Women's Work: Re-fighting battles for equality

In the coming weeks, judges at the Supreme Court are expected to deliver their verdict in a case which campaigners hope will give a definitive answer to the question which has vexed Scottish politics – what is a woman?

The group For Women Scotland is challenging the lawfulness of statutory guidance issued by the Scottish Government which has the effect of recognising a person with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) as a woman. The issue, which has put feminists at loggerheads with the SNP administration, first grew out of legislation passed in 2018 which sought to increase female representation on public boards. In the intervening years, the issue of sex and gender has come to dominate politics at Holyrood like no other. And yet despite that ongoing discourse there are some worrying indications of a stalling in the progress towards full gender equality, both in Scotland and internationally.

According to Scotland’s Gender Equality Index – a measure which assesses indicators such as ‘work’, ‘power’, ‘money’, and ‘health’ – the situation overall is slowly improving. On a scale of one to 100, where one represents no gender equality and 100 is full gender equality, the figure for Scotland was 79 in 2023, a revision from the score of 72 recorded in 2020. 

Across public life there are signs of that progress. Women lead Police Scotland, the prosecution service and NHS Scotland. The political leaders of the country’s two largest local authorities by population – Edinburgh and Glasgow – are also female. But where once nearly all of Scotland’s main political parties were led by women, now just the Scottish Greens have a woman, Lorna Slater, in charge and even then it is a position she shares with a man.

That power imbalance is reflected across the country according to the Gender Equality Index. While ‘health’ is given a score of 99, suggesting near parity between men and women (a contentious point in its own right), the score for ‘power’ is just 56 – the lowest of any of the categories. At present, 59 of Scotland’s 129 MSPs are women, a record number that represents a marked increase from the previous parliament where there were 45 female MSPs. At the last election, the SNP used all-women shortlists in eight constituencies where the incumbent was standing down, while all the main parties – with the exception of the Scottish Conservatives – used equality measures to increase female representation. 

But despite the undoubted progress, there are some signs that complacency is creeping in. When Stephen Flynn, currently the SNP’s leader at Westminster, announced his decision to stand for the Holyrood seat of Aberdeen South and Kincardine, it led to a furious reaction from some women in his own party who accused him of attempting to oust Audrey Nicoll, the current holder of the seat. Evelyn Tweed, SNP MSP for Stirling, suggested that “protections” needed to be put in place to prevent male candidates forcing out women in the selection process for the 2026 election. And Emma Roddick, a former equalities minister, posted a message about Flynn on X (formerly Twitter) which eagle-eyed followers noticed was an acrostic spelling out the word ‘prick’. 

In the end, Flynn dropped the plan, saying he “got it wrong”, with MSPs later voting to ban so-called ‘double jobbing’, closing a loophole which had allowed someone to sit both in Westminster and Holyrood. Nicoll, a former police officer, has since announced her intention to stand down at the election but denied that she had been pressured into doing so. It has since been reported that the SNP will change its rules for the upcoming election, meaning outgoing female MSPs can be replaced by men.

Johann Lamont, a former leader of Scottish Labour, says that while increased female representation in parliament is to be welcomed, it hasn’t necessarily followed that the rights of women have improved.

“A lot of women, and I include myself in this, have been given pause by the extent to which things you thought were a given [and] had been won are now being tested,” she says. “Women’s representation in and of itself is a good thing but it has a purpose. There’s an underlying reality of women’s lives… the extent to which they are the caregivers, managing children, managing elderly patients, being in low-paid jobs, at the mercy of male violence… These are fundamentals. No matter how many women you’ve got in positions of power, if they don’t understand that’s part of their job, then it’s a challenge.”

On a range of metrics, the lives of women in Scotland have steadily improved in the early years of the 21st century, albeit not enough to bring full equality with men. On pay, for example, the median gender pay gap for all workers is around nine per cent, compared with 13 per cent across the UK as a whole. But for those working full-time, the gap has narrowed from almost 20 per cent at the end of the 1990s to 2.2 per cent, although it widened again in 2024 as a result of men’s hourly earnings increasing at a faster rate than women’s. In education, girls consistently outperform boys, leaving school with better qualifications and more likely to win a place in further or higher education. 

And yet despite what the statistics say about near-equality when it comes to healthcare, there are glaring examples of where women often receive inferior care to men. Last year, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) highlighted a double standard in the diagnosis and treatment of heart attacks, with women more likely than men to have their symptoms dismissed. Indeed, a recent study by the Journal of the American Heart Association found women presenting at hospital with chest pains had to wait 29 per cent longer than their male counterparts for a heart attack evaluation.

Women take to the streets of Edinburgh on International Women's Day | Alamy

BHF talked about moving beyond what it called “bikini medicine”, the idea that women’s health is only about breasts and ovaries. With men historically dominating research positions and senior clinical roles, many conditions which predominately affect women have been overlooked. This has particularly been the case with chronic pain conditions, which women and girls are more likely to suffer from. Migraine, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, and irritable bowel syndrome are just some of the conditions that are more common in women but are often slow to be recognised by doctors. Last year a survey by Endometriosis UK found the average diagnosis time to be nine years, with most respondents having to visit their GP more than five times before the condition was identified.

If there is one area where the lives of women and men remain starkly at odds, it’s the ability to live free from violence. From the death of Sarah Everard at the hands of serving Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens to the recent murders of Carol Hunt, 61, and her daughters Hannah, 28, and Louise, 25, by Louise’s former boyfriend, Kyle Clifford, the media is full of high-profile cases of violence towards women and girls. And yet these are just the stories which make the news. Last week, Femicide Census, which documents male violence towards women, published a report on 2,000 women killed by men, noting that in many cases, the deaths are seen as “inevitable, even unremarkable” and not worthy of the front page.   

Last year, Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, called on the UK Government to take urgent action to tackle what she called a “national threat”. “Entrenched patriarchy at almost every level of society, combined with a rise in misogyny that permeates the physical and online world, is denying thousands of women and girls across the UK the right to live in safety, free from fear and violence,” Alsalem said following a 10-day visit to the UK. 

As if to illustrate the point, Scotland is currently considering the introduction of legislation to make non-fatal strangulation (NFS) a standalone offence, bringing the country into line with the rest of the UK. Asked about the issue at First Minister’s Questions, John Swinney called NFS an “abhorrent act” but said the practice could already be prosecuted as common assault. However, campaigners including Fiona Drouet – whose 18-year-old daughter Emily took her own life after being choked and slapped by her ex-boyfriend – say the law as it stands does not recognise the full physical and psychological impact of NFS.

The rise of NFS has been blamed on internet pornography normalising the practice for a generation of young men. A recent review carried out by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin called for media regulator Ofcom to be given powers to ban “degrading, violent and misogynistic content”, including making it illegal to possess or publish pornography showing women being choked during sex. 

And yet everywhere there are mixed signals. As President Donald Trump was preparing to welcome Prime Minister Keir Starmer to the White House earlier this month, the self-styled misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, who along with his brother is facing allegations of rape, trafficking of minors, and money laundering in Romania, was allowed to travel to the United States. Trump, himself found liable of sexual abuse in a New York court in 2023, claimed to know nothing about Tate’s passage out of eastern Europe but officials from his administration are known to have met their Romanian counterparts to discuss the case. At the time of writing, the two men – who hold dual US-UK citizenship – are still expected to return to Romania at a later date to face trial.

In Scotland, much of the debate about protecting women and girls from male violence has revolved around access to single-sex spaces. There was a public outcry after the double rapist Isla Bryson, previously known as Adam Graham, was initially housed in a women’s prison before being moved to the male estate. And last year a report commissioned by Rape Crisis Scotland found Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre had failed to protect women-only spaces. ERCC’s chief executive Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman, resigned after being criticised in the report.

In recent weeks, the debate over gender self-identification has been re-opened by the case of Sandie Peggie, the nurse who claims she was subjected to unlawful harassment by her employer, NHS Fife, by being made to share a changing room with a trans doctor. Last week, Edinburgh Women’s Aid, a domestic abuse charity, said it would no longer allow trans women or men who identify as non-binary to access its group support services or refuges. Amid the ongoing debate over the Peggie case and single-sex spaces, the first minister was asked at a recent press conference whether trans women are women. “I accept that to be the case,” he said. 

Lamont says she was “utterly astonished” by that answer. “I’m sad to say, because I have respect for John, that it would appear that he’s either made a calculation it doesn’t matter enough to him or he’s not paying attention. Either way, it’s unforgivable.”

John Swinney speaks to Marion Calder of For Women Scotland | Iain Masterton / Alamy

Previously a vocal critic of the government’s attempts to reform the Gender Recognition Act, Lamont rails against what she calls the “state-funded activism” of Scotland’s equality organisations, essentially accusing them of being co-opted in return for financial support. 

“It’s that kind of relationship between government and the third sector where you fund the third sector to reinforce what you’re saying or to give you ideas which you then reinforce,” she says. “The fascinating thing, which gives me great hope, is that a women’s movement has emerged in resistance to that which is entirely self-funded.” 

Part of that movement is For Women Scotland, the organisation challenging the government’s definition of ‘woman’ at the Supreme Court. For a generation of women, many of the battles they considered long-since won are now being reframed and refought. For them, their daughters, and granddaughters – and for society as a whole – there is still work to do.