One Billion Rising Campaign
The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-05609, in the name of Kezia Dugdale, on one billion rising. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament recognises and welcomes the campaign, One Billion Rising, which has been established in response to UN reports that one in three women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime; notes that the campaign, which was set up by Eve Ensler, is attempting to end violence against women; condemns all violence against women wherever it occurs; welcomes the campaign’s “dance strikes”, in Lothian and across Scotland on 14 February 2013, and recognises calls for unity and action against gender stereotyping, inequality and violence against women in all its forms.
17:03
I thank members across the chamber for signing the motion so that it could be heard in the Parliament tonight.
This is actually my first members’ business debate, as I was unable to make the last one in my name. I thank the members who have stayed for the debate and the organisations that have provided briefings for it, most notably the Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust, Leonard Cheshire Disability, Hollaback! and the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund.
The one billion rising campaign, after which the motion is named, was set up in response to the United Nations campaign UNiTE to end violence against women, which began in 2008. A key finding was that one in three women worldwide will be raped or beaten in their lifetime. That is 1 billion women throughout the world who have direct experience of violence. The one billion rising campaign’s call is simply to turn those 1 billion victims into 1 billion activists calling for change.
I will focus my speech on how community organising and empowering women to take action are the key to successfully changing our culture and our society’s attitude towards women. I will do that by talking about three campaigns that have done that in their own separate ways. Before I turn to Hollaback!, the everyday sexism project and the no more page 3 campaign, I will take a moment to recognise the dedication of the people throughout Scotland and around the world who took decisive action on 14 February this year. That day, the one billion rising campaign asked women around the world to organise dance strikes to raise awareness. There was a dance strike here outside the Scottish Parliament and another in Waverley station.
The reason why so few people know about that day of action is that 14 February was also the day when the world learned that Oscar Pistorius’s girlfriend had been shot and killed. The story monopolised our airwaves. The next day, The Sun’s coverage of the killing shocked the country—it pictured Oscar’s nameless girlfriend in a bikini. That front page led to the hashtag #HerNameWasReevaSteenkamp trending worldwide, with thousands of column inches devoted to the media’s portrayal of women, in particular its portrayal of victims of gendered violence. That served only to reinforce my long-held belief that we cannot seek to tackle gender-based violence without tackling gender inequality in all its forms no matter how small or how endemic, and no matter how difficult that is.
One of the most difficult challenges is to persuade some tabloid newspapers to give up their obsession with page 3 models in so-called family newspapers. The no more page 3 petition campaign currently has 96,000 signatures, and it recently secured the support of the 500,000-strong UK Girlguiding movement. For as long as women are promoted as sex objects in our mainstream media, gender equality will be forever distant.
Topless models in newspapers is one of the better-known crusades of the feminist movement, but there is a new crusade that is celebrating its first anniversary this week, called the everyday sexism project. The campaign is led by the formidable Laura Bates, who, like Caitlin Moran and Lucy-Anne Holmes, speaks with an authenticity and a coolness that cuts through and speaks to young women who might not recognise the word “feminist” in their own identity or indeed see gender inequality in their lives in the blunt and unforgiving way that their mums or grannies did.
The everyday sexism website and Twitter account reveal a catalogue—an anthology—of women’s daily experiences of everyday sexism, from gender stereotyping in the workplace to a so-called harmless bum pinch in a nightclub, which paints an ugly picture of our culture and the casual sexism that we let slip by day by day. All that casual everyday sexism leads to the normalisation and acceptance of gender inequality, which eventually leads to violence.
What can we do as men and women who are all striving for a more equal world? The answer is to fight back, to come together as a community, whether in the real world or online, and to say no.
I became involved in the everyday sexism project before Christmas in response to a tweet that I had seen from a friend, lambasting Amazon for its Christmas gift list. Amazon had suggested lists of books for Christmas presents. Under men, the list included science fiction, political biographies and business books. Under women, animal calendars, cookery books and romance novels were promoted. My friend tweeted:
“Thanks @AmazonUK for letting me know business, politics and sci-fi aren’t for my pretty little head”.
That was retweeted more than 1,000 times in 24 hours. That ultimately led to Amazon withdrawing its gift list and changing its ways. I tell that story to say that, when we unite together and challenge everyday sexism, we can change our society and make for a more equal world. If we believe in equality, we owe it to one another to challenge gender inequality in all its forms, wherever we see it.
I congratulate Hollaback! in Edinburgh on its work in empowering women to holler back whenever they are subjected to street harassment in the city.
I thank members for the opportunity to bring these issues to the chamber. I very much look forward to the speeches of colleagues from across the Parliament. I commend the motion.
17:09
I thank Kezia Dugdale for lodging the motion that we are debating this evening. Even as someone who has long cared about and campaigned on gender violence, I have learned a couple of things tonight. I sometimes think that I am getting really dopey as I get older, because it never dawned on me what “Hollaback!” meant. I thought that it was perhaps somebody’s name.
One billion rising is a super initiative, which has references to the early feminist movement, as we call it. There were a lot of feminists around before the 1960s, but the term was not used. The campaign started on—I think—the New York subway, to encourage women to shout out when they were harassed in the way that Kezia Dugdale talked about, in order to embarrass the perpetrator and to put them on the spot.
It is sad that an awful lot of those initiatives have been lost. I do not know why; all of a sudden people said that feminism was not something to be proud of and that we had to keep it quiet, and girl power became the thing. To me, the whole girl power thing was just the kind of stuff that promoted the page 3 photographs that we are trying to get rid of as some kind of female choice. Instead, we should recognise that in our society and throughout the world there is gender stereotyping and there is abuse, from the mild pornography that is the page 3 photograph to absolutely horrendous abuse in all its forms, I guess the ultimate of which is rape as a weapon of war, which is happening all over the place.
It was interesting to read about the Eve Ensler initiative, which I did not know much about. I like the idea of flash dancing, which sounds pretty good. Something is far wrong, because I missed the dance strike at the Parliament. Let us hope that if there is another one, Kezia Dugdale will have us all—women and men—out there dancing in support of ending violence against women.
I have been reading quite a lot lately about the atrocities in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where women were subjected to terrible sexual harassment; they were battered and all sorts. The lack of respect was about power; the use of women as sex objects is about enabling men to feel that they have power.
I learned about another terrible form of abuse when I did some work in East Timor. Women were being sterilised by the Indonesian occupiers of the country, as a way of preventing them from reproducing, because there was an attempt to transmigrate Indonesians into East Timor.
Abuse went on in Peru, too. I was there during the dictatorship of Fujimori. There was abuse of women by Shining Path and by the Government side. Women activists who were deemed to be getting a bit too lippy and mouthy were abused.
In the Parliament, I think that all members have listened to people’s testimonies. I remember in particular the testimony of a young woman from Rwanda—I think that Sarah Boyack was there to hear that, too—who had hidden in her village and watched all her female relatives being raped.
Unfortunately the problem is spread right across the world. In eastern Europe, we heard that people who were supposed to stop such things happening, including people who worked for the UN, were trafficking women and using them as sex objects.
The campaign will go on. Anything that we can do to raise awareness of the issue, such as the one billion rising campaign and the dance strikes, is good. Let us all work towards the day when every woman in the world feels able to dance like no one is looking.
17:14
I congratulate Kezia Dugdale on lodging the motion. In bringing the debate to Parliament, she has brought to light the work of an incredible campaign, which we all applaud. The campaign has been successful and visible because it has used art and performance to demonstrate the level of support among women—and, I hope, an increasing number of men—around the world for the drive to eradicate domestic abuse and sexual violence against women and girls.
Through an incredible series of events, the V-day campaign’s most ambitious project, one billion rising, sought to engage participants in 197 countries and territories in a global day of action to mark the organisation’s 15th anniversary.
One billion women in the world will be impacted in their lives by male violence. The V-Day campaign asked that on 14 February this year—and throughout the year—we work to help to turn the eyes of the world to this gross subjugation of human dignity and equality. On 14 February it succeeded. The campaign brought together diverse groups by creating a body of campaign material and providing a starting point for sustained awareness raising. We should not be able to ignore gender-based violence because it is an uncomfortable truth; we should challenge it because it is a universal injustice.
Eve Ensler, who set up the campaign, first came to the fore as a groundbreaking stage producer and writer, and is most famous for her work “The Vagina Monologues”. A passionate women’s rights campaigner, she saw that art has the power to reach, transform and motivate individuals to act with a shared purpose. Performance can put issues that affect us all on to a global stage and can highlight the hidden ugly aspects of humanity that may previously have been unseen. Violence against women must no longer be unseen and unchallenged. As long as fear and aggression are used as means to control women, and are excused and perpetrated on a global scale, we cannot achieve equality between women and men.
As all the great campaigns and organisations that we know so well in Scotland have been telling us for many years, equally we cannot achieve the ending of violence against women without also challenging the wider inequalities in society. In her speech, Kezia Dugdale highlighted the dimension of the structural inequalities in society and the gender stereotyping that is such a crucial part of that. I endorse what Kezia Dugdale said in applauding the everyday sexism project, the campaign against page 3 and the “Hollaback!” movement—of which a branch was recently formed in Edinburgh, although the movement has been active elsewhere before that.
Many great Scottish organisations and campaigns were mentioned by many people, including myself, in debates that we had in the chamber in December and January. In my last minute I want to mention one of those organisations—the Edinburgh Women’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre. In a debate—I think it was in the January one—I highlighted the very serious funding crisis that is faced by that organisation. It has made some progress over the past three months or so, but it still requires to raise £70,000 by the end of May or its services will be put under severe strain. I hasten to add that the Scottish Government did not withdraw its funding; a Big Lottery Fund grant has ended.
The fact is that if that money is not raised—it has some applications in the pipeline—that vital organisation will need to restructure its services to prioritise front-line support and counselling posts, but that will mean a 50 per cent cut in front-line services and the redundancies of skilled and specialist counsellors and support workers. It already has a nine-month waiting list and referrals are increasing, so a 50 per cent cut to front-line services would significantly reduce the capacity of the organisation to meet the tragically increasing need. It is very sad to have to end on this note—we have emphasised the campaigning and the awareness-raising campaigns—but until we have made progress, we desperately need such services, and the centre is one of the many organisations that are desperately needed, so it must fill the funding gap.
17:18
I congratulate Kezia Dugdale on securing the debate and I commend her motion, which I hope all members can support. I also commend the one billion rising campaign, which has done good work to raise awareness of the appalling global scale of violence against women. We heard from Kezia Dugdale about the truly shocking extent of rape and abuse of women around our world.
It is impressive that the one billion rising campaign has reached 207 countries, where people have come together to protest about the suffering of women, and I am pleased that the one billion rising website emphasises that it wants men as well as women to become involved in the campaign, and states:
“Violence against women and girls is not only a woman's issue; it's a human issue. When we say everyone should join the campaign we mean EVERYONE.”
I am also encouraged by the actions of the United Kingdom Government in supporting women abroad. The Foreign Office, through its preventing sexual violence initiative, is pushing for greater international action and is helping countries to improve their efforts to tackle those crimes and support survivors. A team of experts now works on evidence gathering, investigations, prosecutions and the proper care of victims and witnesses in conflict situations.
In 2011, the Department for International Development published its strategic vision of how the UK’s international aid could best be used to have a transformative impact. In answer to a question from Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Mr Hugo Swire said:
“This Government will stop at nothing in trying to stamp out violence of any sort against women, wherever it takes place. Unfortunately, there is too much violence against women even in our own country. The Under-Secretary of State for International Development ... (Lynne Featherstone) is taking forward an international campaign to end violence against women, and will represent the UK at the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which will focus on the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls. I would also say to the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) that we are using Britain’s presidency of the G8 to run a year-long campaign, led by the Foreign Secretary, on preventing sexual violence in armed conflicts.”—[Official Report, House of Commons, 22 January 2013; Vol 557, c 149.]
Recently, many of us saw the extensive coverage of the visit by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and Angelina Jolie, the special envoy for the United Nations Human Rights Council—and great actress—to the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of their battle against use of rape as a weapon of war. That, too, was very important with regard to awareness raising. The UK Government subsequently committed an extra £10 million to tackling sexual violence and harm to women in war zones, which has been widely welcomed.
Today’s debate is timely and welcome. I hope that all of us in Parliament and the Scottish Government can unite to send out a message loud and clear that violence against women in any form, on any part of our planet, is completely unacceptable.
17:22
Congratulations to Kezia Dugdale on securing the debate, and to one billion rising on its remarkable global mobilisation on 14 February. Any event that spans the world from Kelso to Bukavu in the Congo is something very special.
I saw the chaotic, violent anarchy in Bukavu almost 20 years ago and I cannot pretend to be surprised that it has since been called the rape capital of the world. What is surprising is that the one billion rising movement has reached out to rape survivors there in eastern Congo, opened a support centre and mobilised thousands of women in its cause.
However, we should not kid ourselves that violence against women is defined by war, societal breakdown or some kind of foreignness. The shame stalks Scotland, too. Only today, STV reported that a Milnathort man was convicted of assaulting his wife because she had overcooked his steak. That is not an isolated example; tomorrow morning I will buy my weekly local paper, which will have a whole page of court reports, and I am willing to bet that most of them will be similar stories of violence against women—they usually are. Of course they are.
Two years ago, Edinburgh Napier University studied attitudes to gendered violence among 11 and 12-year-olds in Scotland. Nearly all those young people, boys and girls, believed that a man was justified in punching his partner because she had had an affair, and 80 per cent of them thought that he had cause to slap his partner if his tea was late. We do not need war to justify abuse—a badly cooked steak is reason enough.
That man did not just throw his wife out of the house. He included his daughters, too, presumably to teach them that all women are collectively guilty, no matter whose hand was on the frying pan. His lawyer explained that consideration should be given to the fact that he had now recognised that he has a difficulty with alcohol. It is not alcohol that is his problem—it is his attitude to women.
Kezia Dugdale is right. The problem begins with everyday sexism and inequality, and ends in the normalisation of violent abuse. That sexism is found in the most erudite of circles. Last year, the astrophysicist Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell visited the Parliament and described the intimidation that she was subjected to as the only woman in her undergraduate physics class at the University of Glasgow. She stuck it out and went on to discover pulsars; then her male supervisor was awarded the Nobel prize on the back of her work. And she is not the only one to have been treated in that way. Rosalind Franklin helped to discover DNA, but it was Crick, Watson and Wilkins who got the prize. Professor Bell Burnell was here to launch a report that shows that, in Scotland, 73 per cent of women who study science never find work in science at all. Perhaps they get the message that they are not wanted.
Likewise, in the Napier study, Sally says:
“At the moment I want to be a dancer or a doctor. When I grow up I’m going to have two babies and work part-time in the shop down the road.”
That is a waste of potential and ambition. It is something much darker, too. That is the same Sally who thinks that, in adult life, her partner will be entitled to hit her if she is late with her tea.
Violence against women is not caused by war, drink or ignorance; it is caused by the attitudes of men, and one billion rising is telling us that the game is up.
17:26
I congratulate Kezia Dugdale on her first members’ business debate on such an emotive subject. It is something in which every one of us here and outwith the chamber should have an interest.
Linda Fabiani spoke about East Timor and Iain Gray spoke about the Congo. I remember a speech that the late, great Margaret Ewing MSP—not Margaret Thatcher—who did an awful lot of work on tackling violence against women, gave when she came back from the Congo. She said that she had spoken to women who had been raped in every orifice. The shock and the horror of hearing her say that has never left me. Rape is still being used as a weapon of war, with atrocities being committed against not just women but young children. There should be a special sentence for anyone who uses rape as a weapon of war.
It is important that we keep our eye on international events while we, in the Scottish Parliament, are tackling certain issues of violence against women. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities paper “Safer Lives: Changed Lives: A Shared Approach to Tackling Violence Against Women in Scotland” sets out all the things that the Parliament has done to tackle violence against women and domestic abuse. Those include establishing the domestic abuse task force, setting up domestic abuse courts, considering the Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Bill, which we are doing just now, and addressing the issue of corroboration particularly in relation to sexual offences, which is still to come. Yes, we should be proud of those things, but there are lots of other things that we can do.
Like everyone else here, I am very interested in tackling the sexual exploitation of women. I have never appeared on page 3 of certain newspapers, but I have certainly been slated in many of those newspapers because of my stance—which is shared by others—against sexual exploitation in the many forms that it takes. We have heard about the need to address the educational opportunities for young girls and their belief that, if they say no to a young boy when they are a teenager, they deserve a slap in the face. That was a horrific report.
Sexual exploitation takes many forms, including the words of the music that is aimed at young girls. We see girls as young as five, four or even three—toddlers—gyrating about a stage and people think that it is fine because they are in one of those dance classes, but it is actually sexual exploitation of kids as young as three, four and five. We also see the clothes—I will not name the stores that sell them—with terrible slogans across the front. Not long ago, I saw a wee five-year-old wearing a tiny T-shirt that said “I am a mini WAG” on it. We have had bras and pants for kids as young as four and five being sold in shops. That is sexual exploitation. What can be done about that? People must be educated.
I know that many members have tried to take action. I proposed legislation on the licensing and control of adult entertainment venues, including lap dancing venues. Unfortunately, the legislation was not passed, because certain parties voted it down. I appeal to them to support my new member’s bill when it is introduced.
We must ensure that we tackle the sexual exploitation of young girls and the horrific crimes that are a consequence of that and the fact that women are looked on as sexual objects and not human beings. We must do everything in our power in this Parliament—and throughout the world—to ensure that women are treated as equals to everyone else on the planet.
17:30
I thank Kezia Dugdale for bringing this important debate to the chamber. Few people would expect that more women die or are disabled as a result of violence or rape than as a result of malaria, traffic accidents, cancer and AIDS combined, yet that is a fact.
Scottish Women’s Aid and Zero Tolerance have worked long and hard to raise awareness of and tackle this blight on society. One billion rising aims to raise awareness of the fact that one in three women in the world face violence in their lifetime. Engender tells us that the number of reported cases of domestic violence is on the increase in Scotland, and one in five women are projected to be affected by domestic violence in their lifetime. However, as Malcolm Chisholm said, the rape crisis centre in Edinburgh faces an on-going struggle for sustainable funding.
Violence against women does not take place in a vacuum; it takes place in a context in which women are paid less than men, even when they are doing similar work, and in which gender segregation—from toys to clothing—begins at birth.
Austerity is gendered. Women are, quite simply, poorer and, consequently, have fewer choices. To what extent do women make the choices that affect them? There are too few women in politics. Women are very visible in campaigns to protect schools, hospitals and nurseries, but too few women are involved in making the decisions in our local authorities, Westminster and Holyrood.
How are women represented in the media? They are underrepresented on many of the most frequently aired panel shows. Anyone who watches “QI”, “Never Mind the Buzzcocks”, “Mock the Week”, “A Question of Sport” or “8 out of 10 Cats” will be aware that gender balance is a rarity.
Why is that important? Because print and broadcast media have a massive impact on how society views women. Women disappear from the cinema screen when they reach a certain age. We have even been made aware of cases in which they have been deemed to be too old to read the news.
Sports media has an overwhelming male focus, but that is seldom questioned. International research has shown that, when reporting on women in sport, sporting media is focused only on winners, record holders and those with unique achievements. If those criteria were applied to male sport, newspaper back pages would shrink rapidly.
Women are described as sex symbols, wives, mothers and victims. It would seem logical that, once a structural inequity has been discovered, action might be taken to address it, but there is little evidence to suggest that that is the case. Outside major global games, women are largely invisible in our sporting press. It is a rarity—which is astonishing in the 21st century—that women are pictured in the sports pages. When did members last see women’s sport televised, outside Wimbledon or major global games?
What of the impact of fashion? The ex-editor of Vogue recently reported cases of models eating tissues to stave off hunger pangs and meet the whims of designers whose ideal woman is very tall, thin and young. That filters down from the catwalk to permeate our culture and results in dissatisfaction, criticism and objectification. That is why it is so important to show that there is an alternative. Let us celebrate normal women’s bodies and fit and healthy bodies.
Women are too often made to feel wrong even when we know that they are very fine indeed. In Parliament and outwith, let us look at what day-to-day action we can take to bring about the systemic change that is needed.
Thanks to brave men and women the world over, violence against women is receiving more attention. Rape as a weapon of war and as an everyday occurrence is being challenged. We must ensure that that awareness translates into action.
Violence against women takes place in a context in which a woman’s appearance is deemed more important than her endeavours and achievements. Women’s diverse and complex lives are reduced to caricature and they are objectified.
Let us do all that we can to ensure that women and girls have the freedom to exercise agency and autonomy over their own bodies and lives. Let us support, empower and resource all women and girls to know and claim their rights and to ensure that no one is in any doubt that violence against them is an unacceptable, despicable crime.
17:35
I thank my colleague Kez Dugdale for bringing the debate to Parliament. Her commitment to equality is evident in her work in this building and in her community every day. With such powerful advocates, we can continue to march forward.
I will speak about a group of girls and women who cannot rise or march forward because abuse of their human rights is hidden. That human rights abuse is hidden to such an extent that, to date, there has not been a single police report of or prosecution or conviction for that abuse in Scotland. It is one of the worst abuses of human rights that I have heard of. Many of those involved do not know that what is happening to them is illegal, a fundamental breach of their human rights and, indeed, torture. [Interruption.]
I am talking about girls in Scotland who have their genitals cut out—their clitoris dug out and removed by a scalpel. Sewn up, they are left to bear the indescribable pain and long-term health consequences. Death can be caused by haemorrhage or infections. Cysts, abscesses, chronic pelvic infections, repeated urinary tract infections, increased complications during childbirth, traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, psychosexual problems—[Interruption.]
Ms Marra, if you want to stop until we get the noise from the contractors outside stopped, you may do so and I will allow you to continue thereafter. However, if you want to continue, please do.
Would you prefer that I stopped, Presiding Officer?
No, I would prefer you to continue, but it is entirely up to you.
I will continue.
That is the searing and inscrutable pain that some school-age girls in this country suffer.
Young girls and women, mainly in our refugee communities in Scotland, experience that. They experience that on Scottish soil and they are sent to other countries, which their families are from, to have the procedure—or physical violation—done to them. I am loth to sanitise and normalise that torturous physical abuse by calling it a procedure.
Women who have been through that—an estimated 3,000 women in Scotland—still consent to have the same done to their daughters. Why? Because many women who come to Scotland as refugees have received no education and are not in a position to know that female genital mutilation is not normal procedure. They are told in their communities that it is culturally, religiously and socially acceptable and necessary. They are told that it will make them more female and more marriageable and prevent them from promiscuity. They are told that their daughters will fare better if they undergo this torturous human rights abuse, and consent is given.
Female genital mutilation has been specifically against the law in this country since 1985. In 2005, this Parliament passed an act that extended the crime to those responsible for taking girls and women to another country to perform the torturous act there. We have the full power of law in this country to prevent female genital mutilation, but to date there has been not one police report or prosecution or conviction in our courts, although we know that it is happening. I would very much appreciate it if the minister in her closing remarks made a commitment to investigating why that is the case.
I want to know why our law is not being enforced in this country. Today, I rise in indignation for the children whom the law is failing—for the girls and women undergoing torture and the most grievous of human rights abuses imaginable. Today, I pledge to continue to make their voices heard.
Thank you. I congratulate you on persevering with your speech in the face of what was an obvious distraction.
I invite Linda Fabiani, who is a member of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, to note the level of noise, which is completely unacceptable during debates. Does she wish to respond?
I would like to respond, Presiding Officer.
Of course, I do not hold you personally responsible.
Dave Stewart, Liam McArthur and I visited the site today and, when we told your man in charge how disruptive the noise had been when it happened before, he was profusely apologetic. I think that we can certainly go back to him with a degree of—what will I call it?—annoyance that this has happened again and ensure that something is put in place.
Thank you. I note that this is the second time that this has happened today.
17:40
First of all, I congratulate Kezia Dugdale on securing this very important debate to mark such a significant global campaign. It is very appropriate that this is her first members’ business debate, given her long-term interest in gender equality. I also thank all members who have participated in the debate for interesting, positive and constructive contributions.
I am very pleased to be able to respond to the debate in a personal capacity, given my full commitment to this topic. It is also my pleasure to respond in my capacity as minister with responsibility for equality alongside my responsibilities for sport, the Commonwealth games and obesity. That happened as a result of the growing importance of mainstreaming equality and allows me to work alongside and provide extra support to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing and to progress our work on equality. I should say that the cabinet secretary retains responsibility for same-sex marriage legislation and will maintain close contact on all equality issues. I look forward to working with members in the chamber and indeed the whole Parliament on progressing our equality work.
As many have pointed out, violence against women destroys lives, limits freedom and potential and has no place in 21st century Scotland. However, less than three weeks ago, a 14-year-old girl was raped by two men on a Glasgow bus and at the weekend a 24-year-old woman was dragged by three men into a lane near Queen’s park in Glasgow and raped. It is clear that we still have a lot of work to do. There was widespread coverage of the crimes and a general sense of outrage in Scottish society. As a society, we must stop accepting violence against women and girls as a given and challenge the attitudes to women that lie behind such horrific crimes.
As rape and other sexual offences are among the most distressing and disturbing crimes in our society, we want to ensure that those who commit them are caught and that, in addition to justice, victims receive the support that they need. Indeed, it is the intention of Scotland’s new single police force to treat rape as seriously as it treats homicide and to use the same levels of expertise for investigations as are used in homicide investigations. Moreover, specially trained sexual offence liaison officers will support victims throughout those investigations.
On the wider world stage, G8 leaders are for the first time conferring on the topic of sexual violence during war, including the more efficient prosecution of perpetrators. Resolving sexual violence in conflict is an inseparable part of resolving conflict in general. As Ban Ki-Moon said,
“We must unite. Violence against women cannot be tolerated, in any form, in any context, in any circumstance, by any political leader or by any government.”
He also said:
“There is one universal truth, applicable to all countries, cultures and communities: violence against women is never acceptable, never excusable, never tolerable.”
We very much welcome campaigns such as one billion rising that raise awareness of violence against women and inspire people from all over the world to take action. The truth is shocking. According to the United Nations, one in every three women on the planet will be physically or sexually abused in her lifetime.
On 14 February, the largest global action in history to end violence against women and girls took place, with more than 1 billion people—women and men—in 207 countries mobilised and inspired to come together, express their outrage and strike, dance and rise against violence. I was delighted to hear of the number of events that happened all over Scotland. There were dance protests and street parades throughout Scotland, from the Borders to the Highlands and Islands, and communities large and small took part. An event took place outside the Parliament, as Kezia Dugdale pointed out.
Tomorrow is national stalking awareness day. To mark it, a brand new partnership-based campaign was launched in Glasgow yesterday to raise awareness of what stalking is and what to do about it. Stalking has a negative impact on every part of victims’ lives. It ranges from harassment, telephone calls and computer communications to letter writing, and can, of course, sometimes escalate into physical and sexual violence, and even murder.
As a Government, we want to work collaboratively to ensure that Scotland has robust laws to tackle stalking. We improved protection for victims, of course, through the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010, which criminalises stalking, but we recognise that there is still much to be done.
I am pleased that, in spite of severe economic constraints, we have been able to maintain our funding for tackling violence against women at £34.5 million. That is important because it benefits projects such as the mentors in violence prevention programme, which is led by the violence reduction unit, the ASSIST—advocacy, support, safety, information services together—service, which is a specialist service that provides advocacy and support to victims of domestic abuse, and the Scottish Borders pathway project, which is a new multi-agency project that is designed to support victims of domestic abuse and any children involved. I recognise the particular circumstances in Edinburgh, of course, which Malcolm Chisholm pointed out. He acknowledged that they have arisen as a result of the end of lottery funding. We support the Edinburgh centre to the tune of around £100,000, I think, but I recognise his and Alison Johnstone’s local concerns.
I believe that the Government and the Parliament provide leadership on tackling and preventing violence against women. However, this is about not just us but everyone playing a part, no matter how small. Violence against women cannot be tackled by any one sector alone, which is why it is vital that we work with our partners. We certainly welcome Police Scotland’s commitment to addressing domestic abuse and rape. We also welcome the energy and dedication of our public, statutory and voluntary sector partners in working to reduce and ultimately eradicate those terrible crimes.
Jenny Marra raised the horrific crime of female genital mutilation. I will write to her in detail on the specifics around police reports and convictions.
I pay tribute to the work of partners in the voluntary sector—Scottish Women’s Aid, Rape Crisis Scotland and the Women’s Support Project—that have campaigned and lobbied nationally over many years. We are currently developing Scotland’s first strategy on tackling violence against women, and prevention and early intervention will be a central feature of our approach.
It is essential that men and boys are part of the solution, because the problem is absolutely not just a women’s problem, although women are overwhelmingly the victims. Iain Gray put it very well when he talked strongly about the need for men to take responsibility and change their attitudes to women, as those underlying attitudes underpin some of the sexual violence that I talked about earlier.
We continue to support the very successful white ribbon campaign, which has grown from its roots in Canada into an international education and awareness-raising initiative. It engages men in a positive way to take action and send a message to other men that violence is not acceptable.
We are fully committed to tackling all aspects of violence against women and to supporting the continued work that many in the Parliament and throughout Scotland, particularly in the voluntary sector, are involved in. Any instance of rape or violence against women is one instance too many. Progress is being made, but there is still a lot to do, and it is vital that we continue to work to raise awareness and change attitudes, through the one billion rising campaign and other means, so that we prevent violence against women from happening in the first place and tackle the gender inequality issues that underpin much of that.
In conclusion, I commend again the one billion rising campaign. I look forward to its continuing presence as a leading campaigning organisation in Scotland and to a time when its and our work to tackle violence against women is done, although I suspect that that is some way off. In the meantime, I look forward to working with members across the chamber to make the progress that is required.
Meeting closed at 17:49.