Radical proposals intended to make Scotland a world leader in gender equality have been put forward in the first annual report from the country’s National Advisory Council on Women and Girls.
The recommendations include offering two months of paid paternity leave, 50 hours of free childcare a week for all children aged between six months and five years old, and establishing a world-leading process for complainants of sexual violence.
The report, published on Friday, also calls on the Scottish government to legislate for local and national candidate quotas for all political parties by the 2021 Holyrood elections, which would require devolution of specific powers from Westminster.
It also recommends the creation of a What Works? Institute to test evidence-based approaches to changing public attitudes to equality, a commission to examine how to embed gender equality at all levels of the education system, better data gathering on the impact of the media on attitudes to women and girls, and the criminalisation of misogynistic harassment.
The council, whose 16 members include Vicky Featherstone, Helena Kennedy and Katherine Grainger, was established in 2017 by the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who took her inspiration from Barack Obama’s White House Council on Women and Girls.
The council’s independent chairwoman, Louise Macdonald, who is also chief executive of the national youth charity Young Scot, acknowledged the recommendations reflected scale of ambition rather than direct local solutions, describing the task as “bringing a revolutionary lens” to the issue.
“We know from the growth of global movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp that there is a real appetite for radical change for equality for women and girls. The first minister’s National Advisory Council on Women and Girls vision is for Scotland to be recognised as a leading nation in the pursuit of gender equality.”
The council had agreed early on in the process to focus on “systemic change, because changing the system would lead to changing behaviours and that leads to changes in attitudes and culture”, Macdonald said.
She also made it clear the recommendations were not only for the Scottish government to take forward, but ought to be within the remit of the public, private and business sectors.
“We all have a part to play in creating a more inclusive society, and in these recommendations we have focused on tackling changes in the systems that too often perpetuate inequality,” Macdonald added.
The report’s content was informed by a series of meetings with council members, input from a wider circle of experts and speaker events with senior women across Scotland.
The first minister will give her initial response to the report at a meeting of the council to be held next Wednesday.
