It is a pleasure and a privilege to move today’s motion, as we mark the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918—the landmark law that gave not all but some women the right to vote for the first time. Today, above all, we pay tribute to the people whose sacrifices secured a fundamental right that we all now take for granted.
There is an old Scots proverb that was often used on suffragist and suffragette banners—indeed, its first part later provided the title for a history of the movement. The proverb says simply:
“A guid cause makes a strong arm”.
The guid cause that we honour today was given strength by the commitment of tens of thousands of women, and many men, from right across our country. By 1914, there were suffrage associations in every part of Scotland, from Orkney and Shetland to Kirkcudbright and North Berwick.
If we look for them, we can see reminders of the suffrage campaign all over Scotland. When I was a student at the University of Glasgow, I must on countless occasions have walked past the famous suffragette oak in Kelvingrove park. The First Minister’s residence, Bute house, overlooks Charlotte Square, which was the starting point for the Scottish suffragists’ march to London in 1912. I occasionally look out of the window across Charlotte Square and wish that I could spend a few moments with those women, to pay tribute to their courage and sacrifice and to thank them for enabling a woman like me to occupy the office that I occupy today. Charlotte Square is also where Elsie Inglis, one of the very greatest of Scottish suffragists, went to school.
This morning, with the suffragette flag flying outside, I chaired a meeting of our gender-balanced Scottish Cabinet in St Andrew’s House, which stands on the site of the old Calton jail, where many suffragettes were imprisoned in the years before the first world war. That poignant fact is a reminder that many of the women who campaigned for the right to vote made immense sacrifices that are beyond our imagination today. Some—especially those who adopted militant tactics in response to Government intransigence—were not just jailed, but were horribly mistreated and even force fed. Many more devoted their energies and countless hours of their time to the cause. All too often, they encountered public ridicule, disapproval, anger and contempt.
We in this generation know that, even today, it is not always easy for women to speak up in public life, but whatever the challenges that we face now, it was far more difficult then. The Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage described what women often went through. It said:
“she defies convention and throws aside that much-prized virtue—respectability. She gives up friendships that she values; often she renounces all her past life.”
As I stand in the chamber as a female First Minister to be followed by a female leader of the Opposition, my overriding emotion today is deep gratitude. All of us—women in particular—owe an immeasurable debt to the suffragettes and suffragists whom we are honouring today.
For that reason, the centenary is being marked not just by this parliamentary debate, but by events and commemorations across the country. Yesterday, the Scottish Government confirmed that we will provide funding for local projects that will mark the anniversary. We will support the Glasgow Women’s Library, which is developing a programme of commemorative events, we are organising a cross-party event for young people in our Parliament, and we will fund projects to improve women’s representation and participation in public life.
Those final two strands to the programme are important. The commemorations should not simply be about marking our past; they should also look to our future. After all, although some women secured the parliamentary vote a century ago and women have had voting rights equal to those of men for 90 years, the uncomfortable truth is that gender equality is still an unwon cause, which it is the duty of our generation to win.
The gender pay gap still stands at 9 per cent in the United Kingdom and at almost 7 per cent in Scotland. Women are more than half of the population, but make up just 27 per cent of the members of the boards of the UK’s largest companies. We still need to address the gender stereotyping that means that just 6 per cent of our engineering modern apprentices are women and only 4 per cent of our childcare modern apprentices are men. It is worth thinking deeply about all that.
A key reason why women secured the vote, of course, was the contribution that they had made to the war effort, from the munitions factories of Clydeside to the field hospitals of the Balkans. They demonstrated quite irrefutably that women’s competence and capability are equal to those of men. However, 100 years later, that equal capability is still not reflected in equal pay or equal status. In addition, as we have been reminded all too recently, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and sexist behaviour are still far too widespread across our society.
Inequality also persists in political representation. When members of the Scottish Parliament were first elected in 1999, more women were chosen to represent Scottish constituencies than had been elected at Westminster in the previous 80 years. However, the hard reality is that there has been little progress since then—in fact, we have gone backwards. In 1999, the proportion of women MSPs in Parliament was 37 per cent; that proportion now stands at just 35 per cent. In my party, the figure is 43 per cent, which represents progress since 2011, but it also means that we, as all parties do, need to do more.
However, there are areas in which Parliament has genuine grounds for pride. Just last week, every single member supported the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Bill, which has been acclaimed as setting a new gold standard in protecting women from coercive and controlling behaviour. We also approved legislation last week to ensure 50 per cent female representation on public boards, and that the public sector will lead by example in appointing women to leadership positions. There will be a massive expansion of childcare during this parliamentary session, which will help parents—especially mothers—to return to work and pursue careers. Much of Scotland’s international development work in Africa and Pakistan prioritises empowerment of women.
We still need to do far more, but we can—and we should—draw strength from those significant recent accomplishments. When we look at some of the wider social developments of the past year, such as the public response to stories of harassment and unequal pay, and the development of the #metoo and time’s up movements, there is a chance to achieve even more significant and rapid change. After all, public scrutiny of discrimination has never been higher and public tolerance of it has never been lower. That gives us all not just an obligation, but a huge opportunity to make much greater progress towards true gender equality. It is an opportunity that we must all work together to seize.
When I was first elected as First Minister by Parliament in 2014, I commented on the fact that my niece—who was then just eight years old—was in the gallery. I said then that my fervent hope was that she would, by the time she is a young woman, have no need to know about issues such as the gender pay gap or underrepresentation, or about the barriers, such as high childcare costs, that make it so hard for so many women to work and to pursue careers. I hope that this Parliament will play a vital role in consigning those issues to history. I want young people in the future to be able to see those issues in the same way that we see voting rights for women—as causes that were argued for, and won, by earlier generations.
We are here today to honour the perseverance, courage and self-sacrifice of the suffragists and the suffragettes. Ultimately, the best way of doing that is not through parliamentary debates or commemorative events—important as thy are—but by renewing our resolve to use the powers that we have, which in so many ways we owe to the brave women of the suffrage movement, to make the world a better place for the girls and young women who are growing up today. If we can add our strength to that guid cause, we will pay a fitting tribute in this centenary year.
It falls on us and our generation through deeds, not words, to complete the work that the suffrage movement started, in order that we ensure that no longer is gender a barrier to any woman achieving her dreams. That, in my view, is the only truly appropriate way for us to repay our enormous debt to the heroic movement that we celebrate and honour today.
I move,
That the Parliament recognises that it is 100 years since the Representation of the People Act 1918, which finally gave some women the right to vote, and the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918, which allowed women to stand for the UK Parliament; welcomes the activity taking place in Scotland and across the UK to celebrate and commemorate the centenary of women’s suffrage; further welcomes the considerable progress that has been made in women’s political representation over the last 100 years; pays tribute to the suffragettes and suffragists who fought to ensure women’s right to vote, in some cases at considerable personal sacrifice, and welcomes the work of many organisations and individuals seeking equal representation for women.