dig deeper and you find only 35 percent of members elected to the Scottish Parliament are women. At the last election, 29 percent of councillors elected were women and there are 103 elected council wards in Scotland with no women at all. Unsurprisingly, no wards had no men.

Talat Yaqoob, founder of Women 5050, which campaigns for equal political representation, says bold change is needed now. She claims that women who do stand have a slew of stories about discrimination including hostility, online sexism, "being asked how you plan to balance motherhood and being a politician and told you are denying a position to a favoured son”.

“Voluntary mechanisms only get us so far, quotas guarantee that parties have to take women candidates seriously and the sexism they face seriously,” she adds. “Nobody is saying men cannot represent women. [But] diversity makes for better, more inclusive decision making. It is a simple as that.”

2. Child care that works when parents do

Childcare costs in Scotland are amongst the highest in the world – research shows that 25 percent of parents in poverty have to turn down jobs as a result. While legislation, introduced in April 2015, allows fathers to split maternity leave with their partners, the reality is that only a minority stay home. It's most often mothers who pick-up the slack right through the pre-school years when a "free nursery place" all too often means 2.5 hours of childcare between 9.15 and 11.45am. What's needed, argues Engender, is flexible, funded childcare, available for all parents who want to take it up from six months to school age, that takes onboard the realities of modern life. And as most paid childcare workers are women, we also need to invest in this workforce and offer training and wages that raise its status.

3. Women should be paid for "invisible" work

When we think of what we need to keep Scotland working day after day we think of power, IT and transport networks. But there are other invisible systems at work and one of the key ones is care - care for elderly parents, disabled relatives, and sick children in particular. "It's unpaid, under-valued work that is propping up our whole economy," says Emma Ritch of Engender. Some, 60 per cent of all caring is done by women. "Everything about it reflects women's inequality," adds Ritch. What is needed, she claims, is a living wage for carers and a proper acknowledgement of how much it would cost to replace the invisible care army if they downed tools and left the rest of us to get on with it.

4. Gender neutral schools

In the BBC's No More Girls, No More Boys we were brought up short by seven-year-olds with an already pretty old-fashioned gendered view of the world. While the boys in Lanesend Primary classroom on the Isle of Wight over-confidently predicted success in a test set by Doctor Javid Abdelmoneim, the girls hedged and guessed scores for themselves far lower than they achieved. All agreed that boys were stronger and that girls did jobs like make-up artist and dancer while boys were mechanics and magicians - misapprehensions that over the course of the six-week experiment Abdelmoneim firmly disabuses them off.

The main take-away was the powerful role that schools could play in setting our children on a path towards a future of more equal opportunity. The “Roadmap” says gender should be put on the teacher training curriculum and schools evaluated on equality - no more football for boys and cheerleading for girls. It's time to tackle sexist bullying head-on too, says one recommendation. A survey last year showed 75 percent of girls and young women report anxiety about sexual harassment while in education.

5. Protection from violence (on and offline)

"Violence and the threat of violence affect every woman and girl no matter where they live, how much money they have, what their ethnic origins are, or how old they are," says Marsha Scott, chief executive of Scottish Women's Aid. "We learn not to make eye contact with men in public, we cross the road to avoid groups of men blocking the pavement, we think twice about what we wear, whether it’s dark out, whether we dare go out alone."

The stats are stark. At least one in five women in Scotland will experience domestic violence in her lifetime and despite research that shows rape is under-reported, four will be logged with police every day. Despite this the vast majority of perpetrators will go unpunished. "Justice remains elusive for most women," notes the Engender report, which recommends better access to legal advice and more specialist courts.

Tackling online misogyny with better regulation is also a must, according to Ritch. “The internet is now part of our public space and if women are routinely hounded out of it and are unable to speak then that is of huge concern,” she says. “It should not be a prerequisite to have rhinoceros skin in order to take part.”

6. Apprenticeships for the girls

Women in Scotland earn less than men. They are more likely than men to work as cleaners, in catering or retail and they are less likely to get promoted. The typing pool culture of seventies sitcoms is alive and well – most admin workers are still women.

Fixing the problem starts with apprenticeships and training opportunities: boys choose engineering and construction while girls are more likely to opt for hairdressing and childcare. It's time to shake it up, claim the report authors, with a Modern Apprentice Equality Plan that makes sure we break down the stereotypes. Why not follow the lead of Silicon Valley, where tech companies have trained up admin staff to become the female web developers of the future?

8. No more 'Legs-it' - a media that portrays women as equals

It was a meeting of two of the most powerful politicians in the UK. But the focus of the Daily Mail's front page treatment of a meeting between Nicola Sturgeon and Theresa May? The well-turned legs of the First Minister and Prime Minister, shot from below, as they discussed the Brexit negotiations.

“A headline such as “Never mind Brexit, who won Legs-it” is just one of far too many examples of the sexist, offensive, demeaning and degrading ways women are reported in the media in this day and age," says Fiona Davidson, women's project worker for NUJ Scotland.

It goes much deeper than the Sun's erstwhile Page 3. Not one single woman edits a major newspaper in Scotland and 100 percent of national broadcaster chief executives are male. The vast majority of professionals quoted are also male, including 85 percent of academics, 87 percent of business people and 97 percent of those commenting on sport.

"It is vital that women achieve equality in terms of pay, conditions, status and seniority and that women being reported are recognised in terms of their abilities and their achievements rather than their looks and family status," adds Davidson. Engender’s report calls for the creation of a new Women in Media unit, monitoring women's participation and portrayal, and publicly-funded regulation to ensure gender balance.

7. Abortion rights: decriminalise and democratise access to termination

Abortion is such a deeply emotive issue that it's easy to forget how common an experience it is. At least one in three women in the UK have an abortion despite opposition by those who believe unborn life should be protected at all costs. A US study suggests that 95 percent of women do not regret it.

Though abortion has been legal for 50 years, the detail is still murky. Two doctors are required to sign off on a women's decision to terminate and if she goes ahead without that consent she could be prosecuted.

The report recommends full decriminalisation and improved access to the procedure. "While doing this piece of work we've discovered a lot of shock and surprise that this is still a criminal justice issue," said Ritch. "It's a common law offence and the parameters are poorly set but there's a lack of legal certainty. It's symbolically powerful that two doctors are required to give a women legal permission over something that she feels should be an autonomous decision that she makes with the support a medical professional."

Women looking for abortion after 16 weeks have to travel to England due to a lack of expertise here. “We are urging the Scottish Government to take action on that,” she adds.

9. Sporting equality: regulate to even up the playing field

Football - it's our universal language, the sport that taught Albert Camus about morality, our national common denominator. Or is it? When 99 percent of sponsorship investment and 95 percent of media coverage is dedicated to men's sport, women are shut out of the conversation.

It's not just the exclusion of women in the public arena that's at risk. "The invisibility of women in sport has an impact on women and girl's activity in schools and beyond," argues the report. Recommendations include a national strategy to tackle the issue of representation head-on and new rules that mean publicly funded sporting bodies have ambitious equality plans as a condition of their grants.

10. Government policy - from budgets to bus routes - must acknowledge women's needs

"Budgets are not remote, abstract exercises about putting money in columns,” argues Angela O'Hagan, lecturer in social and public policy at Glasgow Caledonian University and a member of the campaigning Scottish Women's Budget Group. "They are decisions about how to raise and spend money in ways that tackle enduring inequalities.”

We need to use our national budgets to tackle gender inequality in everything from health to education, transport and social care, she argues. Even how a city plans its bus routes can impact on equality. Women, who are more likely to have caring responsibilities are less likely to need the "hub and spoke" design that carries commuters in and out of the city centre at rush hours for example, and more likely to value timetables that fit part-time work and child-friendly services.

It’s not about separate budgets for women and men, she says, but of making resources work best for all of us. Equality, after all is making things better for everyone. As legendary suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst said: “We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half.” Come 2030 we can start on that.