“It’s not enough just to be a woman in a leadership position”, Nicola Sturgeon, Leader of the Scottish National Party, said this week.
Reported by the New York Times Sturgeon spoke to Women in the World founder Tina Brown, at the summit in New York City this week and said: “It’s not enough just to be a woman in a leadership position, it’s important that you do the right things with it.”
She noted all three political parties in Scotland are led by women: “A fantastic message for us to be sending for the world.”
Sturgeon mentioned the recent controversial headline by the Daily Mail after it ran a sexist front-page photo emphasising their legs with the headline: “Never mind, Brexit, who won Legs-it!”
“I try not to overreact because I think sometimes papers like the Daily Mail do it to get attention, so why give them what they want…but it’s a vivid illustration of how much more we have to achieve. This tendency to reduce women to body parts or their hair…it’s not innocent and it’s not something we should just laugh off,” she said.
Sturgeon draw attention to the fact that she is repeatedly question about her choice not to have children:
“My predecessor didn’t have children, and I’m not aware that he was ever asked that question.”
In 2011 she decided to go public with the miscarriage that her and her husband had endured: “It wasn’t a decision I took lightly, but I decided to speak out about it because it’s one example of a position I’m in to change the attitude toward certain things.”
“Assumptions were made about why I didn’t have children.”
“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a woman deciding not to have children. I decided to speak out my experience of having a miscarriage to challenge some of those assumptions. If I can do anything to make it easier for women in the next generations of politics…then I think I have a responsibility.”
