First Minister's National Advisory Council on Women and Girls First Phase Two Report: Scottish Government Response

Next Steps

We are aware that the delivery of the response to the NACWG Phase Two report has come at a time of significant global push back towards efforts and policies to progress women’s rights. The Scottish Government does not share the view, that has become more common in public discourse, that pursing equality policy is a distraction from other issues, such as pursuing economic growth and ensuring our public services are fit for purpose. Rather, we believe that we will only achieve economic growth and the best possible public services if we put equality at the heart of decision making.

We are a progressive government which champions equality, diversity and inclusion, and we believe that tackling gender inequality will benefit everyone in Scotland.

We know that changing attitudes, culture and behaviour to achieve real long-term change for women and girls equality takes time. While we can point to our successes so far, we are aware that we have to take faster action. This is particularly important during this time when political headwinds are trying to undermine the hard-won progress that has been made for women and girls.

As previously mentioned, our new programmatic approach to delivering the recommendations made to us by the NACWG will ensure a holistic, cross-government strategic approach to speed up the pace in which we deliver the recommendations. This approach will ensure that each recommendation has a project delivery plan, overseen more widely by a project delivery board, which will set out timescales for delivery.

We are also committed to publishing an equality strategy for women and girls, subject to this government being returned after the next Scottish Parliament election. It is our intention that the strategy will bring policy coherence for delivering equality policy for women and girls and drive forward real, systemic change.

Equality is a journey; one that is long and with steps forward and backwards. The Scottish Government is committed to the journey, and with the NACWG and EWP we will make further progress in delivering equality for women and girls in Scotland.