Votes for Women
The final item of business is a members' business debate on motion S3M-4644, in the name of Shirley-Anne Somerville, on votes for women. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament welcomes the new exhibition, Votes for Women: The Women's Suffrage Movement in Edinburgh, at the Museum of Edinburgh from 31 July 2009 to 9 January 2010; notes that the exhibition uses photos and artefacts to chart the long struggle to win the vote, which was eventually granted to all women in 1928; further notes that at the height of the campaign in October 1909 a grand pageant was held in Edinburgh and to honour its 100 year anniversary and history of women's activism a re-enactment march will take place on 10 October 2009; encourages all women to join in the parade in honour of all suffragettes who fought hard for all sisters to have a free vote; congratulates the Gude Cause, based at the Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre, for organising the march and complementary events, and further notes that more information can be found at www.gudecause.org.uk.
On 10 October this year, members of the Parliament were among hundreds of women, children and men who marked the centenary of the famous women's suffrage march along Princes Street by re-enacting that extraordinary procession. The re-enactment was the climax to a series of events throughout Scotland to commemorate the efforts of all those who were involved in the women's suffrage movement. On a personal note, I was proud to take part in the march with my baby daughter, who was taking part in her first—the first of many, I hope—political outings.
Conscious of their past, alert to existing inequalities, but looking forward to the future, those involved in the original Princes Street march and the 2009 re-enactment themed the marches what women have done, can do and will do. Tonight's debate allows us a similar opportunity to reflect on the seismic changes of the past, to consider the position of women now, and to re-affirm our commitment to completing the work that suffragettes began so long ago.
On what women have done, it is impossible for me, in such a short speech, to come close to doing justice to those whose personal sacrifice and bravery paved the way for women to gain what was rightfully theirs. Few will not have heard of women such as Emmeline Pankhurst, but every town and city had its local heroines as the campaign reached its climax on the eve of world war one.
It would be remiss of me not to take this opportunity to highlight the work of two Edinburgh women—Chrystal Macmillan and Dr Elsie Inglis. Their lives capture perfectly the story of the revolution that was taking place in the lives of women in that era; they also illustrate the personal courage and determination that were the hallmarks of the movement.
Chrystal Macmillan was the first woman to graduate from the University of Edinburgh in the field of science and was deeply involved in the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. In the days when persons graduating from the four Scottish universities could elect two members of Parliament each, she spearheaded a local challenge when Edinburgh refused to issue voting papers to female graduates. The Court of Session and Court of Appeal refused her case, and she became the first woman to plead a legal case before the House of Lords. Although her eight-hour submission was, ultimately, rejected, the favourable publicity that it generated did much to highlight the lunacy of the idea that such a formidable lady was unfit to vote.
Elsie Inglis was the first student of the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women, and she went on to create the new Medical College for Women. Her medical work opened her eyes to the tyranny that men could exercise over their wives and reinforced her feminism. She later became the honorary secretary of the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage and the Scottish Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies. As the publicity surrounding the movement escalated, in large measure she sacrificed her professional prospects for her work for the franchise.
At the outbreak of the great war, Elsie Inglis offered her services to the War Office, only to be told to go home and sit still. Rather than sit still, she went about the organisation of all-women medical units to assist the allied forces. As well as helping the war effort, those units smashed the stereotype of women medical professionals being restricted to obstetrics and gynaecology. The Serb and French Governments accepted her assistance and, by the end of the war, £500,000 had been raised for the Scottish women's hospitals for foreign service. The money financed the work of more than 1,000 medical women in battle zones across France, Macedonia and Serbia.
Tragically, the doctor herself died the day after her return to Britain, in 1917, and never had the opportunity to vote, which some women gained soon after. However, having played such a brave and effective role in the war, she could not have contributed more to ending the idea that women were not capable of taking part in politics. Perhaps, when we consider the naming of committee rooms in the Scottish Parliament building, women such as Elsie Inglis will be among the contenders rather than the usual male suspects who are already being touted. In similar vein, I wish every success to the campaign for a statue to that great woman to be erected in Edinburgh, a city that currently has only one statue of a woman—that of Queen Victoria in Leith.
Few, if any, of the suffragettes saw the enfranchising of women as an end in itself, however; rather, they saw votes for women as a means to an end. Elsie Inglis, like many others, had a concern about battered wives that motivated her determination to win the vote. Equality in electoral law was and is not enough in itself; it was simply the beginning, albeit a hugely significant step.
So, where are we now and what work still needs to be done? There is no doubt that we all need to work to increase the number of female representatives in the Parliament. A look around the chamber at decision time reminds us of that. Equality may be one of the founding principles of the Parliament, but until we have equality in representation—and not just for women—we will not live up to that principle.
Much remains to be done beyond the field of political participation—far too much to be covered in such a short speech as this. Nevertheless, I highlight one topical example. Members will be aware that yesterday marked the start of the 16 days of action on violence against women—a series of international initiatives to raise awareness of gender-based violence, to make it clear that such violence is contrary to human rights and to press authorities around the globe to take all necessary steps to end that blight on our communities. I am sure that all of us fully endorse that campaign.
I congratulate the organisers of the gude cause march, which was held in October. Such events remind us of the sacrifices that past generations made so that we could vote and participate in politics and debates such as this. It falls to each of us to renew our commitment to the completion of that work and to tackle the inequalities that still hold back too many women in our society. That would truly be a worthwhile mark of respect for Elsie Inglis and her colleagues in the movement.
I congratulate Shirley-Anne Somerville on lodging this important motion. In its timing, it advertised the march in October and the exhibition that is still running in the museum of Edinburgh. Like her, I congratulate gude cause.
I also thank a group from my constituency that was involved in the events at that time and whose film can still be seen in the museum of Edinburgh. The ways of seeing group—a group of older women based in the Prentice centre in north Edinburgh—made a film that is based on the 100th anniversary of the suffragettes and which highlights many features of women's lives over the past 100 years. We can see that progress has been made in some areas—for example, the film says that, even after the war, nurses who got married had to leave their job—but some problems clearly remain. The film highlights the issue of equal pay, which we have debated recently in the Parliament and the Equal Opportunities Committee, and at the end there is a suffragette song, which says:
"Votes for women, it's just a beginningYou haven't seen anything yet."
That is one of the themes of the debate.
We should remember the great struggles of 100 years ago. I am pleased that Shirley-Anne Somerville mentioned two Edinburgh women, and I certainly endorse her call for either of their names to be used for one of the Parliament's committee rooms. I was thinking about which one it should be, and then thought, "Why should it not be both?" Chrystal Macmillan and Elsie Inglis would be highly appropriate names for two of the committee rooms, and we should certainly remember their contribution. Shirley-Anne Somerville has already covered much of the detail of their lives. Yesterday, we had a debate about Scotland's history, but how many of us learned at school about those women or the many other women who made such an important contribution to Scotland's history?
Let me concentrate on Elsie Inglis for a moment. She did many different things. She was active in the suffrage movement and, from 1900 onwards, she spoke at four suffrage meetings a week, over and above being a doctor and establishing a maternity hospital for poor women in Edinburgh alongside a midwifery resource centre. That hospital developed into the hospital in which I was born. Later on, she also set up Scottish women's hospitals committee, which did such sterling work during the first world war. If I had to pick one of those two women, I would go for an Elsie Inglis room, but I hope that there can also be a Chrystal Macmillan room.
It is highly appropriate that we remember the struggles of those women and many others, but we should also remember that, as the suffragette song that I quoted reminds us, the struggles are not over. There is still much to be done on equal pay, and I am sure that, in the debate next week on violence against women, members will highlight all the work that is needed on that. We clearly do not yet have equality between men and women. A great deal of progress has been made, but there is a great deal more to do. The Scottish Parliament has made a contribution, and I hope that we will continue to do so. This debate has made a contribution, too.
The movement for women's suffrage began as early as 1897 with a lady called Millicent Fawcett, although she was very much a pacifist. In 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia set up the Women's Social and Political Union, which started off as pacifist but, as it was getting nowhere in the face of men in politics, had to develop more direct action, about which many of us have read and know.
As a result, there were disgraceful endeavours to force-feed women in prison. I will quote from someone who was force-fed in a Scottish jail less than 100 years ago. She said:
"The tube filled up all my breathing space, I couldn't breathe. The young man began pouring in the liquid food. I heard the noises I was making of choking and suffocation—uncouth noises human beings are not intended to make and which might be made by a vivisected dog. Still he kept on pouring."
Because there was such a reaction in the press in favour of the women who were going to such extraordinary lengths and suffering to such a degree, the Government introduced legislation that came to be known as the cat and mouse act—the colloquial name for the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act 1913. When a woman was getting to the stage of starving herself to death, to avoid a political fall-out from her dying in prison, she was discharged so that she could start eating and was then brought back in, just as a cat would play with a mouse. That gives us an idea of the culture in which those very brave women lived.
As a consequence of those women's actions, and to a great extent because of the intervention of world war one, under the Representation of the People Act 1918 women of property of the age of 30 or above were given the right to vote. Without the intervention of the war, which led to the loss of so many men and the need for women to take over their roles, it would have taken even longer. Indeed, women in the United Kingdom did not achieve full equality of suffrage until 1928.
Many people think that the suffragettes were located only in England, but Scotland played a huge role and was at the forefront of the movement. I found out that even Hawick, which I would not have thought was a revolutionary Borders town, was visited by the charismatic Emmeline Pankhurst herself. Indeed, at the climax of that visit, the people of Hawick sang to the strains of "Teribus"—their own little anthem—these words:
"Bravo, bravo lady suffragettes,We support you in your fight.For your cause is just and honest,And the vote is yours by right."
That proves that the movement itself was extraordinarily dispersed.
Today, we sit in a Parliament that, for the UK at least, has decent representation of women: there are 43 women to 86 men; one of the Deputy Presiding Officers is a woman; and we earn our place here. I certainly think that we have changed not only the tenor of Parliament but some of its priorities, and some of the work that it has done—in advance, I should add, of other Parliaments—has had a great deal to do with the presence of women. Just as important, we have worked very hard to make this place child friendly, not just for women but for the men who have to look after young children.
Would I have been a suffragette? I think so. I have been very difficult since I was in my pram—indeed, "difficult" is how my late father would have described me. I have always thought myself at least the equal of any man, and I have never at any stage thought that women should be curtailed by anything other than their own abilities in any activity—and that includes the vote.
Of course, we must think of women elsewhere who are not in our position. Women still cannot vote in Brunei; there is only partial suffrage in Lebanon; and there is no suffrage for women at all in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. Where we are is where we would like our sisters across the world to be.
I congratulate Shirley-Anne Somerville on securing this debate, but for many women the fight goes on.
I, too, congratulate Shirley-Anne Somerville on securing this debate, which marks the milestone of the 100th anniversary of the women's suffragette movement's grand pageant along Princes Street.
The Scotsman reported that perfect weather conditions made for "a fine spectacle" on 10 October 1909, when the hundreds of women took to the streets of Edinburgh to demand the vote:
"Everything was in its favour. Better weather conditions could not have been chosen; the streets were in perfect condition and although the southerly breeze may have troubled standardbearers, it was agreeable to the enormous crowds who came to witness the scene."
Fast-forwarding 100 years to 2009, we find no guarantee of the same fine weather; indeed, this year is apparently set to be the wettest since records began. Undaunted, however, the march organised by gude cause re-enacted the same procession not just to commemorate the event but to mark what has changed in the past century to improve the position of women in society and to draw attention to what still needs to be done.
As a result, it seems opportune to highlight specific areas in which women still lack parity. Some of these issues, which relate to gender and are intrinsically about fairness, have been tackled by the Parliament's Equal Opportunities Committee. Malcolm Chisholm has already referred to equal pay and, in the past two years, the committee has considered in its budget scrutiny the issue of equal pay in local government and the national health service, which primarily affects female workers. The committee's report highlighted the extremely high cost of resolving the local government equal pay dispute, and members found it gratifying that the Local Government and Communities Committee decided to carry out further work on the issue.
The committee's recently completed report on women offenders in the criminal justice system highlights some disturbing evidence on, for example, harsher sentencing; the disproportionate effect that prison has on women rather than men with regard to loss of tenancy; and the adverse impact on children when a mother has to serve her sentence in a location not easily accessible for family visits. It is to be hoped that, when the report is debated in the new year, progress can be made to address those issues.
In the grand scheme of things, 100 years is a comparatively short period of time. There is no doubt that the democratic right of women to vote would not have been achieved so soon without the courage and determination of the women—and, it has to be remembered, some men—who formed, campaigned in or supported the suffragette movement. Equally, however, some of the issues that are highlighted in today's debate are a timely reminder that, for many women, there is still some way to go before equality is achieved.
I congratulate Shirley-Anne Somerville on securing this important debate.
I had the good fortune to participate in the gude cause march in October, which was a powerful reminder of the struggle that had to take place to secure the vote. It brought together a wonderful alliance of women from all political parties and none, older women, younger women and women with children, all of whom came together to celebrate the fact that, in the past, our sisters fought for us to have the right to vote. It was a timely reminder, too, of what a powerful force we can be if we are united in identifying issues for women. I particularly congratulate all those who made the day such a great success. It was colourful and entertaining. Clearly, such events do not happen by accident, so we should place on the record our thanks to the organisers.
Reflecting on and reading about the campaign for votes for women brought back to me the extent to which it was a struggle. There was nothing inevitable about women securing the vote. There was, of course, individual political action and there were individual decisions by women—and notably some men, too—to be involved in campaigning and take up the cause of votes for women, but underneath that is a powerful message about the strength of solidarity and sisterhood that it took to secure that change. It is important to recognise and understand the degree of resistance to giving women votes and the measures that people were prepared to take to resist it. We heard some of those described earlier.
Of course, that reflects the broader battle for suffrage in general and people's rights to vote and to shape their own lives. That is why I, for one, do not regard the Parliament as a reconvened Parliament. The difference between the old Parliament and the new Parliament is a reflection of the struggle for radical change. Those who were involved in that struggle said that, in our world, people have rights and entitlements and that democracy and the rights of women must be at the centre of that.
There is also an important message about the whole issue of equality. No step in securing political change was ever made easy for women or other disadvantaged groups. Power was never given away lightly. It is important to recognise that and to be strong in our determination to secure equality. We should think about the importance of women's votes. I think that I, too, would have been a suffragette. We need to say to women, "Use your vote," and encourage them to understand what a battle it was to get the vote and the importance of using it in women's interests.
We have to address the issue of women's representation. We started on a high note in the Parliament, but it is slipping. Across the Parliament, all parties need to look at their levels of representation and ask whether they pass the test. We have to look at positive action and resist the temptation to accept, as some would have us believe, that the preponderance of men at every level of government and in every place of power is somehow a reflection of their ability. What it reflects is positive discrimination in favour of them in the past. We need to resist that—and that also applies to public bodies.
In reflecting on the changing role of women over the years and their securing the vote, we must also recognise that we still have a long way to go. Women are still more likely to be low paid. They are still suffering from violence, and they still disproportionately carry out carers' roles. The test for us is to ensure that the Parliament, which made its name on the level of women's representation, remains open to women and to women's priorities.
We have redefined what is political. In renaming our committee rooms, perhaps we should not look only at the powerful women in our history, who often go unrecognised. Perhaps one of the committee rooms should be named to reflect what did bring change and votes for women: sisterhood, solidarity and courage. Those seem like three pretty good names to reflect the power of women to secure the vote and use it in the interests of women and a more decent society.
I, too, congratulate Shirley-Anne Somerville on securing the debate. Understandably, it has been very much centred on Edinburgh and the Lothians. I thought that I would redress the balance a wee bit and talk about what was done in Glasgow and the west of Scotland.
The first women's suffrage society in Glasgow was formed in 1870. Then there was the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women's Suffrage. As Christine Grahame said, that association soon became the Women's Social and Political Union and the breakaway, non-violent Women's Freedom League.
There was peaceful revolt, and some quite noisy revolt in Glasgow. The Glasgow suffragettes went down to London and took part in window-smashing raids in 1912. Dorothea Chalmers Smith was imprisoned for housebreaking with intent to set fire in Park Gardens in 1913. That took place in the culture of society in relation to women that some members have mentioned.
As we know, history always favours the victors. There is an awful lot of history in Scotland, the UK and Europe where the part played by women is not mentioned. Women were very active in all sorts of campaigns to make society a bit better. Looking back at the trades movement, for example, we can see the roots of the women's suffrage movement. Elspeth King wrote some really interesting stuff about the subject. She wrote:
"The weaving trade … was totally female in Scotland",
unlike in the north of England, where it consisted of men, women and children. Wages were consequently lower in Scotland.
The first women's strike took place as early as 1768, in Paisley. It was reported:
"a female combination … has been entered into by the young women of this place … who refuse to work, unless on higher wages."
And quite right, too. It was a woman weaver, I think in 1832, who called for the vote, and that takes me back to the radical uprising in 1820. We rightly talk about the men who suffered at that time, but there were women who were part of that movement, too, as can be seen in the progress that was made.
I know that there are women in the chamber who have read Marion Reid's book, "A Plea for Women". That book was way ahead of its time, and it is a reference that we should all look at often. It was first published in the mid-19th century. Marion Reid spoke about the roles of men and women in society. I love the quote:
"the effects on men of an artificially inflated sense of their prerogatives are just as unfortunate as those of constant depreciation on women."
She was not just shouting about giving women rights; she recognised that those are human rights that have an effect on everyone in society. That is how it is: it is a human right to be treated the same as anyone else. As Johann Lamont said, with all this talk about positive discrimination, it is as if women are trying to get something very special that nobody else has. When one part of society holds the power, it is only right that society considers how to rebalance that power. Women do not hold the power in our society today.
I will end with a poem from another Glasgow woman, Marion Bernstein, written in 1876. She wrote:
"I dreamt that the nineteenth centuryHad entirely passed awayAnd had given place to a more advancedAnd very much brighter day
For women's rights were established quiteAnd man could the fact discernThat he'd long be teaching his grandmammaWhat she didn't require to learn
There were female chiefs in the Cabinet(Much better than males I'm sure!)And the Commons were three-parts feminineWhile the Lords were seen no more!"
Although the intervening century and a quarter has thankfully seen our focus shift away from Westminster towards Holyrood, it is disappointing that, in the 21st century, we still have not got as far as Marion Bernstein hoped for by the end of the 19th century. I hope that, as our Parliament develops, we will no longer need to measure the progress of women towards equality but will be able to take it as a given.
I add my congratulations to Shirley-Anne Somerville on securing the debate, which is timely and has allowed members from throughout the chamber to make good speeches about the background to women's suffrage.
I particularly thank those who made the 2009 gude cause a fantastic celebration. It was a brilliant success. We had great weather, which we could not have predicted. The march itself was the culmination of a year's activities. There were a huge number of really good events run by local groups throughout Scotland, such as the quilting workshop, the banner-making workshop and the political discussions that sprang from the gude cause. I would heartily recommend the not-to-be-missed gude cause songbook, which includes fantastic songs by women from Scotland and abroad. We had the opportunity to celebrate the contribution that was made by the early pioneers of women's suffrage and equality. As Johann Lamont said, the gude cause event was an opportunity for us to celebrate sisterhood and solidarity. The way that it was organised epitomised that.
I thank the organisers of the Edinburgh Peace and Justice Resource Centre, particularly Janet Fenton and Helen Kay, for holding together a huge range of projects with no money to speak of, as far as I can make out. Their imagination and determination really made the difference.
Even in our own festival of politics, we ensured that women were firmly on the agenda this year with some fantastic discussions and celebrations. There was a focus on the poor number of women elected to the United Kingdom Parliament throughout the 20th century and the change that we were able to introduce in the Scottish Parliament, to which groundbreaking numbers of women were elected. We also discussed the fact that the numbers have tailed off since 1999. There was a huge flush of enthusiasm at the start and, although we have managed to keep our 50:50 in the Labour Party, it is time for us to look at how we move forward.
There is a role for women outwith the Parliament as well as in our parties to lobby hard so that the 2011 manifestos reflect women throughout the country. We all have our take on how to achieve women's rights and equality, but I hope that it will take centre stage in all our manifestos.
My party has had strong representation of women in here in the past three sessions of Parliament, but we have also changed our party structures to ensure that they are 50:50. It is not just about women's representation in the Parliament but about their representation in the whole of Scottish public life. Public bodies, trade unions, businesses and the professions all need to have women at their heart, not just doing the hard work and the fundraising but playing leading roles, too.
When we set up the Scottish Parliament, women came from all the parties, the trade unions, the churches and civic society to work together for change. As we look to the next session of the Scottish Parliament, we need to reclaim women's right to be in the Parliament and to look at the women's claim of right that we had for the first session and think about it for the future.
Now is a good time for us to look at the gains that we have made and to set an agenda for the unfinished business that some of us have talked about today. We have made massive progress. When we in the Labour Party set out our priorities for the first session of Parliament, we were clear that we wanted to ensure that our policies made a difference to women's lives. Those included domestic violence legislation; free nursery provision for three and four-year-olds to give all our children a decent start in life and to give women the chance to play a full part in society by being able to work and be carers; and policies targeted at pensioners, because we knew that women live longer and that many women who have taken time out to bring up their children or to be carers have traditionally worked in lower-paid sectors and do not have access to decent pensions.
A huge inequality runs throughout our world. We need to ensure that what we do in the Parliament will redress the balance. My fear is that we are stepping backwards. It is not just about the numbers of us in here but about the policies. It is about ensuring that women do not lose out in a time of recession. We want to ensure that the gains that we have made are not rolled back. Some of our most vulnerable groups have begun to lose out as a result of the cuts that we see across councils. I hope that we will not let that happen and that we will move to ensure that we make more gains for women's equality. There is a huge amount still to do.
If our committee rooms are to be named, let us not name just one after a woman. As Shirley-Anne Somerville and Malcolm Chisholm said, we should go not just for the name of one woman such as Elsie Inglis or Chrystal Macmillan but for naming at least three rooms after women. We must recognise women's role in history and our contribution to our country.
I, too, congratulate Shirley-Anne Somerville on bringing the debate to the chamber. I thank members for their interesting speeches.
As members have said, this centenary year of the great procession and the women's demonstration of 1909 gives us a wonderful opportunity to celebrate and commemorate women of the suffrage movement. We had the centenary procession in Edinburgh in October, in which some members here participated, as did other politicians from across the parties, members of women's organisations, trade unionists and many others. Complementary local events have been held throughout Scotland, such as the suffrage exhibition that is being held in the museum of Edinburgh. We have today held a timely debate, to which I am delighted to respond. Like other members, I thank gude cause for helping us and giving us the opportunity to reflect and celebrate.
Scotland's first suffrage groups appeared in the late 1860s. They demanded the vote for women as a basic human right and as a means of improving women's lives in the workplace, at home, in the courts of law and in education. They demanded justice and equality for all women and used peaceful tactics to try to win support. They sent petitions to Parliament, wrote letters to MPs, distributed leaflets and organised meetings. However, 30 years of peaceful campaigning produced only minor change so, in the 1900s, more militant campaigners—whom we know as the suffragettes—began to emerge.
We have heard about people from Edinburgh and Glasgow, so I will choose another city: Dundee. Two Scottish suffragettes—Ethel Moorhead and Lila Clunas—are celebrated in two of the 25 bronze plaques on the Dundee women's trail, which is a city-centre walk that Linda Fabiani opened last year. Ethel Moorhead was an artist and was known locally as the "most turbulent" of Dundee's suffragettes. She was force-fed in Calton jail—the situations that Christine Grahame described in that regard were telling—and she had a string of convictions, but her first recorded act of dissent was in 1911, when she threw an egg at Winston Churchill. It is ironic that St Andrew's house stands on the former site of Calton jail and is where all four female Scottish ministers have their offices, as did the female ministers in the previous Scottish Executive.
Lila Clunas was an elementary schoolteacher who ensured that working-class women were involved in the fight for the right to vote. She was imprisoned in London and went on hunger strike after an unlawful incident at 10 Downing Street. After world war two, that remarkable woman was elected to the council in Dundee, where she served until she was 88.
As a result of the pressure and agitation from the suffragists and suffragettes, Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act 1918, which gave all women over 30 full voting rights. However, that was less than full democracy. Women continued—rightly—to campaign until 1928, when full voting rights were finally granted to all women over 21, as others have said.
Democracy had finally triumphed and the suffrage campaigners had won their argument. Without the suffragists, how long would it have taken to move on from an age in which women could not own property, hold public positions or vote? Without the suffragists, the Duchess of Atholl might never have become the first Scottish female MP. As a Conservative and Unionist Party member, she represented Kinross and Western Perthshire—my home area—from 1923 to 1938, although I was not there at that time. She was the first female minister in the Westminster Parliament.
The suffrage movement made a lasting contribution to Scottish democracy and society. It led the way in women making their voice heard, campaigning for an end to all discrimination and prejudice, and striving to achieve equality with men in all aspects of their lives. It is not easy to find proper recognition of the women who were and are part of shaping Scotland—those who made the country what it is today and what it can be in the future. By awarding proper recognition to women, we promote pride in communities and in Scotland and create role models for the rest of us, most importantly our young people.
This Government is committed to proper recognition for women in today's society. I spoke earlier about the Dundee women's trail. This year, the Government has demonstrated our commitment in other areas, too. Examples include ministers' involvement in the Evening Times Scotswoman of the year awards in January, international women's day events in March, the Scottish Trades Union Congress women's conference in November and, of course, the centenary suffrage procession in October.
The Government is committed to encouraging more women to become involved in political decision making. It is funding the Scottish Women's Convention to the tune of £521,000 over a three-year period. The convention organises a large international women's day event in March each year. The theme for next year is the importance of the involvement of women in all aspects of the political process, from voting to becoming an MSP. In addition, the Government is providing £245,000 over a three-year period to Engender, which is an information and research networking organisation for women that provides opportunities for women to engage in focused debate on issues of concern and enables them to influence policy decisions.
We have heard in the debate about the rigours and hardships that the women's suffrage movement endured in the early 1900s. That reminds us of the significance of the right to vote. Voting is the single most important action that anyone can take to ensure that their voice is heard. By voting, we directly elect the people who make the decisions that affect us and our families every day, locally and nationally. We all—the men and women in civic society, political parties, trade unions and local authorities—need to focus on the reasons for the low turnouts at elections and do more to make people want to turn out to vote. We owe it to the memory of the women of suffrage to do all that we can to strengthen democracy.
Meeting closed at 17:42.