Gender policy coherence: annual statement 2025

Accountability

Gender inequality is a complex issue. It won’t be solved with superficial or one-off changes. Achieving gender equality requires sustained, intentional and collective effort. This is why accountability is important. Developing accountability and transparency is a key driver in the Mainstreaming Strategy, ensuring Scottish Government and the wider public sector are accountable to the public and stakeholders for the way they have carried out their functions. Accountability around gender inequality allows us to identify areas of good practice and maintain high standards. It also helps us identify areas of improvement, and to implement and evaluate changes. Key services must meet the needs of women and girls, and a culture of accountability encourages self-reflection, sharing of best practice and collective ownership of gender equality goals. After all, gender equality is everyone’s business.

This section looks at progress made on the NACWG recommendations around accountability. It shows how we are encouraging change in Scotland’s media and culture. This includes evaluating Scottish media for sexist and misogynistic content, providing guidance on gender-sensitive media and responsible reporting of violence against women and girls, and supporting equal opportunities and fair work in the media and culture sectors. This section also shows our work to address sexual violence, misogyny and domestic abuse, including the ways we are improving the justice system and support services to better meet the needs of women and girls.

Create a Resourced Media Body on Gender Equality

Recommendation: ‘Create a resourced media body in Scotland to hold the media to account and provide guidance on gender equality.’

The Scottish Government is clear that a strong, free, and independent press is the bedrock of a well-functioning democracy. As well as editorial independence, we believe that media plurality, a diversity of voices, and fair representation, are all key to maintaining and improving the vibrant landscape of news media in Scotland. Media services and the press have the power to challenge gender inequality and norms, as well as the underpinning attitudes that perpetuate and condone violence against women and girls. We also believe women should be fairly and properly represented as professionals within the creative industries.

The NACWG recommended that the Scottish Government create a resourced media body to publicly review media which is sexist, misogynistic or bigoted, as well as to provide guidance on gender equal media and strengthen the intersectional voices of women in media. The media body was intended to evaluate, provide guidance and promote best practice, rather than regulate or censor the media.

As an initial step, we funded a Development Manager post in Engender to develop a long-term vision and identify potential delivery models for the media body, in collaboration with industry experts, academics, campaigners and the public sector. The Equal Media and Culture Centre for Scotland (EMCC) then launched in 2023. It conducts research to understand gender representation and diversity in Scottish media and culture. It also monitors progress towards gender equality, such as monitoring the representation in leadership positions, diverse portrayal of women in media content, and the presence of harmful gender stereotypes. Through strategic partnerships, campaigns, and policy advocacy, the EMCC advocates for diverse representation, gender-sensitive content, and equal opportunities in Scottish media and culture.

The media is key in shaping public attitudes towards violence against women and girls (VAWG). Responsible reporting, which does not normalise or minimise VAWG, helps the public understand how pervasive VAWG is, its causes, who is affected, and how it can be prevented. It can also help victim-survivors recognise their own experiences and encourage them to seek support. Tackling gender inequality in the media is an important strand of our work on ending VAWG. Our refreshed Equally Safe strategy takes a public health approach to ending VAWG and challenges the notion that VAWG is inevitable or acceptable. As a result, our Equally Safe Delivery Plan focuses heavily on developing a primary prevention approach to VAWG, that is, preventing VAWG before it occurs. Our wider work on changing attitudes around gender equality is also part of primary prevention.

Funded by the Scottish Government, Zero Tolerance developed guidelines for journalists and content creators on how to accurately and sensitively report on VAWG (broadcast edition, national edition). The guidance includes tips for reporting on different forms of VAWG, including rape and sexual assault, domestic abuse and domestic homicide, harmful traditional practices, commercial sexual exploitation, online abuse, and child sexual abuse. It highlights approaches to avoid, such as excusing, glamourising or sensationalising violence. The guidance also includes best practice on issues affecting specific groups of women, such as covering forms of violence from harmful traditional practices, like forced marriage or female genital mutilation, without stigmatising any ethnic groups or religions. It also highlights how different inequality affect women’s experiences of violence. For example, disabled women are twice as likely to experience men’s violence as non-disabled women.

The EMCC is also concerned with the experiences of and the opportunities for women working in the media and culture industries, examining workplace policy and culture, as well as boards and leadership teams. Scotland’s creative workforce broadly includes groups such as artists, musicians, authors and playwrights as well as those who work in museums, galleries, theatres or historic attractions. However, evidence suggests that there is still a lack of diversity across gender, disability, sexuality, age and socio-economic background in the creative workforce. We need diverse creative voices, reflecting Scotland’s diverse audiences. We encourage media providers to be ambitious in addressing diversity and gender equality issues. Below are some examples of projects we support to meet this goal.

We are committed to supporting the creative workforce, and continuing work on making the creative and culture sectors part of our broader Fair Work agenda. Creative Scotland commissioned Culture Radar to undertake a status review on behalf of the Scottish Government, to consider Fair Work, leadership, workforce and skills development. The Culture Radar Review on Fair Work (2022) showed that women, people of colour and those from socio-economically deprived backgrounds are still systematically blocked from entering, remaining and progressing from an early career stage. Surveys on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic also show the significant impact on disabled groups and others facing barriers in the sector.

The Culture Fair Work Taskforce includes representatives from unions, employers, sector representative organisations, freelancers and government agencies. It will develop recommendations for actions to further implement Fair Work First in the culture sector, including consideration of a sectoral Culture Fair Work Agreement. This aligns with action set out in the Fair Work Action Plan and the National Strategy for Economic Transformation (NSET) which both commit to developing sectoral Fair Work Agreements in partnership with industry and trade unions, to deliver payment of the real Living Wage, better work security, and wider Fair Work standards. A Fair Work Agreement for Scotland’s creative and culture sectors is likely to have a disproportionately positive impact for women including those groups facing intersecting inequality such as disabled women and women of colour.

Screen Scotland launched the British Film Institute Diversity Standards pilot in 2022, which has been extended until 2025, meaning productions must meet those standards to be eligible for funding. The standards apply across protected characteristics, as well as addressing under-representation in regional participation, socioeconomic background, and caring responsibilities. Productions may demonstrate, for example, that a lead character is a woman, or that there is a 50-50 gender balance in crew or minor on-screen characters. While broadcasting is reserved, we continue to advocate for improving diversity, equality and data collection in broadcasting in our communications with UK Government, the broadcasters and the UK communications regulator Ofcom.

Scotland’s five National Performing Companies undertake significant outreach work, including school and wider community engagement programmes reaching right across Scotland. These include Scottish Ballet’s Safe to be Me Programme with schools which uses dance and film to introduce topics such as racism, homophobia, ableism, and transphobia. The National Performing Companies are supported by grant funding from the Scottish Government.

Improve Access to Justice against Men’s Violence

Recommendation: ‘Improve access to justice for women and girls experiencing men’s violence by:

• Creating a world-leading process for complainers of sexual violence.
• Criminalise serious misogynistic harassment, filling gaps in existing laws.
• Create a consistent and inclusive model to ensure that women experiencing domestic abuse have sufficient access to expert legal advice and legal aid.’

Sexual Violence

The Scottish Government is determined to improve the justice system to better meet the needs of survivors of rape and sexual assault. We recognise that women experience the justice system differently from men and that a greater understanding of gender must be promoted.

We set up the Women’s Justice Leadership Panel in January 2022, bringing together expert women from all aspects of the justice system to discuss the experience and unique needs of women and what this means for justice processes, including the interaction with trauma. Their findings on gendered and intersectional approaches to justice are vital in continuing our understanding and awareness of gender and its impact across the justice system.

The Panel examined several themes in which women’s experience of justice varies from that of men, including caring responsibilities and ‘hidden sentences’ (having a loved one in prison); gaps between policy and practice; culture, gender and sexism; victim and offender status; and intersectionality and data gaps. The report and key findings have been shared with justice partners and across the Scottish Government and will be used to inform and complement work being progressed under our Justice Strategy and transformational reforms.

Sexual Assault Response Coordination Services (SARCS)

Creating a trauma-informed process for people who have experienced sexual violence is an important part of improving our justice system for women and girls. The Scottish Parliament passed the Forensic Medical Services (Victims of Sexual Offences) (Scotland) Act in 2021 (FMS Act) which provides a statutory basis for health boards to provide person centred, trauma informed forensic medical services for people who have experienced rape or sexual assault. Ensuring these responsibilities rest with the NHS helps to ensure that an individual’s holistic healthcare needs are paramount.

The FMS Act also establishes a legal framework for consistent access to ‘self-referral’. This allows people aged 16 and over, subject to professional judgement, to access healthcare services and a forensic medical examination within a SARCS without first having to make a report to the police. Any evidence obtained from the forensic medical examination is stored securely within the SARCS in accordance with Scottish criminal justice system requirements and is retained for 26 months from the date of the forensic medical examination. This gives someone two years and two months to consider their options around reporting to the police, whilst also ensuring their healthcare needs are met. It also avoids having to make difficult decisions at the same time of year as the rape or sexual assault happened.

We know, from listening to survivors, that access to self-referral is an important aspect of giving people back control. Sandy Brindley, Chief Executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, said that the roll-out of SARCS represents ‘a transformation in how we respond to rape in Scotland.’ (Holyrood Magazine, March 2023).

We have allocated over £17 million since 2017 to support the development of a Sexual Assault Coordination Service (SARCS) in every health board area for people who have recently experienced rape or sexual assault. We are continuing to invest in SARCS in 2025-2026, with funding provided for key national actions, including:

• funding the SARCS Network to provide national leadership for SARCS within the NHS and to help ensure consistency in the quality of service provided;
• funding a SARCS Patient Advocate post to ensure the voice of lived experience is embedded in everything we do;
• raising awareness of SARCS with NHS Boards and the public;
• developing the SARCS workforce through investment in training for doctors and nurses; and
• funding the NHS 24 telephony service and other nationally delivered projects – as well as supporting the continuous improvement of SARCS services locally.

Bairns’ Hoose

The Bairns’ Hoose programme is part of our work to improve support and access to justice for children, including those experiencing men’s violence, which we know is often linked to violence against women. Bairns’ Hoose aims to provide a genuinely child-centred approach to delivering justice, care and recovery for children who have experienced trauma, including child sexual abuse. We are testing our approach to Bairns’ Hoose across ten geographical areas – providing safe, trauma-informed environments where child victims and witnesses can access multi-agency support and recovery services in line with our 2025-26 Programme for Government commitment. We have, to date, supported this with investment of almost £10 million from 2023 to 2025 with up to £10.5 million of further investment in 2025-26.

The Bairns’ Hoose programme is already improving children and young people’s experiences of the child protection, justice and health services as partnerships start to introduce Bairns’ Hoose style services across Scotland. While stages and approaches vary between partnerships, the primary focus of the work has been on further development of partnerships across local authorities, Police Scotland, health and the third sector as well as planning for and carrying out building work to develop child friendly, trauma-informed environments.

Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill

We introduced the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill in 2023. It is intended to improve the experiences of victims and witnesses in Scotland’s justice system and to therefore improve access to justice for women and girls experiencing men’s violence. This progresses our Vision for Justice strategy, which envisions a person-centred and trauma-informed justice system that better serves women, girls and victims.

Building on recommendations from Lady Dorrian’s Review into the Improving the Management of Sexual Offence Cases, there is a particular focus on improving the experiences of victims and survivors of sexual crime. Evidence in our Equality Impact Assessment suggests that those most at risk of gender-based violence, sexual crime and domestic abuse have less confidence in the justice system and are more likely to be retraumatised by justice processes. Disabled and minority ethnic women and girls in particular face barriers to reporting crimes and accessing support.

The Bill’s focus on sexual offences and trauma-informed practice is intended to significantly improve the experience of all women and girls in contact with justice agencies.

Corroboration

The NACWG recommended reviewing the law on corroboration as part of creating a world-leading process for complainers of sexual violence. The corroboration rule has been a unique feature of criminal law in Scotland for hundreds of years. The accused cannot be convicted of a crime unless the essential facts of the crime are established by evidence from at least two independent sources. However, corroborative evidence is less likely to exist for certain offences usually committed in private, such as domestic abuse, sexual crimes, and abuse of children and older or protected adults. Some argue that the corroboration rule can therefore deny access to justice for victims of these types of crime, who are predominantly women and girls.

In 2023 and 2024, the Lord Advocate used the mechanism known as a ‘Lord Advocates Reference’, to seek the opinion of the High Court on points of law relating to corroboration. This was a decision which the Lord Advocate took independently, in her role as head of the prosecution system in Scotland. The outcomes of those References have been widely hailed as significant in improving access to justice for victims of sexual offences by allowing more evidence to be considered of corroborative value. As a result of these decisions, more cases will now meet the test for legal sufficiency, meaning there is enough evidence or information to support a claim or argument in a legal case.

The Lord Advocate has commented that this decision will improve access to justice for victims and has the potential to ‘transform’ the way that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) prosecute all offences, in particular sexual offences. COPFS is the public body that prosecutes crimes and investigates deaths in Scotland. COPFS is considering the terms of the rulings carefully and we are working with them and other partners to understand and respond to the likely systemic impact.

Legal advice and legal aid

Investing in legal advice and legal aid means that women experiencing domestic abuse can more easily and effectively navigate the legal system, improving their access to justice. The Scottish Parliament passed the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill in May 2025. Current practice on how third sector organisations can provide reserved legal services is considered unnecessarily complicated and restrictive, negatively impacting those seeking advice. If passed by Parliament, The Bill will remove restrictions preventing charities, law centres and citizen’s advice bodies from directly employing solicitors to provide certain legal services to some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens.

We awarded £48m to victims’ organisations for the period 2022-2025 under our Victim Centred Approach Fund as part of our commitment to putting victims at the heart of the justice system. This fund now forms part of our Fairer Funding pilot, under which the intent is that recipients will continue to receive awards for the next two financial years. This means we will provide £32m to 23 organisations between 2025-2027, including £12m for specialist advocacy support for survivors of gender-based violence:

The Scottish Women’s Rights Centre which offers free legal information and advice to women in Scotland who have or are experiencing gender-based violence (up to £230,000 a year)

• Linked to this, a project that employs advocacy workers, a project co-ordinator and admin support, and delivers a national helpline (up to £384,026)
• A pilot project, established through the Scottish Legal Aid Board, to support Scottish Women’s Aid for the provision of legal advice to those affected by gender-based violence (up to £432,000 from 2023-2026)
• Rape Crisis Scotland’s National Advocacy Project which ensures there is a key support worker in every Rape Crisis Centre in Scotland to help victims engage with the criminal justice process.
• In March 2024, we launched a pilot scheme allowing complainers in High Court sexual offences cases to have free access to transcripts of their court cases. The pilot will help us understand why applications are made, the potential volume of applications and if cost is a barrier.

Misogyny

The NACWG recommended that the Scottish Government should criminalise serious misogynistic harassment by filling gaps in existing laws. The Scottish Government is committed to delivering new protections for women and girls, and so new protections for women and girls will be introduced via Hate Crime legislation.

In 2023 the Scottish Government consulted on draft legislation to implement the recommendations for criminal law reform contained in the report published by the Working Group on Misogyny and the Criminal Law chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy. However, misogyny is a complex area of policy and law, and any new criminal law needs to be clear and unambiguous in regard to the circumstances in which they apply.

Instead we will deliver new protections for women and girls by adding the characteristic of sex to the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. This will mean women and girls have the same protections as other groups protected by that Act. We will lay before the Scottish Parliament in September a proposed draft of a Scottish Statutory Instrument to make the required changes under that Act. This will criminalise stirring up hatred on the basis of sex, and allow for a sentencing aggravation where an offender demonstrates, or is motivated by, prejudice on the basis of sex. This is a proven model for providing legal protections with the operation of statutory aggravations and stirring up hatred offences for existing characteristics such as race and religion.

We recognise the gendered nature of the harm caused to women and girls. We will take forward further work and engagement on the harms caused by misogyny, including what more could be done to tackle the underlying attitudes that lead to misogyny and gender based abuse. Our Equally Safe Strategy focuses on violence and abusive behaviour carried out predominately by men and directed at women and girls precisely because they are women and girls. The Strategy places emphasis on challenging gender inequality and norms, and the underpinning attitudes that perpetuate and condone such violence.

Commercial Sexual Exploitation

In March 2024 a Multi-Agency Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation was established to inform our approach to tackling all forms of commercial sexual exploitation, including prostitution, trafficking, lap dancing, stripping and pornography. It will also inform the implementation of Scotland’s Strategic Approach to challenging men’s demand for prostitution. The group’s work is driven by the Equally Safe Strategy and its clear definition that commercial sexual exploitation is a form of violence against women. The work of the group will also align with the Scottish Government’s Vision for Justice, and will also be guided by policy principles published in 2022, which were developed by a previous Short Life Working Group.

Domestic Abuse

In 2018, the Scottish Parliament passed our Bill to tackle domestic abuse in Scotland. The Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 created a specific offence of domestic abuse that covers not just physical abuse, but also other forms of psychological abuse as well as coercive and controlling behaviour.

Our services must acknowledge the significant trauma survivors experience to best support survivors. It is reassuring to note that research on the operation of our ground-breaking Domestic Abuse legislation found that it does better meet their needs.

In addition, and following the Criminal Justice Committee’s post-legislative scrutiny of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018, we established a Domestic Abuse Roundtable comprising justice partners who considered the initial implementation of the Act. Members include Scottish Government, Justice Analytical Services, Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, the Judicial Institute for Scotland, Police Scotland, and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service. Key focus areas of the group include developing the evidence base, improving victim experience, tackling perpetrators, improving multi agency working, early intervention/prevention and changing societal attitudes.

Police Scotland’s Disclosure Scheme for Domestic Abuse Scotland (DSDAS) has helped safeguard those who have been suffering from, or are at risk of, domestic abuse. It aims to tackle and prevent domestic abuse by providing individuals with the right to ask police about a partner’s background, if they suspect they have a history of domestic abuse. Requests can also be made on their behalf by a concerned family member, friend or neighbour.

Applications to DSDAS have increased 435% between 2015 and the end of the 2023/24 period. In the last five years alone (2019/20 to 2023/24) the number of applications received annually has increased by 111%, more than doubling, from 2,648 to 5,589. This includes a 113% increase in Right To Ask applications from members of the public.

Domestic Homicide and Suicide Reviews

The Scottish Government introduced part two of the Criminal Justice Modernisation & Abusive Domestic Behaviour Reviews (Scotland) Bill in the Scottish Parliament in September 2024. This includes provisions to create the statutory framework for Scotland’s first national multi-agency domestic homicide and suicide review model. This review model aims to learn lessons following a death where abuse is known or suspected and to ensure a voice is given to those who have died and their family. Our commitment to develop a review model was set out within the Equally Safe Delivery Plan. Provisions with the Bill have been informed by the Domestic Homicide and Suicide Review Taskforce.

The types of deaths included within the review model scope are: those killed by a partner or ex-partner; violent resistance, where a person kills their abusive partner or ex-partner; where a perpetrator of domestic abuse kills their children (of any age) or their partner/ex-partner’s children (of any age); those under 18 (or under 26 for “looked after” children) who are killed as part of an incident of abusive domestic behaviour; and domestic abuse-related which has or may have been contributed to by abuse from a current or former partner. The Bill makes provision for the model scope to be expanded to include other types of deaths or events. Whilst recognising that the majority of domestic homicides are carried out by men against women, the provisions and continuing development include victims of all genders.

In 2023-24, 57 victims of homicide were recorded of which 77% (44) were male and 23% (13) were female. Of the 13 female victims, 38% (5 of the 13) were killed by a partner or ex-partner.

Equality Focused Review Body in the Scottish Parliament

Recommendation: ‘We call for an Equality Focused Review Body to be established in the Scottish Parliament.’

While recognising that this recommendation is for the Scottish Parliament to consider and respond to, we are supportive in principle.