Engender blog

Time to drive gender equality home with robust legislation

This blog first appeared in The National

It is now three months until the Scottish Parliament elections. Elections which, we hope, will see manifesto pledges made for women’s equality, and a record number of women MSPs elected. Engender will be working up until the election to call for parties to commit to our “20 for 2016” – 20 asks which we think could see real progress towards women’s equality in Scotland. We’ll be supporting groups across the country to hold “Gender Matters” hustings events, and we’ll be writing in The National about a different ask each week.

Scottish Green Party Elections - Female Co-Convener Q&A

On the eve of the close-of-poll for the Scottish Green Party internal elections, Engender put some questions around women's equality to the two contenders for the post of Female Co-Convener.

Rather than electing one leader, as many other political parties do, the Scottish Green Party has one male and one female co-convener. Up for the female co-convener position are incumbent Maggie Chapman (MC), former Edinburgh City Councillor and top list candidate in the North-East region for Holyrood 2016, and Zara Kitson (ZK), co-convener of the Glasgow and West of Scotland branch, and former co-convener of the Scottish Young Greens.

Guest Post: To succeed we must achieve equality

Guest post by Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, SNP candidate for Ochil and South Perthshire.

We need to do all we can to encourage more women to get involved in politics. Although we now have a respectable number of globally important political leaders who are women – I’d strongly argue we need more. And, in particular, women remain woefully underrepresented in the House of Commons.

It is hard enough raising your head above the parapet into politics as a woman, but as an Asian woman I feel it’s even more of a challenge. If privileged enough to be elected, I could be the first Scottish black and minority ethnic woman parliamentarian. It is quite incredible that this be the case in 2015.

Guest Post: A politics by and for women

Guest post by Sarah Beattie-Smith, Westminster Candidate for the Scottish Green Party in Edinburgh North and Leith

If this general election campaign will be remembered for one thing, it’s the role played by women and by Scotland in a political culture that was utterly unprepared to share the stage with either. Whether it’s a London based media waking up to the fact that Nicola Sturgeon exists (and that she happens to lead a country) or whether it’s a generation of voters seeing Green Party of England and Wales leader Natalie Bennett, Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood and Nicola Sturgeon breathing life into this election and challenging the austerity consensus, it’s clear that politics has changed. As Lesley Riddoch, put it recently, what we’re seeing is “the end of the Big Man and the start of the assertive woman as the preferred model for political authority”.