 The next item of business is a debate on motion 10285, in the name of Nicola Sturgeon, on celebrating 100 years of women's right to vote. Would members who wish to speak in this debate press their request to speak buttons, please, and I call on the First Minister to speak to and move the motion for up to nine minutes. Presiding Officer, it is a pleasure and a privilege to move today's motion. As we mark the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, the landmark law that gave not all but some women the right to vote for the first time. Today, above all, we pay tribute to those whose sacrifices secured a fundamental right that all of us now take for granted. There's an old Scots proverb, which was often used on suffragist and suffragette banners. Indeed, the first part later provided the title for a history of the movement, and that proverb says simply, a good cause max a strong arm. The good cause that we are honouring today was given strength by the commitment of tens of thousands of women and also, of course, many men from right across our country. By 1914, there were suffrage associations in every part of Scotland from Orkney and Shetland to Cercubrie and North Berwick. Indeed, if you look for them, you can see reminders and powerful symbols of the suffrage campaign all over Scotland. When I was a student at Glasgow University, I must have walked on countless occasions past the famous suffragette oak in Kelvin Grove Park. The First Minister's residence at Bute House over Luke's Charlotte Square was the starting point for the Scottish suffrage's march to London in 1912. Occasionally, I looked out of the window across to Charlotte Square and found myself wishing that I could spend a few moments with those women to pay tribute to their courage and their sacrifice but also to thank them for enabling a woman like me to occupy the office that I do today. Of course, Charlotte Square is also where Elsie Ingalls, one of the greatest Scottish suffragettes, went to school. This morning, with the suffragette flag flying outside, I chaired a meeting of our gender balance Scottish Cabinet in St Andrew's House, which of course stands on the site of the old Calton jail, where many suffragettes were imprisoned in the years before the First World War. That last poignant fact is a reminder that so many of the women who campaigned for the right to vote made immense sacrifices, sacrifices that are beyond our imagination today. Some, especially those who adopted militant tactics in response to government intransigence, were not just jailed but horribly mistreated and even force fed. Many more devoted their energies and countless hours of their time to the cause, and all too often they encountered public ridicule, disapproval, anger and contempt. We in this generation know even today that it's not always easy for women to speak up in public life but whatever the challenges we face now, it was far more difficult then. The Glasgow and West of Scotland suffrage association described what a woman often went through. She defies convention and throws aside that much prized virtue, respectability. She gives up friendships that she values, often she renounces all her past life. So when I stand here in this chamber as a female First Minister to be followed by a female leader of the opposition, my overriding emotion today is one of deep gratitude. All of us, but women in particular owe an immeasurable debt to the suffragettes and the suffragists who we honour today. For that reason, this centenary has been marked not just by this parliamentary debate but by events and commemorations across the country. The Scottish Government confirmed yesterday that we will provide funding for local projects, which will mark this anniversary. We will also support the Glasgow Women's Library, which is developing a programme of commemorative events. In addition, we are organising a cross-party event for young people here in our Parliament, and we will fund projects to improve women's representation and participation in public life. Those final two strands to the programme that I have mentioned are important. Those commemorations should not simply be about marking our past, they should also look to our future. After all, some women secured the parliamentary vote a century ago. Women have had equal voting rights to men for 90 years, but the uncomfortable truth is that gender equality is still an un-one cause, an un-one cause that is the duty of our generation to win. Today, the gender pay gap still stands at 9 per cent in the UK and almost 7 per cent in Scotland. Women are more than half of the population but make up just 27 per cent of members on the boards of the UK's largest companies. We still need to address the gender stereotyping, which means that just 6 per cent of our engineering modern apprentices are women, while only 4 per cent of our childcare modern apprentices are men. It is worth thinking deeply about all of this. A key reason, of course, for women securing the vote was the contribution that they made to the war effort from the munitions factories of Clydeside to the field hospitals of the Balkans. They demonstrated quite irrefutably that women's competence and capability was equal to men's. But 100 years later, that equal capability still is not reflected in equal pay or equal status. In addition, as we have been reminded all too recently, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and sexist behaviour are still far too widespread across our society. Inequality also persists when it comes to political representation. When this Parliament was first elected in 1999, more women were chosen to represent Scottish constituencies than had been elected at Westminster in the previous 80 years. However, the hard reality is that there has been little progress since then. In fact, we have gone backwards. The proportion of women MSPs in the Parliament was 37 per cent in 1999. It now stands at just 35 per cent. My own party is 43 per cent, which represents progress since 2011, but that also means, as with all parties, that we need to do more. However, there are also areas where this Parliament has genuine grounds for pride. Just last week, every single member of the chamber supported the domestic abuse bill legislation, which has been acclaimed as setting a new gold standard in protecting women from coercive and controlling behaviour. Last week, we also approved legislation to ensure 50 per cent female representation on public boards, ensuring that the public sector leads by example on appointing women to leadership positions. This parliamentary session will also see a massive expansion of childcare, something that will help parents, particularly mothers, to return to work in pursue careers. Much of Scotland's international development work in Africa and Pakistan prioritises the empowerment of women. We still need to do far more, but we can and we should draw strength from those significant recent accomplishments. When we look at some of the wider social developments of the last year, such as the public response to stories of harassment and unequal pay, the development of the Me Too and Time's Up movements, I think that there is now a chance to achieve even more significant and rapid change. After all, public scrutiny of discrimination has never been higher and public tolerance of it has never been lower. That gives all of us not just an obligation but also a huge opportunity to make much greater progress towards true gender equality. It is an opportunity that we must all work together to seize. When I was first elected as First Minister by this Parliament in 2014, I commented on the fact that my niece, who was then just eight years old, was in the public gallery. I said then that my fervent hope was that, by the time she is a young woman, she would have no need to know about issues such as the gender pay gap or underrepresentation or barriers such as high childcare costs that make it so hard for so many women to work and pursue careers. I hope that this Parliament can play a vital role in consigning those issues to history. I want young people in the future to be able to see them in the same way that we see voting rights for women as a cause that was argued for and won by earlier generations. We are here today to honour the perseverance, the courage and the self-sacrifice of the suffragists and the suffragettes. Ultimately, the best way of doing that is not through parliamentary debates or commemorative events—important, though they are. It is by renewing our own resolve to use the powers that we have—powers that, in so many ways, we owe to the brave women of the suffrage movement—to make the world a better place for the girls and young women who are growing up today. If we can add our strength to that good cause, we will pay a fitting tribute in this centenary year. It falls to us in our generation through deeds, not words, to complete the work that the suffrage movement started, to ensure that no longer will gender be a barrier to any woman achieving her dreams. That, in my view, is the only truly appropriate way for us to repay our enormous debt to the heroic movement that we celebrate and honour today. I move the motion in my name. I am getting all emotional. It is quite a day to speak to and move amendment 10285.2. Along with many in this chamber, I have been asked over the past few weeks as a woman in elected politics to talk and to write about the centenary celebrations of women receiving the vote and what it means to me. At every point, I, like others in this chamber, have been keen to point out that the 1918 representation of the People Act did not, as the shorthand would have it, grant women the vote. It granted some women and almost all men the vote. Those newly enfranchised women over the age of 30 who were householders, the wives of householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of £5 or graduates voting in university constituencies who were considered responsible enough to vote, which amounted to around 8.5 million women. My great-grandmother, Bessie Richie, would not have been among them. Despite herdling the age barrier, despite raising five sons to adulthood and a daughter who died young, she did not qualify. Leaving school at 14 and living in a Glasgow corporation tenement in Trayston, she had neither the means nor the education to be deemed worthy of political decision making. Voting was not a universal right, but it was a value judgment given only to those who were thought up to the task. It would take another 10 years until universal coverage was achieved. Equal voting rights between men and women offered to all over 21 irrespective of property. The centenary is not necessarily a celebration in itself, but it is a staging post to a better system. Staging posts are worth marking, too. I, like the First Minister, commend all those across the country who are supporting or attending the programme of events, the talks, the marches and the exhibitions that bring together the stories of our grandparents and great-grandparents and bring those stories to the next generation. I say great-grandparents rather than great-grandmothers for a reason, because men are part of the story, too. It was men that passed the law and men that objected to its passing, and one of the arguments that was employed by those standing against it was that women would simply want more. The right to vote would not quench a woman's thirst for equality. They thundered, but rather it would encourage women to do things like enter politics, become MPs or even shock horror, become cabinet ministers. I wonder if those same unenlyten souls could ever have imagined a time in UK politics where, simultaneously, we had women holding the office of Prime Minister, of First Minister of Scotland, of First Minister of Northern Ireland, plus the leadership of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Conservatives, Sinn Fein and the Alliance Party in Northern Ireland, along with the co-convenerships of both the United Kingdom and Scottish Green parties. In every single part of the United Kingdom, young girls growing up can look at politics and see that women can make it to the top and conclude that they can, too. We have come a long way in a hundred years, right enough, but when it comes to parity, equality and representation, we are still not there. As proud as I am to be of the First Political Party to admit women members who saw the first female MP-taker seat, the first and second female Prime Ministers, and in a devolved context is the only party represented in the chamber to have had more female members than male ones—long may that continue—is, in fact, on an unbroken run of more than 13 years of female leadership in Holyrood. I know that we have more to do, too—a lot more to do—if we want to see parity. That is why, along with other parties, we have established our own organisation for us—it is called Women to Win—to help identify, recruit, train, mentor, support and advance women into elected positions at all levels of Parliament and local government. It is why I support campaigns such as Asker to Stand, along with others in the chamber, to encourage more women to consider coming forward as candidates. While I am pleased that last year's general election returned more women than ever before, it is still telling that, if you add together every woman who has been elected to the House of Commons in the hundred years since the Parliament Qualification of Women Act, you are still 165 shy of filling the green benches. 650 members returned every single election—only 485 women in the whole of history. However, it is not just in politics where we see equality in law but disadvantage in practice. We need only to look at the world of work to see that women are more likely to be paid less than men, more likely to be harassed in the workplace, less likely to be promoted irrespective of qualifications or experience and more likely to see their career progression hampered by having children. According to the Faucet Society, the gender pay gap across the UK is 14.1 per cent for women in full-time employment. It sat there for the last three years, which means that I currently share my birthday, 10 November, with equal payday—the day when women stop earning relative to men because of the gender pay gap. It is not simply a moral right to rectify that. Equality between men and women in the workplace is proven to lead better outcomes for companies. The idea of equal only exists if women are given the same opportunity to make progress, the same rewards for hard work and the same treatment in the job as the man standing next to her. That is the next fight. Closing the gender pay gap, gender-blind recruitment and promotion, confronting sexual harassment and cracking down on real life and online misogynistic attacks are the next frontiers in a war that is not yet won. There is much more for all of us to do, and anniversaries like today can help to focus our attention on that work and it can prompt us into action. For example, more than 1,000 women were imprisoned during the battle for equality prior to the 1918 act. Sam Smithers, the chief executive of the Faucet Society, says today that it would be a fitting tribute to pardon them now, and I agree. It is a symbolic step only, of course, but symbols matter. Under 100 years on from the battle to win equality, we should recall the women and men who fought not as criminals but as righteous trailblazers. I am indebted here to Chris Deere, the columnist and the Herald, who used a recent article to recall some of those forgotten names, added to those mentioned by the First Minister a few moments ago. We see fearsome Scots women like Flora, the general drummond, born in 1878, died in 1949, qualified as a postmistress who was refused entry because she was too short and who campaigned for equal rights on the back of a huge charger, hence the nickname. Flora was imprisoned nine times and, while in prison, she taught fellow suffragettes Morse code so that they could communicate. A five foot two inches tall reminder that those of us who live in luckier times stand on the shoulders of giants. Today we give thanks to those women of courage and bloody mindedness, and we recommit ourselves to finishing their work. There is much still to do. I move the amendment in my name. Today we commemorate an important milestone on an important journey. We celebrate a crucial victory in the fight for equality, and we remember that those things worth fighting for the most demand struggle and sacrifice, and what sacrifice there was. Many paid with their health, some even paid with their lives to secure women's suffrage. Yet we cannot say today in this Parliament or outside it that this long march to equality is over. The path that those campaigners first trod at the beginning of the last century still has many miles to run. So while this afternoon we look back, we must also face the future. Face the future with a renewed commitment and a renewed purpose to deliver real equality in our society and in our time. The women's suffrage movement had many members and martyrs, the pancre sisters Emily Davidson and Millicent Fawcett, just some of the women whose tireless fight for equality has seen their names written into the history books. Many others remain hidden from history. Women like Janey Allen, a member of the ILP in Scotland, of the Women's Social and Political Union, of the Women's Tax Resistance League, who addressed the courts in 1913 while refusing to pay taxation said this. She said, Government rests upon the consent of the governed, and that consent I consider women are justified in refusing until they are enfranchised. I object to pay this tax, my Lord, because I hold that taxation without representation is tyranny. So long as women are denied any voice in the expenditure of the money derived from taxation, so long are they perfectly justified in refusing to pay taxes. Deputy Presiding Officer, the first leader of the Labour Party, Keir Hardie, was also one of those who valiantly took up the cause of a woman's right to vote. For the prophetic Hardie, equality was paramount to improving both society and the economy. Yet he was one of just a handful of men in Parliament who stood four square behind the women's suffrage movement. Hardie believed emphatically as his 1905 pamphlet on this topic attested that and I quote, only by removing the disabilities and restraints imposed upon women and permitting her to enter freely into competition with men in every sphere of human activity that her true position and function in the economy of life will ultimately be settled. And whilst Hardie's detractors accused him of focusing on the wrong idea of trying to prevent universal suffrage for all men, he knew, Hardie knew that if women were not given the franchise in their own right, then any further extension of adult voting rights would continue to exclude women. And that message, Deputy Presiding Officer, should be our continued calling today, because when just one woman is paid less than a man for the same day's work, all society is shortchanged. When just one woman suffers abuse or discrimination, all society is degraded. When just one woman is denied the same rights as a man, all society is unequal. The scale of the struggle before us is huge, but just as it did for those women and men a century and more ago, the magnitude of our task should serve not as an excuse for inaction, but as a motivation for further action, not as a reason to back away, but as a cause to move forward with renewed vitality. Because, Presiding Officer, while we may have a female First Minister, only 45 of our 129 MSPs are women, while we may have a female Prime Minister, just 208 of our 650 MPs are women, and while we may have the Equal Pay Act of 1970 on the statute book introduced by a Labour Government and driven by Barbara Castle, we know that pay inequality remains stubbornly widespread. And so, Deputy Presiding Officer, let us today commemorate and celebrate, but let us also continue that work. Let us harness the spirit of the suffragists and the suffragettes to fight on for equality and to fight on for justice in our society. A century has passed since some women won the right to vote. We should not let another century go by before women and men are equal in all things. So can I move the amendment in my name? Thank you, Mr Leonard. Open debate, speeches of five minutes. Christina McKelvie, followed by Margaret Mitchell. Ms McKelvie, please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. The House of Commons Passive Representation of People Bill in June 2017 was the House of Lords that held it up until February the next year. And the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 finally corrected the injustice in which women did get a mention in the long title—they weren't mentioned in the long title before, so progress indeed. And from February 1918, it took Parliament another 10 months to enact the Parliament Qualification of Women Act 1918 to allow women to be elected to the House of Commons as an MP. So technically, nine months how apt it took for some women who could vote for an MP but not stand as an MP. And some 50 years later, when Dr Winifred Ewan was elected to the UK Parliament in the Hamilton by-election, she recounted many times the way she was treated in the Commons with misogynist disrespect and treated very well by a few good men and those allies I'll come back to later. But let's hope, Presiding Officer, that not that now another 50 years has passed since that by-election, that the treatment of women parliamentarians is better. I'm sure we can all live in hope for that one. And the women's suffrage movement grew from a sense of frustration with militant women pledging to argue at every by-election at which the Liberal Party stood because the Liberal Party kept refusing to give them the vote. With Prime Minister Asquith in Fife and Churchill in Dundee, Scottish suffragists had cleared targets in their fight for the right to vote. Whilst campaigning in Dundee in 1908, Irish suffragette Mary Maloney followed Churchill for a week, ringing a large bell every time he started to speak. An interesting tactic to deploy in this place, but I fear that Presiding Officer would not be too happy with it. But we do look back now and think, how could that ever be the case that women had fewer rights than men? But we need only look at the serious inequalities that we see today and see that difference still exists. Many suffragettes were imprisoned, beaten and, more importantly, taken home to their husbands who were encouraged to discipline them physically. So it was with great pride last week that in this place we passed the Domestic Abuse Bill in our Parliament. The suffragette Ethel Moorhead in Edinburgh became the first in Scotland to be force-fed, like that sink in, force-fed. The Pankhursts, the Daviesons, our grandmothers, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, your great-grandmother, a regimen of monstrous women, maybe, but women who were brave, who had conviction, who stood up against the patriarchy and won, using some of that patriarchy along the way. Those women deserve their legacy to be honoured by a new generation of monstrous women. Those who wear pink pussy hats, the waspy women, those who call out times up, those who stand and be counted every day in every way for that good cause. Our sisters call out to us from 100 years ago and they say deeds not words, and I am sure that they would welcome the funding announced today by our First Minister. I say to our male allies here and across Scotland that men of quality do not fear equality and ask you to stand with us in our fight. I leave you with the words of Emlyn Pankhurst. She said, and I quote, we are here not because we are law breakers, we are here in our efforts to become lawmakers. And every woman in our Parliament today should remember that. We are here to become those lawmakers and we are here to stay. Today we celebrate 100 years of women's or at least some women's right to vote. In the great scheme of things, this is a relatively short period of time. And in family terms, for me, it represents just one generation, my mother having been born in 1911. This was almost seven years before the 1918 representation of the People Act, which gave women over the age of 30 the right to vote in general elections if they met certain conditions. Ten years later, the 1928 ROP act extended this to women aged 21 and over. So my mother's first opportunity to vote in a general election was in 1935 and the war meant that she had to wait 10 years to vote in another. Thereafter, she voted in every election, be it local, national, European, insisting on going to the opposing person in order to exercise women's hard fought and earned democratic right. Politics mattered to her and, as a young girl, she was short for a junior imperialist, a lifelong supporter of the union and the Conservative party. She was born in Coatbridge, where she lived all her life. Times were hard and, as part of a large family, there was no possibility of her enjoying the educational opportunities that we so easily take for granted today. Money had to be earned to contribute to the household income. Two world wars saw her generation of women taking on roles previously, exclusively male occupations. They worked in munition factories or were engineers, mechanics or land guilds or, like my mother, they were in the timber core based in Tinnabrook in Argyll. All played their part in the war effort as our democratic freedoms hung in the balance. After the war ended in 1945, men returned home and resumed their previous occupations, and when women, like my mother, married, many employers prohibited them from working. Housework was labour intensive, and this was the time when gaslight predated electricity as a household commodity. Clothes and bedding were handwashed on a board, fed through a ring and hung out to dry. Co-fires were cleaned daily. The absence of fridges or freezers meant frequent trips to the local butcher, fishmonger, baker and grocer. The nearest thing to online shopping was the grocer boy's weekly bicycle delivery. In the 60s and 70s, technology and technological change introduced the labour-saving gadgets that we rely on today, and this coupled with the widespread availability of the pill further increased women's emancipation and with it brought new freedoms and also new pressures. While women's earning power increased, the same gender prejudices still remained. This was something that I discovered when applying for a loan for my first car and, despite being employed full-time as a teacher having my own current and savings bank account, I was told that it wouldn't be improved unless my husband was a garden tourer. It still rankles, he had to fix that out. In 2003, four years after the Scottish Parliament was established, my mother completed a journey from gaining the right to vote to watching proudly from the gallery as many women, including her daughter, were sworn in as MSPs. In conclusion, huge challenge she's lie had to achieve equal pay to crack the glass ceiling. As domestic abuse is being tackled, much more needs to be done. Here in Scotland now, women are being trafficked and subjected to sexual exploitation and forced marriage. Globally, in war and conflict areas, women are being raped as a weapon of war. However, today, on this significant anniversary, it is good to pause to acknowledge and pay tribute to another generation of women whose tenacity and courage made it possible for us to exercise our democratic right to vote and to be here as legislators addressing the challenges of the future. I call Ruth McGuire to be followed by Kezia Dugdale. Ruth McGuire, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. 1918 marks a huge step forward for women's equality, but it's important to bear in mind that we're celebrating 100 years of some women's right to vote. Only a select group of women were deemed worthy of the right to vote in 1918. Those over the age of 30, who were also either householders, the wives of householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of £5 or graduates voting in university constituencies—in other words, well-off and well-educated women. The reality is that the ancestors of many of us in this chamber wouldn't have benefited with the extension of the franchise. I don't know if my great-grandmothers took an interest in politics. In 1918, Isabella Walker was gutting fish in Tory Aberdeen, and 19-year-old Sarah Thomas worked mixing creams in her uncle's pharmacy in London. I do know this, though. They didn't have the right to vote yet. It was to be another whole decade until universal suffrage was achieved. So this centenary is less a celebration of an end goal than an important marker on a path towards equal voting rights for women. We could say that we're in the same position today. We're much progress has been made, but we're much remains to be done. All women now have the vote, and we have a women First Minister and Prime Minister. Despite that, women remain stubbornly underrepresented in politics and in public life. In 2016, I was one of only 45 women MSPs elected to serve in this Parliament. Women make up only 35 per cent of MSPs—the exact same proportion as in 2011—and less than in 1999, when our Parliament was first created. Just as there was still more to do in 1918, there remains a power of work to be done today before we have real equality. It's not enough for women in positions of power to say, well, I'm here, so that'll do. Neither is it enough to say that women just need to have a little more confidence or be encouraged a little bit more. We need to break down the structural barriers that are in their way. Deeds, not words. That's why, as a councillor, along with my colleague Mary Gougeon and Labour and Lib Dem councillors, I argued for and won a change to causeless constitution to ensure gender balance in the leadership team. All of us who want our council and parliamentary chambers to reflect the country that we serve must vigorously support action to make that happen. Deeds, not words. That's why I was proud to vote for equal representation on public boards, Bill, last week. As has often been said, including by our own First Minister, it's not simply enough to be a woman in politics. You have to actually use your power and influence to benefit other women. Although we still have work to do, the SNP's action on all women short lists and constituencies with retiring MSPs had a clear and positive impact on the number of our women MSPs elected. Scottish Labour's action of quotas also ensured a strong representation on their bench. The overall figures in Holyrood have stagnated in large part due to the increased number of Conservative MSPs in Holyrood, of whom not even 20 per cent are women. The representatives of that same party all voted against increasing women's representation on public boards just last week. Deeds, not words, Presiding Officer. Lastly, and returning to the centenary we're marking, it'd be remiss of me not to mention the great Ayrshire suffragette, Flora Drummond. Flora grew up in Arran and became known as the general. She led the great procession and women's demonstration in Edinburgh in 1909 on top of a horse dressed in military uniform. She was known for her daring and headline-grabbing stunts, including slipping inside the open door of 10 Downing Street. Flora was pregnant when she was imprisoned for her campaigning, and, like many other brave suffragettes, the torture of force-feeding took its toll on her health. As we celebrate that step forward for women in 1918, we should never forget just how much those brave women like Flora sacrificed and suffered for our rights. We should all resolve to do our duty and to do all we can to continue to further women's rights today. Deeds, not words. The proudest day of Granny's life was when the vote was won. The paper said that it's over, but Granny had just begun. Her women's committee went on to organise and challenge the union, the council and their lies. Granny was a suffragette, only five feet tall. Granny was a suffragette, and she took on City Hall. Singing votes for women is just the beginning. You haven't seen anything yet. Granny was a suffragette. Here I stand so proudly with my college degree, and my daughters have more options than Granny could foresee, but if you think we're satisfied, take a look around. There are a lot of angry women who won't let their Granny down. Granny was a suffragette. It's as if she's still alive. Granny was a suffragette. Their voices still survive. Singing votes for women is just the beginning. You haven't seen anything yet. Granny was a suffragette. It's right that we come together to mark 100 years of women's suffrage, although I have to say that I struggle a little with the words that we use. Is it a celebration when the right to vote is such a fundamental one? Is it a commemoration? We commemorate the start and end of wars, although I suppose that this is a war of sorts. Commemorations remember sacrifice and service, and we are certainly doing that. They also serve as opportunities to learn the history, the lessons of history, and apply them to the present. What did we learn from the suffragettes? In the simplest terms, we learned that the path to equality is full of obstacles, and that those obstacles can be overcome. We have also learned that not only can we find a way over those obstacles, we must remove them to ensure that the path of the people that follow is an easier one. The suffragettes remove the obstacles that allow us to stand in this chamber, and therefore follow that in this chamber we must remove the obstacles that women beyond it face, many of which have been named by colleagues across the chamber already. Commemorations are also moments of reflection. What would Emily Davidson, the Panchurst and Mona Giddas have made of the past 100 years? I suspect that they would have been proud, but very far from satisfied. Would they believe that women were still underpaid for the work that they would do? Could they believe that, 100 years on, two women would die a week at the hands of their violent partners? That 80,000 women a year would be raped, and that 400,000 women would be sexually assaulted and countless more harassed? Would they rally against 21st century work houses? Could they comprehend that we would still see low pay and insecure work? That, 100 years on, women would still work a full week and struggle to put food on the table? That we still have to argue every single day that the unequal distribution of wealth and power holds women back? Commemorate, yes. Celebrate, no. I'm too angry and I'm still marching. Looking at Twitter this morning, I was struck by how many people were wearing quite green and purple ribbons, the colours of the movement and how many of those ribbons were tied to statues and monuments connected to the suffragettes across London. We can't do that here because, if I said before in this chamber, there are more statues for dogs in this capital city than there are for women. We still teach too little about women's history and the fight for equality. If it's not taught, how will we ever learn? I can't and I won't wait 100 more years for gender equality. I won't wait 10. I want it now and I strive for it with every breath of my working life, because its absence is both a natural injustice and a bloc to economic progress. That's as true of our country today as it is of every other country around the world. We should look at the world beyond our shores. The first place in the world to give women the vote was New Zealand in 1893. It's no coincidence that that same country barely blinked when its 37-year-old Prime Minister announced that she'll give birth whilst in office and her husband will take extended leave. At the other end of the scale, as recently as 2015, Saudi Arabia was debating the merits of universal suffrage. One planet, the same debate, is 115 years apart. Richard Leonard asks us to consider where we will be in 100 years. Let me ponder what that generation will make of us and what we did in our time. In 100 years might there be statues for Malala, who history remembers as championing the rights of women to an education first in Pakistan and then across the globe? Might they remember Gina Miller, who took the Government to court and won Parliament's right to vote in article 50? Might history tell us yet that that was the day the path of Brexit was altered? Or might we see statues for women like Fadou Maudaib, who fled the violence of Somalia in the 90s only to return to stand for the presidency in her own country, doing so solely to champion the rights of women and the end of FGM? The stories of those women or any others will only be known if they are taught and told. In closing, there is more work to do here at home. In the first six weeks of this centennial year, we have had the Me Too campaign, Time Up, the gender pay gap crisis in the BBC, millionaires flaunting their cash in front of scantily clad women at the president's club and the debate over F1 grid girls. God, even Doritos, felt the need to produce a crisp that is more ladylike and less crunchy just yesterday. The evidence that women remain unequal can be seen everywhere we turn, so we must redouble our efforts to deliver that gender equality. Commemorate yes, celebrate no. I'm too angry and I'm still marching. I call Alison Johnson to be followed by Jenny Gilruth, Ms Johnson. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. On Friday, I was privileged to host here in this chamber young women from Leith academy working with Amina Muslim Women's Resource Centre and Edinburgh Rape Crisis on a fabulous project called My Big Beating Voice. It aims to give ethnic minority women and Muslim women a safe space to explore issues to do with gender inequality. It seeks to help them to amplify their voices and express their views and I can assure you from my experience on Friday that it is working. Their visit couldn't have been more timely. We discussed the underrepresentation of women in our parliaments and in our local authorities. We asked how political parties here in Scotland could help attract more BME women to join us. We need to. Their absence in our politics means we're all losing out. Then we played a game, educational of course. The young women had photographs of BME women's rights campaigners active in the fight for votes for women. My colleague Andy Wightman and I had to match the photographs with slips of paper containing text summarising the life stories of these truly remarkable women, one of whom Ida B Wells is widely known for her relentless work on behalf of the anti-lynching movement. She marched in the first suffrage march in Washington, D.C. with the other 21 founders of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, the only African American women's organisation to participate. Mary Church Terrell, a sorority member, marched too. Like Ida, she was the daughter of former slaves and Mary was determined, despite calls to the contrary, that Afro-American women would be represented on the march, saying that. We're the only group in this country that has two such obstacles to surm out, both sex and race. She pleaded that my sisters of the dominant race stand up not only for the oppressed sex but also for the oppressed race. They were asked to march at the back to avoid upsetting any white delegates from the United Southern states. Ida said either I go with you or not at all. I'm not taking a stand because I personally wish for recognition. I'm doing it for the future benefit of my whole race and she characteristically took matters into her own hands and joined the Illinois unit in the body of the march as it progressed, walking with white co-suffragists Bellsquire and Virginia Brooks. Ida Wells famously said that the way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them and she was commemorated on a US postage stamp in 1990. On 15 this month, the Royal Mail will issue a stamp featuring Sophia Duleep Singh. It's a photograph of her selling the suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court, where she lived. Thanks to my wonderful visitors on Friday, I know more of Sophia's story. Born in England in 1876, she was the daughter of a maharaja and therefore a princess. Her godmother was Queen Victoria. She could have chosen a life of luxury. Instead, she became actively involved in the movement for women's suffrage, campaigning on the streets, selling and auctioning some of her fashionable belongings to raise money for the cause, and occasionally attracting police attention. She knew that because of her elegant clothing, her expensive coat and hat, no one would suspect her. She had a banner underneath her coat, threw herself at the Prime Minister's car and revealed a vote for women banner. She became a princess with a criminal record. King George was so astonished by her behaviour that he exclaimed, have we no hold on her? She was active in the women's tax resistant league. She held withheld payment of taxes and defending herself in court said, I'm unable conscientiously to pay money to the state as I'm not allowed to exercise any control over its expenditure. Neither am I allowed any voice in the choosing of members of parliament whose salaries I have to help to pay. If I'm not a fit person for the purpose of representation, why should I be a fit person for taxation? Presiding officer, women, even those under 30, now have the vote, but progress is not linear. The numbers of women in this chamber proves that. As the struggles of those women and those my colleagues have so eloquently spoken off highlights, progress in this area hasn't been easy to achieve. It has been hard won. Cuts have an impact on the ability of women to get involved in politics to the degree that they might wish to. When I was born, women, including women over 21, had only been allowed to vote for 37 years. That is such recent history. I warmly welcome the First Minister's announcement today. Women in Scotland were incredibly active in campaigning for the vote, their actions were widespread and varied and brave. Reed Fanny Parker, alias Janet Arthur's account of brutal force feeding by a doctor when imprisoned, women endured being assaulted, tripped and verbally abused merely for marching, for the right to be involved in the democratic process. I was really heartened to find that information about Fanny in the Scottish Archive for Schools, and I had asked the Government what they might do to make the curriculum as inclusive as possible to ensure that the young women that I spoke to have an opportunity to learn about role models from their own and different backgrounds. I thank in gender, the Fawcett society, women 50-50 and each and every organisation still working for equal representation for women. It's 2018, women have the vote, but we are far from equally represented. Presiding Officer, the job is not yet done. Let's honour the memory and legacy of all of those remarkable campaigners and let us work to close the gap. Thank you. I call Jenny Gilruth. We follow by Willie Rennie. Ms Gilruth, please. Robert Alexander, John David, James James, James John, James Robert William, James James James, John James, Robert Robert John, Henry Alexander, James Archibald, James James, James John, Barry, Mingus and Stephen. East Fife, today North East Fife, is the seat in which I grew up in and has only ever been represented by men, both in Holyrood and in Westminster. It was the constituency of Herbert Henry Asquith, the first Earl of Oxford and Asquith and the seat of the former Prime Minister. In 1913, Asquith bestowed upon his constituents a visit to the town of Leven in my constituency. I am extremely grateful to the Glasgow Women's Library for providing me with the following information from the book A Get-Caws, the Women's Suffrage Movement in Scotland by Lea Lennon. Lennon describes how a group of suffragettes attempted to rush a public meeting that Asquith was attending. One individual threw pepper in the face of a policeman. She was later arrested and taken to Method Police Station, whereupon she smashed all the windows, turned on the water, flooded the jail and then threw a bucket of water over another policeman. The day after, at her trial in Coopershire of Courts, the Dundee Courier reported, Ms Morrison's enthusiasm for the cause is probably sincere. Her sense of the injustices under which women's labour is possibly strong and deep, but the actions that spring from those quite legitimate foundations fail lamentably to impress. Talking of failing to impress, it really does beggar belief that not just one, but two men from my party thought it appropriate to comment on the 2016 intake in the national press yesterday. One described us as a group of political lightweights. That is important in the context of today's debate, because my party's Holyrood 2016 intake elected 17 new members—13 of us women. I hope that those men will think carefully in future before banding about gendered stereotypes of what constitutes an effective politician. I digress back to Ms Morrison, who it would later transpire was, in fact, Ethel Moorhead, a huge figure in the suffragette movement in Scotland, as we have already heard. In her home city of Dundee, she went through an egg at Winston Churchill, and it was due to Churchill's actions as Home Secretary that Moorhead became the first suffragette in Scotland to be force-fed in Edinburgh's Calton Jail, as my colleague Christina McKelvie mentioned earlier. The suffragettes should be lauded, as they rightly are, for winning the majority of the population voting rights, but we are not there yet. Deeds, not words. We all have a responsibility to ensure that this Parliament is reflective of civic Scotland. After all, let's remember that Gail Ross is the only woman on the rural economy and connectivity committee. She sits on that committee with 10 male MSPs, and it looks awful for our Parliament. It looks awful for our country. It's time every party in this place looked at the gender makeup of our parliamentary committees, particularly in the current climate. I read the two amendments last night from Labour and the Tories, and I really just cannot understand why Labour makes no reference to its own deeds, which helped to ensure that this place became one of the most gender-balanced parliaments in the world at the time. Conversely, my party at the time held back, and our numbers of female MSPs dropped, and we quickly realised that not only was it the right thing to do, it was a politically expedient thing to do, to become a group that more accurately reflected our country. The Tory motion today calls on us to welcome campaigns such as the Ask Her to Stand campaign. In November 2013, the original campaign referred to in the motion submitted a petition calling on the UK Parliament and political leaders to do something to ensure a better gender balance in Westminster. Quite honestly, I have never heard of the Ask Her to Stand campaign previously. I had heard of the Women 50-50 campaign, the cross-party campaign in Scotland, which I am aware that no Conservative member has yet signed up to. I had heard, of course, of the Tory's own Women to Win campaign, which was, of course, started by Ruth Davidson's boss Theresa May back in 2005. In 2003, four of the 18 Tory MSPs were women, or 22 per cent. By 2011, that rocketed to 40 per cent, making the Tories the second best party in this place in terms of the representation of women. Now, where stands Scotland's opposition? Nineteen per cent of their MSPs, the worst level of women's representation with the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party since 1999. Deeds not words said Panchurst. As Ruth Maguire said, last week, the Conservative group voted against gender representation on public boards act. Last week, a male Tory MSP thought that its own political point of order was more important than passing the Domestic Abuse Scotland act. Last year, the female leader of the opposition whipped her MSPs not to take a single intervention during the rape clause debate. Ask her to stand sounds like a well-meaning campaign. The premise of the website suggests that form filling in is the real impediment to change, but the impediment to greater numbers of women in Holyrood is clear. It is the Conservatives' consistent refusal to enact measures to increase their number of female MSPs. Until they do, this Parliament will be held back. Scotland's women need every political party to take action to ensure that we get more women into politics. We can pass all the progressive legislation that we want to in this place, but it matters not one bit if we don't live by the standards that we set others. Deeds, not words. A male voice at last, Mr Rennie. Willie Rennie, to be followed by Joan McAlpine. Listening to the excellent contribution from Jenny Gilruth, it would be too easy to think that women being denied the vote was of a different age. Even though it was 100 years ago, it is still off the current world. Everybody has been talking about their grannies this afternoon. I am going to talk about my granny. My granny, Jeane Rennie, was one of the first women to earn the right to vote on an equal basis with men. Born and brought up in the miners' roles called the happy lands in Lochgellian Fife. She knew and talked of Jenny Lee. The life path of my grandmother and Jenny could hardly be more different, both from mining stock, both intelligent women, facing the gender barriers of the time. Jenny Lee won a scholarship to university thanks to the Andrew Carnegie trust in Dunfermline, escaping the circumstances of her birth. She became a radical Labour MP and established the open university over a long parliamentary career, which created a ladder of opportunity for so many women just like her. What was remarkable was that she became a member of Parliament just one year after equal voting rights were introduced in 1928, at the tender age of just 25 years old. That is quite remarkable. What an inspiration she must have been to the women, to the people of Lochgellian Fife and to those mining communities. Somebody so young breaking that glass ceiling and getting into Parliament just after equal rights were introduced for women. She was clearly an inspiration to my granny. My granny often talked about her. My grandmother was pressed into service in a home in Cooper. She was intelligent, and if a young woman today would probably be studying at one of her best universities, she would be happy and fulfilling life and may well have chosen the same route if she had her time again. However, that is the point. She did not have the choice, but I have a choice. I have a choice to make change. I am sure that it has probably not gone unnoticed that I am a white male leader of an all-male parliamentary group. I am impressed by my parliamentary colleagues in my group and the contribution that they make to this Parliament. However, that does not stop me wanting and being determined to use my leadership to change its composition for the future. Christina McKelvie Thank you very much for taking the intervention. If a young Willie Rennie, who had the powers of time travel, would go back 100 years and tell the Liberal Prime Minister to give the woman the vote? Rennie, do you have a TARDIS? Rennie Gilvie I think that we would all do things differently if we had the power of time travel. It was of an age, and we have an age now, which we can make a difference now today. That is why I persuaded my party to change its selection rules for candidates so that we can achieve that 50-50 representation. The first test was last year at the general election. As we increased our numbers of members of Parliament, half were elected as women. With just two more votes in north-east Fife, Jenny Gilruth and a majority of our group with a woman would have been women. It is a modest change, but I am determined for it to signal a long-term change for our party. It is changing for 2021 as well. For the next Scottish Parliament elections, Liberal Democrats will have a number of all-women short lists. That is action, not just words. We have dedicated funds to help women to win, and we have instituted improved training and support as well. My ambition is that the Liberal Democrats more accurately reflect the people that we seek to represent, and we remove the barrier to getting good women elected. If you are a young woman, even contemplating a life in Parliament and politics, I cannot imagine the thought of being the only woman in a room full of white men that is particularly attractive. That is why I want the change. I want it to be guaranteed. Even if all those men are charming and welcoming, I want it guaranteed that that woman will not be the only woman in the room, and that she will sit alongside other quality women who can make a quality contribution to the wellbeing of our society. That is why we need to guarantee that change, and it is my ambition that we will deliver that change. When I think of the battles of my grandmother's generation and the sacrifices that they made, there is a responsibility on all of us—men and women—to change the world for the better. Thank you, Mr Rennie. I call Joan McAlpine, to be followed by Michelle Ballantyne. The motto of the suffragettes, indeed not words, was born of frustration. Peaceful attempts to extend the parliamentary franchise to include women began in the 1860s with John Stuart Mill MP at a Liberal—so they weren't all dinosaurs—who tried to change both the English and Scottish Reform Acts to include women getting the vote. That failed. Two million people signed petitions demanding reform, and that failed too. So arrived the age of direct action, the age of the suffragette. I want to devote my speech today to remembering the Scottish suffragettes who, unlike the Panchursts, are not household names but who surely changed the course of history through their courage. Like the Scottish artist Marion Wallace Dunlop, who was the first to go on hunger strike in Holloway prison and, as others have said, the many women all across Scotland who took direct action. The movement was strong here because of their organisation, as the First Minister has said, and also because of the presence of high-profile members of the Cabinet in Scottish Seats, Mr Churchill and Mr Asquith in particular. Those women included Maud Edwards, who was jailed for damaging a portrait of King George V, the Royal Scottish Academy, Francis and Fanny Parker, who had already mentioned of the Scottish University's Women's Suffrage Union, who attempted to set fire to Burns Cottage to draw attention to the rights of women, and Helen Crawford from the Gorbils in Glasgow, a red Clyde Cider who left the Women's Social and Political Union in protest at its support for World War 1 and focused her attempts on her organisation on the Glasgow rent strikes in 1915, another important civil disobedience movement led by women. Ethel Moorehead, who has already been mentioned as throwing a negate Churchill in Dundee, was the first suffragette, of course, to be force fed in Scotland. As a result of her treatment in Calton jail, she contracted aspiration pneumonia. The Vaseline-coated tube forced down her throat, entered her lungs. That's a really serious thing in a time when there were no antibiotics. Other women lost teeth or sustained permanent damage to their vocal cords. Moorehead's case was raised in Parliament along with that of another Scottish suffragette, Francis Gordon, who was jailed in Perth, which became known as the King's Torture Chamber due to the mistreatment of women there. The Irish nationalist MP Timothy Michael Healy asked the Secretary of State for Scotland Thomas McKinnon Wood about the way in which those women were treated. I want to quote from Hansard. Mr Healy said that, was it by doctors' orders that Ms Gordon was held down by the assistant doctor and wardresses for an hour and a half after forcible feeding? Was a hand-tile held over her mouth to prevent vomiting? Will the Secretary of State for Scotland state why the doctor found it necessary to administer three enemas daily to Ms Gordon? The graphic description of the barbaric practice of force feeding through the rectum, which left many women horribly injured, is not widely known, although it was reported in Hansard. The popular portrayal of suffragettes as jolly posh ladies in hats, chaining themselves to railings, does a very great disservice to the women from all walks of life, like Ms Gordon, who were abused in prisons like Perth and Calton jail. However, there were lighter moments as well as tragedy. I particularly like the account of Prime Minister Askwith and the Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna, being accosted at the golf in Dornoch by Lillias Mitchell from Leith and Elsie Howey, one of the first female graduates of St Andrews University. One newspaper reporter at the time said that ministerial golfers were halfway through a pleasant game and were putting on the 10th green when the advocates of votes for women appeared. Ms Mitchell, at one shouting, Mr Askwith was responsible for force feeding and torturing our women. The Home Secretary unsuccessfully attempted to push Ms Mitchell away and then began struggling with both women. A detective who ran to help the politicians appealed to the caddies for help, but according to the report, the caddies were evidently finding some enjoyment in this departure from the routine of their work and failed to make any response. I rather prefer to think that this was a gesture of solidarity from the working class local men who probably didn't have the vote either. Today, I have used the debate to remember the women behind these demonstrations, some destructive, some mischievous, none causing any loss of life or physical injury. I therefore wish to end by suggesting that it is the time to consider pardoning such women. They broke the law so that we could make the law. We have praised them to date in word, the time has come for deeds, to use the power of lawmaking that they gave us to clear their names. I call Michelle Ballantyne to be followed by Kate Forbes. In 1914, Dr Elise Ingalls approached the War Office to offer her services as a medical professional. She was promptly dismissed, told to go home and sit still because commanding officers did not want to be troubled by hysterical women. In just four years, women went from being told to go home and sit still, to being enrolled in the armed forces services, marking the beginning of the end of gender inequality. We have all seen the films, we have heard the stories, we know the history of the women's suffrage movement and the events that led up to the 1918 representation of the People Act. The sacrifices that those women were willing to make afforded us freedoms that many of us now take for granted. They gained us rights that enabled us to be standing here today and which directly determined our futures as women. They made sure that we would no longer be governed by laws in which we had no say in making. They were willing to challenge the status quo where many dared not. This courage to question and courage to pursue what you believe in is a legacy of the suffrage movement, which cannot be overrated. A legacy that has led us all to this chamber, where we stand free to question and free to pursue our beliefs. This centenary marks a change in attitudes that politics would no longer be just for the elite and the privileged. The move towards equality across class as well as gender was an indication of a radical shift in societal perceptions following the First World War. I believe that the significance of this debate extends beyond women's right to vote. It is an opportunity to celebrate our progress over the last century towards universal equality. We have continued to see that equality evolve over generations. For example, the number of women in work has risen by 67 per cent since the 1970s. However, as we have already heard, there is still more that can be done. The figure that just six per cent of STEM apprenticeships start in Scotland are women suggests that we all still need to find ways to encourage more girls to see this as a career path. Promoting the rights of women, however, does not mean reducing the rights of men. The focus must be on creating real parity. Issues such as equal pay do remain a fundamental stumbling block for equality. While the continued empowerment of young girls has greatly increased the prospects for women in work, the creation of more flexible working conditions would go a long way to increasing the equality of opportunity in this country. That being said, the majority of young girls today do not suffer the inequality of opportunity that they did in previous generations. Girls are no longer told that their vision should be limited. Today, our daughters are encouraged to achieve just as much as the boys they grow up with. When HH Asquith replaced Campbell Bannerman as Prime Minister in 1908, the suffrage movement claimed that it had lost a weak friend and gained a determined enemy. Today, I believe, we must see ourselves as surrounded by determined friends, with very few enemies who would stand in the way of equality in this country. Presiding Officer, the most important aim for this anniversary, I believe, should be re-engaging people with politics. Between 1906 and 1914, more than 1,300 women were imprisoned for their work in the suffrage movement. Some were forced fed up to 200 times. Yet, between 1992 and 2010, the number of women voting fell by 18 per cent. In the 2017 January election, just 62 per cent of women who were eligible chose to cast their vote on polling day. We must do more to reach out to these women, understand what it is that will re-engage them with our society, and understand why they do not feel that their voice matters. This year, we have the opportunity to inspire women's participation in politics, to make people remember the significance of their right to vote, the value of universal suffrage in Britain. If we cannot convince more women of the importance of voting, then this anniversary will have lost its meaning. We can only honour the suffrage movement by using the right to vote that its bravery gave us. The First Minister thanked those who sacrificed their freedom, their comfort and their names for our votes, votes that were first granted to certain women in 1918. However, the four years before 1918 were marked by other sacrifices, too. Men and women dying in the bloody conflict of the First World War, dying in a war that they were led into by leaders for whom they had not voted, to fight for and to serve a cause over which they had no vote, no say and no influence. They gave their lives without representation, and they returned home to rebuild society without influence. That is what sticks in my throat, that anybody should bear the brunt of decisions over which they are powerless when it is their lives, their families and their homes that bear the impact. Still today, decisions are made by elected members of whom only 34 per cent are female, which shape the lives of women who represent 50 per cent of the population. As others have reminded us, in 1918 only women over a certain age could vote, and women at my age, at the age of 27, would have to wait another 10 years until 1928 to be able to vote. Only two in every five women could vote after 1918—8.5 million women. They could not vote not for lack of resolve or ability or desire, not for lack of hard work, determination and integrity, but simply because they were women. They worked, lived and loved, but without any say over the decisions made and the laws passed that would change their lives. I come from a long line of strong and able women—we have all been mentioning our grannies, and I will continue the theme—two grandmothers who came from utterly impoverished backgrounds, one of whom put herself through university while her father was an unemployed ships carpenter in Clydebank and walked over five miles to university, there and five miles back home to save the bus fare every day. That is determination. She continued to work as a primary school teacher near Inverness, even when five sons came along and the chores at home of keeping home and helping with the farm remained the same. I have no idea when she slept. She did not change the world. She did not see her name in lights. She did not write sell-out memoirs. She was a very ordinary lady, competent, wise and compassionate and she had a say. She had a vote, but without the representation of the People Act, she could never have used those qualities to shape society, to elect wise leaders and to have a say over her own future, her family's future, her work and her home. That is the past, but the past leaves a legacy and I think that it is a legacy of determination, the same kind of determination of the 27 women that followed Churchill during the 1908 campaign that Christina McKelvie mentioned and forced him to hide in a shed during one meeting, so campaign meetings and sheds are not all that novel. It took decades for women to get the vote. 86 years after the first petition to Parliament for women's votes by Henry Hunt in 1832, changes to the law in favour of women getting the vote were presented in Parliament almost every year from 1870 onwards. It is that determination that I hear in the chamber today. It is that determination that keeps fighting against injustice, that supports other women to stand for Parliament and that opens up opportunities not just here, not just in Scotland, not just in prosperous parts of the world. Last year, I met a female MP from another country who regularly faces down machetes outside her surgeries and whose immense bravery and determination gets her back on the road every single morning to represent the women who would otherwise be unrepresented in that Parliament. If I think back to my own political journey at every crossroads, it was the support of other women and men that kept me marching forward and it is the sheer talent still amongst all my female colleagues across these benches. It is the determination of my parents who never let me take the easy road and waste my time or ability and it is the memory of the women who were willing to break laws and suffer the horrors of prison, hunger strikes and forcible feeding so that I might stand here with my female colleagues and make the law. I call Neil Findlay to follow by Sandra White. Mr Findlay, please. In school, if you speak to young girls in primary school and tell them that just 100 years ago she, her mother and her grandmother and her auntie's female friends and family would not have been allowed to vote, they would be, they are indeed rightly astonished. That is a real testament to the work of the pioneers of the campaign for women's suffrage in the early 20th century and the continued campaigning of countless women between then and now. It is because of their efforts that there are so many women represented in this Parliament, women of all parties and political persuasions, but of course we have some way to go towards genuine equal representation. As people have mentioned, the suffragettes fought quite literally at times against the ugly face of bigotry and against accusations of hysteria and insanity. Violent oppression, imprisonment, degrading treatment by the authorities and some gave their lives. Their unwillingness to give up against the might of the state and their radical direct action and sacrifices paved the way for progress and gave confidence and showed leadership to those who followed in their footsteps. As people have mentioned, the 1918 representation of the People's Act was only the first step very limited in its scope to the property owning from women who were property owning and graduates over 30. The establishment worked against extending the franchise to working-class women and minorities. It seems that the divide in rule tactics of the ruling class was as strong then as it is now, because gender equality is a class issue. It is women who disproportionately are on low pay and in insecure work and suffer exploitation in the workplace. We have all been sharing our granny's story, so I will share mine. Her job title was a domestic servant. That is how women, like her, were viewed as servants. The campaign for women's rights and the Labour movement have gone hand in hand over history. Great socialist women have shaped the work of the Labour movement, changed history and changed the lives of many who came after them. The Labour Party has always been the party driving for new and more radical change that benefits women and all of us across society. Some of the great figures who achieved this include Margaret Bonfield, the first Labour women cabinet minister, Ellen Wilkinson, the minister for education in 1945, and Jenny Lee, who, Willie Rennie, mentioned who fought for equal access to education creating the open university. Barbara Castle with the Equal Pay Act and, more recently in Scotland, my great friend Maria Fife, the only women out of 50 Labour MPs elected in the 1990s. Diane Abbot, the first black women MP, showed why we had to move to positive discrimination. I should also not forget those outwith Parliament, particularly in the trade union movement from the match grills in the late 1800s, the grunnick strikers, the women at fours at Dagnam, Lee Jeans, Plessie, women against pick closures and trade union leaders like Brenda Dean, Mary Turner, Francis Egradian in Scotland, Lynn Henderson and Denise Christie. The Labour movement's history is one of women working together in the interests of equality, justice and solidarity. After nearly 90 years of so-called universal suffrage, it would think that all problems and disenfranchisement would be solved now, but sadly that is not the case. The right to vote is still denied to women and men aged 16 and 17 at UK elections. That new wave of youth political engagement that we have seen in recent years, we should harness that energy by giving our youngest and brightest in our society the right to vote. It does not make sense that young women and men who contribute to society in so many ways, who are able to pay their taxes, are still denied the chance to have a meaningful say. Taxation without representation still exists for some. Furthermore, there are many disabled women and men who are still unable to vote. Whether that is because of inaccessible polling places or lack of accessible information, people are still being disenfranchised. It is now more important that we extend the franchise as much as we possibly can. We remove barriers to voting and we continue what the suffragettes started to ensure that the right to vote extends to everyone so that democracy and debate truly reflect our diverse society and can thrive and flourish in the future. I thank the many women who have given everything, including their lives in some instances, for women rights and that I do wear my vote for women broach with pride and thank the person who gave me that many years ago. I want to mention two particular women in my contributions, the first has already been mentioned, Jeanne Allen, and the second is Hannah Skeffington from Ireland. Jeanne Allen was born into a wealthy Glasgow family in the Allen Line shipping company. She was an early member of the independent Labour Party, and she edited a column covering women's suffrage issues for the socialist newspaper forward. In May 1902, Allen was instrumental in refounding the Glasgow branch of the National Society for Women's Suffrage, as the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women's Suffrage. She was also a member of his executive committee. She was a significant financial supporter and is one of GWSAS. She took up position in the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies Committee in 1903 in order to represent the associations with their affiliation. In March 1912, along with 100 others, Allen participated in a window-smashing protest in central London. He referred to direct action, and those women certainly took direct action, among many other things as well. However, as Joan McAlpine has said, there was no one injured in that particular aspect of it. Along with many of us who took part in the protest, Allen was arrested, tried and sentenced to four months in the Halloway prison. Her imprisonment was widely publicised, and around 10,500 people from Glasgow signed a petition to protest for her freedom, her fellow suffragette Margaret McFunn, who was also imprisoned in Halloway for two months in 1912, after breaking a Government office window and composing a poem entitled to a fellow prisoner, Ms Jeanne Allen. That was included in the anthology, The Halloway Jingles, published by the Glasgow branch of the WSPU later that year. Whilst in Halloway, which has been mentioned before by Christine McKelvie, Jeanne was force-fed for a full week. We all know about the force-fed feeding, and it is a terrible, terrible ordeal that Emma McPankers described as a horrible outrage, and has been likened by women's history scholar Jeanne Purvis to a form of rape. In a letter to a friend, Allen herself said, I did not resist at all that the effect of my health was most disastrous. I am a strong woman, sounding heart and lungs, but it was not until five months after that I was able to take any exercise or begin to feel my usual health. The nerves of my heart were affected, fit for nothing, there can be no doubt that it simply ruins your health. In February 1914, force-fed feeding was implemented in Scotland during Ethel Moorhead's imprisonment, which has already been mentioned as well. Allen was a key part of the campaign against the action. Allen was back in 1913. It has already been mentioned by Richard Lennon, the Women's Tax Resistance League. Jeanne Allen died at 100 in April 1968. She lived well into her years to see exactly what had happened as well. The other lady that I want to mention, I should probably declare an interest in this particular part, is Hannah Shea Skeffington. She is actually the great, great, I think I've got this right, great, great grandmother of my granddaughter who is here in Edinburgh. Hannah Shea Skeffington was born on 24 May 1877 and was one of Ireland's most ardent promoters of women's rights. An influential figure during the suffragette movement, tyrus the campaigning for the equal status of men and women in Ireland. She was responsible for founding the Irish Women's Franchise League in 1908, with her husband Frances Shea Skeffington and Margaret Cousins. The Irish Women's Franchise League was a militant suffragette organisation, played a very important role in the pursuit of women rights. In 1911, she became one of the founding members of the Irish Women's Workers Union, an autonomous branch of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. She also threw rocks at Dublin Castle windows in regards to the Home Rule Bill, and she lost her teaching job through that. She was one of many who risked the rest to fight against the current place on women's freedoms, and Hannah, as many as well, was a very pioneering force for the cause of women rights in Ireland. I'll leave you with this quote from Hannah until the women of Ireland are free, the men will not achieve emancipation. I think that could fit any country in the world. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Thank you, Ms White. I call Rachael Hamilton. We are followed by Gillian Martin, and Gillian Martin will be the last speaker in the open debate. Ms Hamilton, please. Deputy Presiding Officer, it has been 100 years since women got the vote. It was won through hard work and sacrifice by the suffragists, led by Millicent Falsett and the suffragettes, led by Emmeline Panchurst. That day should rightly be celebrated. It marks a huge landmark in our history that has seen women elected into politics and become Prime Ministers. Our party has much to be proud of. The Conservative Government gave some women the vote in 1918. The Conservative Government gave all women the vote in 1928. In 1979, the first ever female Prime Minister was Conservative, and in 2016 Theresa May was elected as the second female Conservative Prime Minister. Those statistics are all well and good, and this day must be a time to reflect on what has been achieved, but we have a long way to go. Deputy Presiding Officer, all parties are working towards getting more women into politics to get closer to equal representation in our parliaments. For the more women in politics, the more women's concerns and issues can be voiced and fought for. To mark the centenary of voting rights for women, the UK Government has allocated £5 million to fund projects to raise awareness of this milestone and inspire people to play their part in the political system across the United Kingdom. I will give way. Humza Yousaf. For giving way, I have been listening very carefully to what I think is an excellent debate so far. I just wondered if she would agree with me that for all the barriers that women absolutely face, that BME women, women from an ethnic minority background, face some of the highest hurdles and the most difficult barriers. Does she agree with me that it is a shame in all of us across the political chamber here that in 19 years of devolution, not a single ethnic minority women has been elected to this parliament? With that in mind, we must all redouble our efforts and indeed have them at the forefront of our mind. I thank Humza Yousaf for that intervention and I understand the issues that have been raised in this Parliament recently. The Conservative Party is absolutely behind getting more BME candidates elected into this Parliament. I was privileged to be first elected in 2016, then re-elected in 2017 on an all-women shortlist. That was not by design. It just so happened that, in 2017, the best candidates for the Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire by-election were all women. This was only the third time in the history of the Scottish Parliament that this happened. It happened in Edinburgh Central in 2007 and in Hamilton Larkhall in Stonehouse in 2016. I am also honoured to be the first woman elected in Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire. The man I replaced, John Lamont, was a driving force supporting me during my election. The point here is that, in order for women to succeed in politics, it cannot be done alone. I am also proud to be part of women to win, set up by Prime Minister Theresa May and Baroness Jenkins. Women to win work to help female candidates to knock down barriers and obstacles and aim to encourage more women into politics. The first part of that is standing. Hashtag ask her to stand. Many women are reluctant to stand because of the vile abuse that candidates receive online. The sole aim of the online abuse against female candidates is to intimidate. It is simply unacceptable and a practice that all parties must work to stamp out. Any form of abuse, threats and intimidation against women by men or indeed by women should end. We must call it out and bring an end to trolling. Deputy Presiding Officer, we must not ignore the impact that this type of public abuse has on candidates nor the young people who witness it. If unchallenged, it says that this behaviour is acceptable, not only to be treated in such an abhorrent way but also to treat others in such a way. As such, it has the potential to turn young girls and young boys off politics or worse, see abuse as an acceptable part of political discourse. For that, we must do more at grassroots. Young people need to grow up in a world where women have an equal role in politics. Just yesterday, I visited Selkirk High School to speak with a NAP5 modern studies group, who were particularly interested in discussing democracy and freedom of speech. Last week, I welcomed an engaging group of P5 class from iMath primary school. Some of you will remember that Calso High School took prime seats at FMQ two Thursdays ago. It is really important, in my view, for politicians to work at grassroots level to encourage young people to engage in politics and healthy debate, to allow them to shape an inclusive future, to change perceptions, unconscious bias and prejudice. Deputy Presiding Officer, to close, I would like to pay thanks to Millicent Fawcett and Emmeline Pankhurst and to acknowledge the work done by all those women in public life and the people that helped to get them there. A lot has happened in the last 100 years and there is still a lot to do. In marking the centenary, we must commit to changing women's lives for the better for the next 100 years. Thank you. I call Gillian Martin, then we move to closing speeches. Ms Martin, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Neither I nor any of my fellow women MSPs would be here in this chamber without the bravery, dedication and determination of the diverse sisterhood across these islands who took part in the suffrage movement. As we celebrate the representation of the People Act of 1918, it is equally important, as many have today, to mention that it was not all women who got the vote. Isabella and Agnes Mackenzie, my great-grand and my great-aunt, working in Broadford Mill in Aberdeen, and like Ruth Maguire's great-grand, the fish and tory did not get the vote in 1918. Just as electoral equality was not achieved through the 1918 act, so the progress did not begin with it, by 1918 women had already spent many decades campaigning. Isabella Five, a male, was one of the most prominent activists and suffragettes in Aberdeen at the time, but 66 years before her birth, the Aberdeen Female Radical Association, led by another Isabella Wilson-Leg, began campaigning for the vote for women. We should always pay tribute to the many women who campaigned but never lived to experience putting their vote in a ballot box. Isabella Five, a male, was an anti-imperialist, a pacifist and an anti-racism campaigner. She was truly ahead of her time, yet she still had to publish the novels and poems that she wrote under a name of Edward Garrett to be taken seriously. Records of her activities are kept in Aberdeen University archives, and I enjoyed reading that during a WSPO meeting over which she was presiding during an Aberdeen bi-election campaign in 1907. She admonished a group of boistress men in the audience to quote, behave like gentlemen, and perhaps our deputy presiding officer can relate to that. I know I can. Mrs Five, a male, was also the first woman elected to a public board. That was the Aberdeen school board in 1894. At that time, school board elections were the only means by which a woman could involve themselves in the public sphere. I reckon that she would be absolutely delighted with our Parliament's decision last week to legislate for gender parity in all public boards, although maybe her reflections should be astonished that society had not moved on enough in over 120 years that it is still a pressing need to legislate on gender parity. Who knows? I would also like to speak about another north-east suffragette and women's right pioneer, Caroline Phillips, who risked her job to campaign with the Women's Social and Political Union. There went many female journalists from Cintor at the start of the last century, but Caroline worked for the Aberdeen Daily Journal. When she was not smashing the glass ceiling in journalism, Caroline was chaining herself to railings, smashing windows and organising trips to suffragette rallies. That activism riled her bosses at the very Conservative Journal. After all, that was a paper whose editor had written this. When suffragettes or women generally try to compete with men on their own ground, they are not only unequal, but as a rule, they become mere imitations of third-rate men. It was no surprise when Caroline received a letter from management at the paper and threatened that her suffragette activity was putting her job at risk, but Caroline got smarter about her campaigning activity. She continued to use the newspaper offices and stationery for her campaigning, and she carried out covert acts of protest such as anonymously and under the cover of darkness traipsing round Balmoral golf course, replacing the flag in each hold with the colours of the WSPU. I also want to mention Mrs Trail, who was the first female baile elected in 1920 in my colleague Stuart Stevenson's Fraser by the constituency, and she held that role until she died. She was also a very significant figure in women's representation. It has been an absolute joy to hear stories of all the Scottish women who have campaigned for our right to vote. I am pleased to be added just a few names from the north-east women to the official report of the Parliament, and they would have been proud to know that this place with its 45 female MSPs and the first of our female Prime Minister was their legacy. However, we can use our voices to honour those women today, but I reckon that if we could hear their voices, they would be asking us why we are just on 35 per cent and not at least 50 per cent. The original suffragettes campaigned for the vote because they wanted to see change. Voting for them was about more than just the privilege of going to the polling booth. It was about seeing a tangible difference in the lives of women in their country. They wanted equality and fairness, not just on the face of it, but fairness in how wives, mothers and female workers were treated by the law. It was not just the suffragettes and suffragettes that felt that they were equally qualified and capable, but they also had something else valuable to add. They had experiences and opinions that were missing from the Parliament and the democratic process that could inform better laws and, in turn, could make a much better functioning society. Neil Findlay pointed out in this debate that this is the centenary of votes for women, but only initially women over 30 were able to vote if they had property or a degree. Therefore, only 40 per cent of women were entitled to vote on the centenary that we are celebrating today. The rest needed to wait 10 years to get that vote. Ruth Davidson said that we are celebrating a staging post to a better system, but how many more staging posts will we have to celebrate before we are truly equal? A number of speakers also spoke about what the suffragettes and suffragettes suffered. Probably the most stark was the contribution of Joan McAlpine. Force fed, jailed, cast out, assaulted—it is grim that people were treated that way simply just to get equal rights to vote. Kezia Dugdale pointed out that women are still suffering today due to inequality, due to poverty, due to violence against women, and sometimes when you read the papers you wonder if we are going back rather than forward. We lack equality in this Parliament on boards, unequal pay with a 14-point gender pay gap and we also have gendered pay, where jobs predominantly done by women are paid much less, even though they need the same level of skills and qualifications than much better paid jobs predominantly done by men. We need to value the work that women do. Christine McAlvey talked about the need of men in our cause. We need male feminists who support equality. Richard Leonard spoke about Keir Hardie's commitment to votes for women. When he was told that that was the wrong thing to be pursuing, he recognised that it was essential to give votes to women and equality to women to build a fair society. I am proud of my party's decision to take positive action to encourage women into politics, but we cannot take any of our achievements for granted as we all know we can slip back quickly. However, what I would like to do is encourage other parties to join us to stand up and make a firm commitment to women's equal representation in public life, not only to ask her to stand but to make it possible for her to stand. The Scottish Labour Party has the highest proportion of women at 46 per cent. In the first Parliament in 1999, the Scottish Labour Party had 50-50 representation, and we were absolutely derided for it how times change. However, if it hadn't been for those women, would we have made the progress that we have in Scotland on things like equal pay, domestic violence and the like? If those women hadn't been there fighting that cause, would those changes be happening now? A number of speakers talked about women in history who have fought for the vote, many people quoting people from their own areas. However, just as many talked about women who are making a difference now, who are still fighting the fight, trade unionists and women in other countries who face death to express their vote. I often say when I am on the doorstep to people that they must use their vote, especially women, because there are still people dying today to do that. It is very humbling to recognise that if it had not been for the struggle of those women 100 years ago, I would not be standing here addressing the Parliament today. I wonder what they would say if they saw us here today. Would they be proud of their achievement or would they be disappointed that we are still fighting for equality? Let us together create a truly equal society that they would be proud of. Let us not wait another 100 years. When Emily Davidson was fatally injured in the Epsom Derby on June 4, 1913, it was one of the most contentious moments in the history of political protest. Even to this day, the details are not clear, and it is still a matter of dispute as to exactly what happened. What is clear is that there was no dispute whatsoever about the reaction. There was a complete division between those who saw her as a brave martyr and those who saw her as an irresponsible anarchist. One spectator was heard to say on the day that women should never have the right to vote because they know not what they do. The country was too dignified, he said, to be held to ransom by an uncultured and uneducated mob of women who did not know their place in society. How wrong he was, not just because Emily Davidson was in fact a highly educated woman, but because he had no understanding of what the rest of the country was going to be up against, that women dared to believe in themselves and that they would marshal their calls with courage and determination that knew no bounds. The incident was, of course, 10 years on from the founding of the Women's Social and Political Union by Emily Pankhurst and the daughters of Christabel and Sylvia. Two years later, in 1905, Christabel and Anna Kearney would interrupt Winston Churchill, perhaps in the manner that Christina McKelvie suggested, to ask him to answer Edward Gray if he believed that women had the right to have the vote. However, when neither replied the women unfurled their banner, they were thrown out of the room, refused to pay the fine and, of course, they ended up in prison. However, as many members have said this afternoon—very movingly, I have to say—they refused to bow to that intimidation and, instead, they chose to burn down churches that were against their cause. They vandalised Oxford Street, changed themselves to the railings at Buckingham Palace, sailed up the Thames and hurled abuse at Westminster, refused to pay their tax, attacked MPs and made their way to work. Indeed, they attacked anything that was the physical reminder of the structures of the powers from which they were excluded, whatever it took to shake out the establishment of the prejudice—prejudice that has been described in this debate this afternoon by many members—that a woman's place was only in the home and that going out into the rough world of politics would change a woman's caring nature, that most women did not want the vote and would not use it if they got it, that women did not fight in wars, that the vast majority of women are too ignorant of political issues and that if women were given the vote it would not be the intelligent ones who would stand for Parliament. Attitudes that we find reprehensible today but which were sincerely believed at the time, but those attitudes, of course, were to change. Both Roy Jenkins and Martin Gilbert's biographies of Churchill make it clear that Churchill felt provoked by the early suffragette manifestations, particularly in terms of the violence that they were perpetrating. He worried greatly about the addition of 8 million women to the electorate, but he was to change his mind because of the huge respect that he had for the women's war effort between 1914 and 1918, spoken about by the First Minister. That changed Churchill's view and it certainly changed the views of the country. It is perhaps, Presiding Officer, very difficult for us to imagine Britain without universal suffrage but it was, of course, a very different world at the time, a world war, some governments suspicious of democracy and, of course, watching the rise of Bolshevism from afar. There are many conflicting views, much uncertainty in the world and it was against the backdrop that the suffragettes managed to persuade the country that their cause was both rational and just and there began the long road to universal suffrage. What message does the suffragette movement have for us today in terms of the legacy? In summing up today's debate, there have been perhaps three that are most prominent. Firstly, there has been nothing inevitable about women getting the vote. After all, it did not happen in Switzerland till 1971 and it was 2015 in Saudi Arabia when women were first allowed to vote in municipal elections. The message must be that there is nothing inevitable about our ability to resolve the on-going issues unless we show the same courage and determination and reason as the suffragettes. On that point, I agree wholeheartedly with Humza Yousaf when he made the plea about BME. I know that my colleague Nishina Mubarak would agree with you wholeheartedly that there is a lot of work still to do. Helen Pankhurst said this morning in her BBC interview that the biggest on-going concern is how many women still feel abused, including by some of the pernicious effects of social media, how many still feel vulnerable and unable to have their voice heard, and the necessary changes do not come about just because of legislation. Last week in Parliament, we took a step further in terms of the domestic abuse bill, but there is still so much to do in terms of changing attitudes. Rhoda Grant and Willie Rennie have reminded us what we have to do for the rest of the world, where women remain so vulnerable and repressed. We salute the suffragettes, but we recognise that their legacy is not complete. There has been much talk in recent weeks rightly so about the power of words, but if we are to honour the suffragettes, then the power of deeds matter even more. I call on the Cabinet Secretary Angela Constance to wind up the debate. Members from across the chamber have made very fitting tributes to some of the many tenacious women of the suffrage movement, without whom we would not have the rights that we enjoy today. There has been much reflection on women's place in history. I always enjoy the ironies of history. I enjoy the irony that the first woman elected to the House of Commons was Countess Constance Markiewicz, who was an Irish nationalist. I also spoke before about the first woman to represent a Scottish seat, the Duchess of Athol, who was a Conservative, and who was not in favour of women's suffrage, but who stood for Parliament because she believed that it was the best way to get Tory men used to women in politics. Unlike Ruth Davidson and Ruth Maguire, I am an admirer of Flora Drummond, who was nicknamed Bluebell after the Scottish match because she was more than a match for any cabinet minister. Christina McKelvie and Joan McAlpine spoke very powerful about the treatment of women in prison and forced feeding and the physical and mental abuse and how that compounded that sense of powerlessness that Kate Forbes very eloquently spoke of. Both the First Minister and Michelle Ballantyne spoke of Elsie Ingalls, who attended a girls' school at Charlotte Square. Those girls at that school were not allowed to play in the gardens at Charlotte Square, and the challenge was given to a young Elsie, who was told that she could play in the gardens if she persuaded all the householders to agree. She was obviously given that challenge and the presumption that not everybody would agree. Of course she got everybody to agree, and the girls were indeed allowed to play in the gardens in Charlotte Square. That is a reminder to us all that are girls in particular, but also our boys in terms of our education, in terms of the work that First Minister's advisory group on women and girls will do, that we need to be bringing up our children to challenge the status quo, and it is those children that have the audacity to challenge who will indeed change the world that they inherit. I am glad that Gillian Martin mentioned women in local government. We have spoke a lot in this chamber about women parliamentarians. I want to pay tribute to Llevenia Malcolm, who was the first woman town councillor in 1907, and in 1913 she became the provost of dollar because all the men councillors fell out something to do with the purchase of the village hall. She was the provost of dollar, a post that she held until 1919. I also hope that George Adam is listening, because I want to pay tribute to Jane Arthur, who was the first woman elected to public office in 1873 in Scotland when she was elected to Paisley school board. All of these women and so many more are women who had a vision of a different society, one where women were valued and who had the same opportunities and the same equalities in men. They had that spirit to keep fighting for what they believed in and, of course, at times of great personal sacrifice when the rest of society, including some women, were thoroughly against them. The past always speaks to the present. I urge members, if they have never had the opportunity, to look at some of the anti-suffrage postcards that were made by companies in the early 20th century, a clear message to women to stop nagging, to shut up and to know your place. The women depicted on those postcards are silenced with violence. They are shown with their tongues nailed to a table or cut out, their mouths bolted or padlocked shut, and with rhymes are words to reinforce their silence. Rhymes amount to words of abuse. The shocking thing is that, 100 years on, women are still hearing this abuse, not in a postcard but in social media. I am thinking about the verbal attacks and threats that Caroline Creadle-Paris was subject to for even daring to suggest that Jane Austen should be the face of the new £10 note, or indeed the despicable daily barrage of abuse that Diane Abbott, who, according to Amnesty International, received almost half of all abusive tweets sent to female MPs in the six weeks before the last general election. This is not 100 years ago, but today every man and woman should be united in condemning this abuse and this abuse in all its forms. In many areas, members have reflected that women's lives are now unrecognisable to what they were 100 years ago, but we know that, in far too many areas, the pace of change has been remarkably slow. Ruth Maguire and Kezia Dugdale are absolutely right that they are still marching for equal pay, still marching to challenge occupational segregation, still marching to finally really crash the glass ceiling and to end violence against women and girls and sexual harassment. It has, of course, been reflected that it has taken until the most recent UK general election for the total number of women MPs elected in the past century to surpass the number of men who are currently MPs in the House of Commons today. An equal representation and diversity, at the point that was made by Hamza Yousaf, is important because Parliament should indeed feel and look and sound like the folk that they seek to represent. It also widens her horizons and her understanding of the society that we seek to serve, and it also leads to better decision making. We have a good record in this Parliament, as many have reflected in terms of female leadership and representation. We have to remember, Presiding Officer, that it is not an equal record. We have less women elected now than in 1999. The lesson there is how progress must be protected, how it must be defended if it indeed is to survive. That is why the passing of the gender representation bill last week and the domestic abuse bills were so important, because it shows that this Parliament is not just about defending progress, it is actually about building on progress. Alexandra Runswick, the director of unlock democracy, said very fittingly that the centenary is a moment of celebration and a time to reflect on the great strides made towards gender equality. However, while politicians and those in power celebrate the centenary, they must not just pay lip service to the principle of equal representation, we need action, we need urgent action from politicians and not overtures. That is why, on behalf of this Government, we will, with the support of others, continue our massive expansion of childcare and continue with our work in the STEM strategy to ensure that women are well placed in the jobs of the future. We will continue to promote the living wage and fair pay, and we will continue to promote flexible work and the value of unpaid care. That is why, also, as a Government, the funding that has been announced by the First Minister will support activity both to celebrate and commemorate 100 years of women's right to vote, but it will look to the future to how best we can ensure equal representation of women in politics and parliaments and public life. I am all for statues to Malala and other pioneering women, but the best tribute to those who have sacrificed so much will be through our deeds, ensuring that, in the next 10 years, perhaps as we move forward to celebrate the 1928 act of universal suffrage, that we can make as much progress or indeed more progress than has been made in the last 100 years. Presiding Officer, there is a time to reflect and there is a time to act, and the time to act is now. Thank you very much. That concludes our debate on celebrating 100 years of women's right to vote. We turn now to decision time. The first question is that motion 10214, in the name of Christina McKelvie, on making the most of equalities in human rights leavers, be agreed? Are we all agreed? We are agreed. The next question is that amendment 10285.2, in the name of Ruth Davidson, which seeks to amend motion 10285, in the name of Nicola Sturgeon, on celebrating 100 years of women's right to vote, be agreed? Are we all agreed? The next question is that amendment 10285.1, in the name of Richard Leonard, which seeks to amend the motion in the name of Nicola Sturgeon, be agreed? Are we all agreed? We are agreed. The final question is that motion 10285, in the name of the First Minister, as amended, on celebrating 100 years of women's right to vote, be agreed? Are we all agreed? We are agreed. That concludes decision time. We will move now to members' business. The name of Gillian Martin. We will just take a few moments for members and ministers to change seats.