THE SNP will tomorrow unveil a new project aimed at combating the gender balance in Scotland’s politics.
Writing exclusively in The National, the party’s national women's convenor, Rhiannon Spear, says: “Women make up over half of the population in Scotland but only 35 percent of those elected to the Scottish Parliament. That needs to change.”
Currently, 43 percent of the SNP’s MSPs are women. For Scottish Labour that is slightly higher, on 46 percent.
The Scottish Tories have six women MSPs, or 19 percent of their total, while the Scottish LibDems have none and the Scottish Greens just one.
However, elections aren’t always representative of the candidates the party has fielded.
The Greens had women at the top of 50 percent of their regional lists, and more than 50 percent of Labour’s candidates were women.
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Just over 40 percent of the candidates put forward by the SNP were women.
Now, the party’s new mentoring project will aim to further increase female representation at Holyrood and in local government.
Spear writes: “The SNP already has a strong record on enabling women to stand but we can and must do more.”
She explains that the project will involve eight mentoring sessions, aiming to ensure women “will be confident enough to successfully stand to be selected and elected”.
The mentoring will be aimed at the 2022 local government elections, but there is also support in place “more immediately for those who are wanting to put themselves forward for the Scottish Parliament 2021”.
Rhiannon Spear explains in full in tomorrow’s National.
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