Through the glass ceiling: exclusive interview with the FM

Inequality was at the heart of the referendum debate and it quite naturally spawned a whole range of women-led groups and initiatives, particularly from the Yes camp, which will not simply go away.

Women for Independence, in particular, has grown into a formidable campaigning force and with many within its ranks having so eloquently and movingly described the experience as a sisterly reawakening of female solidarity, it seems apt that regardless of the 18 September result, a woman is now running Scotland.

And with Scotland at a tipping point, the referendum having given us a taste for a different future, either with or without independence, what Scotland needs now is a leader who can measure up to the task of bringing a nation back together and finding some consensus for change.

And with that rebirth of a nation, it seems appropriate that it is a woman who leads that charge. In accepting the role of First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, a working-class woman from Ayrshire, referred to her eight-year-old niece sitting in the public gallery with Sturgeon’s mother, Joan, the SNP Lady Provost of North Ayrshire Council and Sturgeon’s younger sister, Gillian, who works in the FM’s beloved NHS, and said she hoped her appointment sent a strong and positive message to girls across our lands – that there should be no limit to their ambition or what they can achieve.

“If you are good enough and if you work hard enough,” she said, “the sky is the limit – and no glass ceiling should ever stop you from achieving your dreams.”

"I made a decision before I was in the job formally that I was going to use the fact of being the first woman First Minister to make as much change, or try to influence as much change, as I can"

These were heartfelt words and gave succour to those who believe the issue of gender equality needs to be ramped up a notch and that quotas need to be embedded within law. No one can deny that Sturgeon has achieved high office through anything other than merit. But she brings realpolitik to the role of First Minister, so while her predecessor was an impressive and sometimes divisive figure, whose skills as an artful tactician stood him and his party in good stead on the road to the referendum, it is now up to Sturgeon to capture the mood of a nation and govern for all.

She has put poverty and inequality at the heart of her programme of government and shown by example on gender by creating a 50/50 split cabinet of men and women. Asked whether she sacrificed good male talent from the cabinet table to simply get the arithmetic on equality to add up, she told me that her problem was having too much talent to choose from.

“Every single member of my cabinet is there on merit and it amuses me – and I’ll stick with ‘amuse’ for the moment but you could take another view of it – that I did get the odd email after the cabinet appointments saying it can’t be a cabinet on merit because you’ve got 50/50 men and women and what they were really implying was the 50 per cent women were there not on merit. Nobody emailed to say there are 50 per cent men in your cabinet so it obviously isn’t on merit.

“Equality means a huge amount to me, gender equality in particular means a huge amount to me, and while I can’t change everything as First Minister, I made a decision before I was in the job formally that I was going to use the fact of being the first woman First Minister to make as much change, or try to influence as much change, as I can. I can’t look to other people to make that change if I’m not prepared to make it myself.”

Strategically, Sturgeon knows that putting gender equality at the core of her policymaking is a good move politically. She is acutely aware that women have become the shock absorbers of austerity; that low pay, zero-hours contracts, part-time work and the prohibitive costs of childcare mean many women can’t afford to work at all. She knows that women have paid a far higher price, proportionately, than men for the so-called welfare reforms and that with more women than men working in the public sector, they are also doubly hurt by the cuts in public service spending and with more still to come. She also knows that gender inequality became a touchstone for a political awakening during the referendum year and if now is not the time to enshrine equality, then when?

Salmond changed the course of Scottish history because without him there would not have been that referendum. But Sturgeon has the opportunity to make that history matter. To make sure that all wee lassies like her niece look at her and know that anything is possible, not by accident but by design.