Women 5050 will be hosting guest posts from women MSPs from across parties who are supporters of fair representation. We will hopefully be posting these weekly (depending on how busy the MSPs are!). Here is our first edition:
Meet Gail Ross SNP MSP for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross:
It’s a huge honour to be elected as an MSP and represent the area that I grew up in and love. It’s also great to be able to be a strong role model for young women who are trying to find their way in life and are unsure what path to take. Politics has traditionally been seen as a male dominated profession in the past, now I am glad to see that is changing.
I’ve come across a few instances of casual sexism in the past few years as a Councillor and recently as Civic Leader, from joking remarks about the ‘weaker’ sex to outright astonishment that I should hold such a post. The most memorable was a piece in our local newspaper by a columnist musing on who would hold positions in a new Caithness Council. I was to be promoted to ‘Meenister fur Weemin’ and my primary responsibilities were to be things like ‘advising women on skirt lengths, make up and nail polish, reminding men about their wives birthdays and making the tea’. Satirically written but underlining a more serious challenge that a lot of women face every day in the workplace. I must say I’ve had a lot of mileage out of it though, I used it as the basis for a speech to the SNP conference last October about gender balance and people are still talking about it!
As we move forward we have to encourage more women to get involved in politics. The SNP group now have 43% female representation, we have a gender balanced cabinet and we strive to make the Scottish Parliament more family friendly. This job comes with enormous responsibility and it’s not for everyone but at least we can show women that whether it’s politics or some other career or life goal, gender doesn’t have to be a barrier anymore.