 | 'Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on.' Winnie Ewing, Hamilton 1967. |  |
| 'Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on.' Winnie Ewing, Hamilton 1967. | |
At the first elections to the devolved Scottish Parliament in May 1999, 48 of the 129 MSPs (37.2 %) were women; 28 of the 56 Labour MSPs (50.0 %), 15 of the 35 Scottish National Party MSPs (42.9 %), three of the 18 Conservative MSPs (16.7 %) and two of the 17 Liberal Democrat MSPs (11.8 %). This percentage rose to 39.5 % (51 out of 129 MSPs) in 2003. With such advances being made in the representation of woman at the Scottish Parliament, it can come as a shock to the system when it is revealed that currently only eight of the 59 Scottish MPs are female (13.6 %) while only 34 female MPs have been elected to the British Imperial Parliament at Westminster in Scotland's entire electoral history.
The first woman elected to the Imperial Parliament was Constance, Countess Markievicz, who became MP for Dublin St Patrick's at the 1918 General election. However, as a member of Sinn Féin, Countess Markievicz did not take her seat. The first woman MP to sit at Westminster was an American, Nancy, Viscountess Astor, who was elected to Plymouth Sutton on 15 th November 1919 at a by-election caused by her husband's elevation to the peerage. The first woman MP elected in Scotland was Katherine Murray, Duchess of Atholl, who represented Kinross & Western Perthshire from 1923 until 1938, when she resigned from the Tory party and was defeated in a by-election.
Labour have had 21 women MPs, the Conservatives six, the Scottish National Party five and the Liberals and Liberal Democrats just two. Three Labour MPs won their seat following the death of their husband: Agnes Hardie in Glasgow Springburn in 1937, Helen McElhone in Glasgow Queens Park in 1982, and Irene Adams, now Baroness Adams of Cragielea, in Paisley North in 1990. The post-Westminster careers have been strikingly different depending upon the political party, with eight Unionist MPs heading to the House of Lords (four Labour, three Conservatives and one Liberal Democrat) while four of the female Scottish National Party MPs have gone on to serve in the Scottish Pariaiment.
The numbers of Scottish women MPs have remained extremely low: while in 1948, there were five woman MPs, by 1979 this number had dropped to just one. The number of female MPs reached a high of 12 in 1997, only to drop back to 11 in 2001.
With the defeat of the Scottish National Party's Annabelle Ewing by Labour's Gordon Banks (by 688 votes) the number of female MPs dropped back still further to just nine in 2005. The number of Scottish constituencies had been reduced from 72 to 59, however, the 15.3 % female representation in 2005 actually fell from the 16.7 % high in the 1997 parliament, and fell further to 13.6 % following the death of Rachel Squire in January 2006 - although Labour chose a female candidate in Catherine Stihler MEP, she failed to retain the constituency in the by-election.
Scotland lags well behind the rest of the UK where 20.1 % (118 out of 586) of the MPs are women.
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