The Status of Women in Scotland - For Women Scotland

[ArabellaScott]

This is taken from FWS' recent submission to the UN Women's commission.

'The evidence in this submission illustrates that in Scotland there exists a serious and immediate risk to the overall framework protecting women from discrimination based on sex as well as to the individual human rights and freedoms of women. In particular the human rights of women to safety, dignity, privacy, the freedom of speech, expression and belief, the protection of maternity, the right to education and sports, the right to political and public participation, are all at grave risk from changes wrought by the current legal developments in which the Scottish Government ignores the international obligations and commitments on sex-based discrimination. It does so by replacing or conflating the protected characteristic of sex with non-protected notions of gender and/or gender identity. '

forwomen.scot/03/08/2021/the-status-of-women-in-scotland-conclusions/?fbclid=IwAR0-RvUDqdouz5V1-MQzOso3wvqi_0e8cx4JaXTGL49hxsWcdYOXy4lBKSI

Thank goodness for FWS, and how shocking that the SNP have turned Scotland into a third rate misogynistic country that is reduced to begging the UN to intervene to prevent human rights abuses against Scots women.
Why any sane woman votes SNP is beyond me. Turkeys voting for Christmas…

It's pretty sobering to read it all laid out like that.

Do you know what the next stage in the process is? I've no idea how the UN works... Can the UN do anything if they choose to?

Good question! I'm not sure how it works, but the Commission on the Status of Women certainly seems to seek to influence policy, as far as I can tell:

archive.ph/7ZARn

Fantastic UN submission from ForWomenScot (hope you are on here to hear how awesome you are) and really useful/worrying/terrifying blog posts. I'm in Wales and I've seen the future.

A really important submission. It must have taken weeks. The commission seem to get that sex matters. Hopefully someone knowledgeable about the UN will come along to explain what happens next

I really wish I could believe that someone in the Scottish government could read that and pause for thought...

We've reached the stage where you read something like that and wonder what the actual fuck the government, the press and the international situation is.

Because it's getting increasingly bluntly plain: women are becoming second class citizens. Again.

And I have not the slightest doubt that the SNP will quite openly stand behind it as Better for people born male, and therefore righteous and progressive and Other Words Too.

Oh yes the SNP will be very clear that only bigots think women should be recognised as a single sex category.
I no longer feel rooted in my country

Only Bad Women want rights. And equality.

Because it's getting increasingly bluntly plain: women are becoming second class citizens. Again.

Yes. You know the saying about how we're always only three meals away from a revolution? I think we're about a wafer-thin mint away from the loss of women's rights, from what I can tell.

Why is this not on the front page of every paper and headline news?

Thanks for pointing it out.

@Artichokeleaves

We've reached the stage where you read something like that and wonder what the actual fuck the government, the press and the international situation is.

Because it's getting increasingly bluntly plain: women are becoming second class citizens. Again.

And I have not the slightest doubt that the SNP will quite openly stand behind it as Better for people born male, and therefore righteous and progressive and Other Words Too.

Yes, it is so obvious that the government hold women in contempt and don't give a shit about the affects of these bullshit policies on women and girls.

I only hope the women of Scotland keep fighting.

@ArabellaScott

Because it's getting increasingly bluntly plain: women are becoming second class citizens. Again.

Yes. You know the saying about how we're always only three meals away from a revolution? I think we're about a wafer-thin mint away from the loss of women's rights, from what I can tell.

Whilst being loudly told this is a Good Thing.

And being required to applaud it.

I honestly wonder wtaf MPs are thinking. Or if they're thinking at all.

Hmm. It would be interesting to survey MPs/MSPs and see what they actually really truly think. Of course, you'll mostly get the party line. But there are a few who are speaking up. Very few. Sadly, I think many left the Scottish parliament this year - the ones who spoke up knew they had little to lose, politically.

I can't say the outlook is rosy for women in Scotland, I'm afraid. Most people don't know enough about it, and most people can't work out the impacts, and another great chunk of people just don't care.

I have just watched “How to become a Tyrant” on Netflix. Many of the tactics used by the SNP are straight out of the tyrants playbook. Putting women in their place being one of them, ignoring science another, scapegoating groups of people and creating a new religion or being nationalistic etc…. We should all recognise the tactics being used in Scotland right now.

The UN are TWAW though aren't they?

But like all these orgs use the word women in the Apparently obsolete way s lot as well...

Why is this not on the front page of every paper and headline news?
It's a system that suffocates us. layer upon layer upon layer of biased and fearful media, politicians, policy makers, businesses, charities, digital platforms

“How to become a Tyrant” on Netflix

thanks Rita, someone else mentioned this programme and I immediately thought of queer theory and how it all started (history of it is explained by Dr Clare Jones). Must watch it..

This is an interesting blog post from 2020 by Robin McAlpine, ' director of the Common Weal think tank and a prominent campaigner for Scottish independence':

sourcenews.scot/robin-mcalpine-the-foundations-of-scotlands-democracy-have-crumbled-and-you-should-worry/

And one from 2021, from the Scotsman. I'll stop there, it's a slight tangent from the thread title. But illustrates some of the reasons we've got to where we are, I think.

www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/alex-salmond-inquiry-shows-nicola-sturgeons-government-no-longer-subject-democratic-checks-and-balances-brian-wilson-3132793

Thank you for the kind words, a few of us worked on it. Hopefully it will register with them or at least be useful for others.

Thanks for all that you do, Susan. I'm glad that someone is recording all of this, analysing it and will, hopefully, be able to hold the Scottish government to account at some point.

Just here to post the next part - on All-women shortlists:

forwomen.scot/03/08/2021/the-status-of-women-in-scotland-all-women-shortlists/?fbclid=IwAR2pI0IQo27zG_GH7l0g9DXGp1CE1j-p5_BZrLlQ-Moek86hx5EGoIMfuuE

@SusanSmithFWS thank you thank you thank you

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@SusanSmithFWS thank you to you & your team for all the endless hours of hard work💐