Misogyny in Scotland

[ArabellaScott]

Is Scotland more misogynist than other parts of the UK?

Macho Scotsmen is a thing, but is sexism/misogyny more prevalent than in other places?

The enormously unpopular Hate Crime Bill excluded women (and therefore misogyny) from protection.

Historically, Scotland has been enormously male-dominated culturally, politically and socially:

www.gerryhassan.com/blog/we-need-to-talk-about-sexism-in-scotland/

Police Scotland is rife with sexism and misogyny:

www.heraldscotland.com/news/18863352.damning-report-finds-bigotry-misogyny-police-scotland/

Sexual harassment rife at universities:

www.heraldscotland.com/news/16113797.female-students-face-atmosphere-sexism-scottish-universities/

Difficult to compare domestic violence figures with other areas due to differences in legal definitions:

'England & Wales, domestic violence (abuse) data is not comparable with Scotland’s statistics on domestic abuse due to differences in definition'

'www.gov.scot/publications/domestic-abuse-scotland-2018-2019-statistics/pages/21/'

Sexism in politics is still noted:

'sexism in politics is Scotland’s great unifier.'

www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/sexism-scotlands-toxic-politics-still-blight-our-democracy-kristy-strickland-3109809

This is the working group chaired by Baroness Kennedy (at the rate of £1k a day, btw) set up to look at misogyny:

www.gov.scot/groups/misogyny-and-criminal-justice-in-scotland-working-group/

Which has had several sessions already. From what I can see, none of the people consulted seem to be coming at the subject from a Scottish perspective/background. Shouldn't the committee be hearing from Scottish experts? Scottish law is unique and the working group supposed to be examining specifically the situation in Scotland.

So far I can see the only group they've taken evidence from is this one:

www.loveandpower.co.uk/

Again, not Scottish.

Is this a deliberate attempt to avoid local rivalries and factions? Maybe they're starting with a generalised view and will speak to Scottish based people/organisations in due course? Hard to say as I can't find much information (any) on the meetings/consultations/sessions so far. For £1k a day, you'd think the Baroness could manage a website/blog/newsletter.

How best to look at misogyny in Scotland, particularly?

• thanks, Grellbunt!

'Sturgeon is desperate for Scotland to seem like a more progressive place than rUK. As well as this Stonewall et al are heavily embedded within Scottish government and Police Scotland.

This is all adding up to a very hostile environment for women '

The situation is not helped by all the research/evidence/output on this apparently being confined to a very small coterie of people. Why is nobody asking Scottish women about it? Why is it all based on books written by US academics and policy wonks in fancy Edinburgh offices?

A "small" thing that really upsets me is how it now seems that "cunt" is now proudly proclaimed as the nickname of choice for the true Glaswegian - anyone objecting is of course derided. It's depressing.

I agree and I fear that we won't be able to benefit from gains made in England because there will be resistance for political reasons.

There used to be loads of Community Education (now CLD) groups getting women's voices down on paper and doing projects - I'm sure Craigmillar in Edinburgh did a huge project a few years back. I'll need to have a wee look because I think that's where women's voices will be found, rather than through surveys etc.

The situation is not helped by all the research/evidence/output on this apparently being confined to a very small coterie of people. Why is nobody asking Scottish women about it? Why is it all based on books written by US academics and policy wonks in fancy Edinburgh offices?

Because they are paid by the Scottish Government to advise them on matters such as who should be paid by the Scottish Government to advise them...

Basically the TRAs have the ear of both the government, and the orgs advising the government. It's one big cycle of woman hating crap.

Isn't cunt not being an insult ... kind of what we want?

There is a massive social divide. Many of my comfortable, rural-living, well educated friends who have lived peaceful and, if I am honest, probably pretty small c conservative, lives have no inkling of the challenges that many less well situated women face.

In my experience, having lived and worked in both, is that I've often felt that "chum"ocracy is more of a thing in England. At the worst this is Etonians giving each other jobs, contracts and lordships but on a day-to-day basis is been people in senior positions (almost exclusively white male) giving little leg-ups to their friends (almost exclusively white male). So while it's not blatant mysogeny, I've felt much more disadvantaged by being a woman in England than in Scotland. I'd be really interested to see stats about gender ratios in senior positions in England Vs Scotland. Where I work in the English office seniors are about 90% male, juniors about 80% female whereas it's almost 50/50 for both in Scotland.

I'm very curious about how mysogeny actually compares on the ground between the countries. It looks like domestic violence is recorded in different ways but it should be ok to compare domestic homicides. From a quick search it looks like pre-pandemic domestic homicides were more common per head of population in England. Has anyone looked at the stats of this properly? I'll go back and find official figures if not. Gender pay-gap looks smaller in Scotland. Can anyone think of other comparable stats to get a handle on the actual differences in mysogeny?

Okay, LBTM.

I have looked at some of the data from ONS.

UK gender pay gap: median 15.5 mean 14.6
Scotland gender pay gap: median 10.9 mean 10.4

There are LOTS of spreadsheets, including breakdowns by different job/industry.

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/annualsurveyofhoursandearningsashegenderpaygaptables

We can look at:

gender pay gap stats
domestic violence
sexual assault

But some things are harder to quantify. Very hard to assess the degree of 'macho' culture and social attitudes as compared to other areas/countries.

Aha, this might be of use:

'The Global Gender Gap Index is one of the best-known measures of national gender inequality, used by both academics and policy makers. We argue that that this measure has a number of problems and introduce a simpler measure of national levels of gender inequality. Our proposed measure is based on sex differences in the opportunity to lead a long healthy and satisfied life that is grounded on educational opportunities.'

'countries are ranked by the average of the absolute scores (average absolute deviation from parity, AADP) on the three components 1) educational opportunities, 2) healthy life span, and 3) overall life satisfaction'

It only has 'Great Britain', but perhaps worth looking at some of the things they use as measurement criteria?

journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0205349

... update:

• and then, having read it, maybe not:

'the general focus in the area of gender inequality is often on issues relevant to women, while discounting men's issues. For example, while the issue of Saudi women not being allowed to drive has received much media attention, little is reported about issues affecting Saudi men. Little is written, for example, about the challenges many lower-status men have in finding a partner in a country where polygyny is legally practiced, yet this almost certainly undermines their health and wellbeing'

Fucking hell. The poor men.

Next!

'Ambivalent Sexism, Right Wing Authoritarianism and Rape Myth Acceptance in Scotland
Kallia Manoussaki, Fiona Veitch

Very small study (250). Maybe this type of study widened out would be useful, although I am about the politics of this particular study - seemed to me to be based on some fairly tenuous and possibly politically prejudiced premises:

Abstract
The study investigated the relationship between ambivalent sexism (AS), right wing authoritarianism (RWA) and rape myth acceptance (RMA) in a Scottish context. Findings revealed that benevolent (BS) and hostile sexism (HS) as well as RWA significantly predicted rape myth acceptance. '

'The focus of rape work in Scotland has seen changes in the law and campaigns to tackle rape myths.
However, the greater challenge is to address the socially conservative attitudes of morality, chastity, chivalry and
adherence to traditional institutions, as well as sexism and discriminatory attitudes that are prejudicial towards women
and allow society to ‘avert their gaze’ from male violence. Everyday sexism, embraced by both men and women, is
catastrophic in allowing often subtle but pervasive misogynistic attitudes to emerge, informing among other things,
the way in which society views victims of sexual violence. Pervasive attitudes that view women as sexual objects and
as subservient to men promote rape myth acceptance and victim blaming as do attitudes reflected in right wing
authoritarianism, some of which are embraced by neoliberal policies prevalent in the UK. A better understanding of
the interconnected and complex interplay between conservatism, sexism and rape myths may contribute to a wider
understanding of rape as a violent crime and eventually lead to a more facilitative culture for rape victims, reflected by
an increase in progressive and comprehensive policies and higher report and convictions rates.'

Rape trial and conviction rates are pathetic across the UK, but Scottish rates are significantly better than English.

Sturgeon is desperate for Scotland to seem like a more progressive place than rUK

Do you think this is because she sees it as justifying Scottish nationalism/independence, progressive Scotland shouldn't be chained to such a backward ol' place as England , or thinks the voters will see it that way?

@LBTM

In my experience, having lived and worked in both, is that I've often felt that "chum"ocracy is more of a thing in England. At the worst this is Etonians giving each other jobs, contracts and lordships but on a day-to-day basis is been people in senior positions (almost exclusively white male) giving little leg-ups to their friends (almost exclusively white male). So while it's not blatant mysogeny, I've felt much more disadvantaged by being a woman in England than in Scotland. I'd be really interested to see stats about gender ratios in senior positions in England Vs Scotland. Where I work in the English office seniors are about 90% male, juniors about 80% female whereas it's almost 50/50 for both in Scotland.

This is an interesting take. I worked in both Scotland and England, and was more comfortable in Scotland and I think that might be because there is less of a social/class divide than in England. However, I’d say there was still a feeling of more traditional male and female roles being accepted, which sometimes felt more paternal than patriarchal.

I haven’t lived there for ten years or more now, and lost contact with rural communities before that, but I caught a program on TV one evening about the Hawick Common Riding, where there was a controversy raging because women were only allowed to ride in certain events. There were various men speaking up, and one in particular, who argued “if it isn’t broken don’t fix it” and I couldn’t believe, in this day and age, that a man would openly express that on TV without it crossing his mind that while it wasn’t broken for him personally, it obviously was for the women who were objecting.

And I was reminded very strongly, that for all the female politicians in high places, there might well remain that strong strain of traditional feeling that I experienced when I moved to Scotland as a child, only to discover that boys were given the belt as punishment and girls did sewing and cooking when boys did woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing. It was much more old-fashioned than the part of south-east England I had moved from.

Thanks for the stats @ArabellaScott. And that's an interesting article on right wing authoritarianism and rape myth. I hadn't heard the term "benevolent sexism" before but it resonates with one of the things I noticed much more of when I moved to England as a teenager. There seemed to be much more of things like holding doors open for women, and assuming I would need help with more "manly" activities.

Which is interesting considering the traditional corroboration rules - I forget how that's handled in sexual cases...

Perhaps lots of cases just aren't brought to trial?

@SmokedDuck

Sturgeon is desperate for Scotland to seem like a more progressive place than rUK

Do you think this is because she sees it as justifying Scottish nationalism/independence, progressive Scotland shouldn't be chained to such a backward ol' place as England , or thinks the voters will see it that way?

I think smaller countries tend to be newer and at least perceived as different from the larger ones they've broken away from? I guess it's looking at WM and working out the best optics and narrative to play against that - cast WM as the staid traditional status quo, then you almost have to cast Scotland as the plucky wee rebel that advocates for change (in any form).

I think it could be argued that this has become about nationalism rather than independence. It's almost like being in opposition - you can rail and blame everything on WM, those in power, almost endlessly. Spin and optics.

Also a way to divert attention from the very serious problems in Scotland - mental health, infrastructure, education are all areas that are not healthy, but requre massive investment of time and money to fix. The SNP consistently pretend to fiddle with them but don't actually address the issues.

Instead, we get issues that generate more noise and have attractive, rainbow flags to wave. Nobody 's having parades for children who are failing at school, nobody's really railing about that in the press, our educational attainment has plummeted in recent years, for example. Hate crime is not a big issue here, despite what Humza might have said. We're largely a tolerant nation, and there were plenty adequate laws to deal with prejudice and threatening behaviour, etc.

The HCB was just virtue signalling on a governmental scale (and very poorly thought through as a result).

I know this thread hasn’t been posted on in a while, but have been googling this subject after a conversation with a Scottish friend ( I’m also originally from Scotland)

we were just saying Scotland is hugely misogynistic, and worse than London imo.

the difficulty is I’m comparing a metropolitan, international city with a country that has a different demographic. I also appreciate that Scotland in my youth was more misogynistic and it may have progressed.

i find Scottish men I meet in London tend to be more sexist and resentful of women in positions of authority ( I’m in a senior role) though class may also be a factor ( I have a pronounced accent which I’ve never really lost) . This is all anecdata of course! But friends also note that mansplaining is strong in Scottish men

i definitely think the macho culture has a lot to answer for. It’s also a very small ‘c’ conservative country despite the progressive laws passed in recent years.

id be fascinated to know if anyone has found any recent. Research into this area.

I wonder whether its more that misanthropy is more widespread in Scotland generally? I say this on another freezing cold dreich day as rain lashes the windows.

Perhaps. We can really be a miserable bunch

No fucken wonder! Have you seen who's in charge?! 😂