Was she not on maternity leave?
I keep seeing people criticise this candidate for being absent at this particular vote, but never the justification for condemning her, or any considered analysis.
There's an old argument that elected officials should resign rather than taking leave. Rights to maternity leave are recently established at Westminster and still tenuous. Holyrood has been more progressive on the issue; while we haven't seen a case of an FM needing to take leave, we have had ministers and party leaders do so - for example, Ruth Davidson during her stint as Conservative (and Opposition) Leader at Holyrood. She fully absented herself and left her job responsibilities in the hands of her deputy.
In the corporate world, it's still a challenge to ensure that maternity leave (and parental, medical, and family leaves, although those are less directly tied to sex) is properly deployed, supported, and respected. One of the hardest things is setting the expectation among colleagues and even supervisors that the person on leave is entitled to their full leave and DOES NOT have work responsibilites during that time. Even in places with good legal provisions attitudes remain traditional and there's popular blowback.
This can't be a sex-neutral discussion: not only are the cultural expectations different for women vs men with newborn children, the biological differences are indisputable. Eroding maternity rights - even if we call them parental rights or similar - systemically and disproportionally disadvantages women. If a Scottish Government Minister shouldn't be allowed the full advantage of maternity leave, that's a discussion to be had (again), not a given.