A FRIEND quoted Alphonse Karr’s famous epigram to me at the weekend to sum up the results of last week’s Holyrood election. “The more things change, the more they stay the same”.

In some ways, this fits our situation quite well.

There is a re-invigorated SNP Government with a fresh mandate for the next five years, under the steady hand of Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister. History was made when the SNP secured a third successive victory and the largest number of votes cast for a single party since the Parliament was established while the SNP group still commands the support of the same number of MSPs as it did in March when Holyrood last convened.

The continued collapse of Labour support means that, to a certain extent, Holyrood now mirrors the Westminster Parliament, with the Tories and SNP facing each other as the Government and opposition.

It was great to see pictures yesterday of the outgoing presiding officer Tricia Marwick with many of the 51 new faces elected last Thursday. While there are significant figures from all parties who failed to return, having such a large proportion of new members allows Holyrood an opportunity for positive renewal 17 years after it was first established.

Where Karr’s words fit best is in describing the gender balance of the new legislature.

In the last session of the Parliament, 35 per cent of those elected were female. In this session, it is... 35 percent again.

It’s absolutely vital that our national Parliament represents all of Scotland. It’s a failure of our politics that only a minority of women have a seat at the table when Scotland’s future direction is set.

That’s why, as the SNP’s national women’s and equalities officer I’ve worked within our party to take positive action to face up to this serious concern.

The SNP have developed and implemented a range of measures to help rebalance our party’s elected representatives, from establishing informal networks to updating our selection rules. In the last couple of years we’ve run national conferences and local training sessions all with the explicit aim of increasing the number of MPs and MSPs, and we’ve more activity planned to ensure that we continue to make progress in next year’s local authority elections.

To the SNP’s credit, our members have embraced these changes. They see the benefits to our party and our politics of ensuring that equality is at the heart of everything we do. And that’s why we’ve seen success by electing 27 women to our Holyrood group of 63. I’m proud that three-quarters of our new intake are women.

In the spirit of fairness, I also welcome the steps taken by the Labour Party to do likewise which have meant that almost half of their group are also women.

But I simply cannot accept that in 2016 Scotland’s Parliament is no further forward than it was five years ago. Backward critics of gender equality rely on the old refrain that they would rather have the “best candidate” than re-evaluating their selection processes and support structures. Is this really why Tory members in Scotland ranked their own candidates in a way which elected four times as many male MSPs than women?

Surely progressive parties like the Scottish Greens have more than one single woman who deserves a place in Parliament? Is there not a single female Liberal Democrat in Scotland who would not be a better candidate or representative than the five men elected to represent the party in Edinburgh last week?

In electing our first female First Minster, who is joined by female leaders of Scotland’s three largest parties, we’ve taken some huge steps forward in breaking the glass ceiling in politics. I hope that when the SNP’s new cabinet secretaries are announced that we’ll see another gender-balanced cabinet.

But last week’s result is a clear wake-up call to those of us who value and cherish equality that it’s not enough to talk a good game then cross our fingers and hope for change.

If we stand back and hope for change, we won’t address the fundamental and underlying issues that shape the world around us.

It’s only by focused, targeted action can we rebuild the foundations of our democracy to create a more equal and representative politics.

It’s now up to all parties in Scotland to step up to the challenge that’s before us.

We shouldn’t abdicate our responsibility to our nieces and daughters to clear the path for them.

The job at hand is far from over.