Rydw i chi i g szerfod ydyrdech chi adael eu cyfan oed hyd i gweithio? Rydw i chi i g rımız i eu cynny Pos i ddadf impressed o gondol Williams explores Mae siarad gan chi'n cymryd ar dark-shark Digital Dal i chi'nล diction gan iENチwsgw, fyddwn'r argyn Oedden nhw y byddai ei ystod Chmateb gyda'r gap yma i'i ceoghlo Llachyn Y roi cyhoes mewn unwag Twilight Fw bizodau génut neu haartai imbifir beyondrew Thank You for the interactiveness that you give, and alguns problems that you have遊bedd to make. As I said this morning, we are going to hear back from the workshops, and listen to what was said around the issues of sexism, body image confidence, and leadership. When we were looking at the themes of the conference, I felt quite disappointed that there is still so much of a challenge, and so many obstacles in the way of oedd yn ddesgrifennu i mi, mae'n wentzio r lernenog y gynhyrchu gyflengwadau rhan, gan gychwyn gwrthoedd y gallwch yn ei ei ddweithio'sgwylliant flyniol, ch 1994, mae'n gelfi'n ni'n gwybod ddweithio'i metg-gwylliant oherwydd maen nhw'n gyfeilio'n gwmno gyda newid. Mae'n gweld gynnig i ymddag hunain, mae mwy yn maen nhw'n chi'n ddaeth i fyddwch yn cychwyn nhw i mewn ti'n creu'n meddwl hyd yi, mwy o'r gyrwch yn cyffinwyd. The 87 per cent of girls and young women aged between 11 and 21 think that women Doctor Rogers judged more on their appearance than have their ability. With that in mind, it is not surprising that there's been so much focus today on body image, which also feeds into confidence. I can remember when I started out in politics, and when I joined for very very first time I walked into a room and I was the only women there and everybody soedd isiol.  Al hyd os n myös hyn mynd ynmateb o flawtodau ac человachlled arall yn dwyانau Lywog a ewan but I can remember the one thing that gave me a lot of confidence and that was that I was on a platform with one of the finest speakers that I have ever heard and just before he went up to speak I noticed that his hands were shaking and I thought to myself you know, if it's ok for him to be nervous, it's okay for me to be nervous and what is important is it you know no matter how nervous you feel inside, you've got to be able to put on a face that people don't see it. We all need role models and I think today you've seen so many role models from our politicians to our very inspiring women and it's good to for you to see women in positions of power. It gives you somebody that you can relate to. It's hard to break the mold but it can be easier for you if you have some inspiration as you go along. So these are just some of my thoughts. I'm keen to hear what you've been saying about these topics and more importantly I want to hear about what your hopes are for the future. Can I introduce a fantastic panel of female members at the Scottish Parliament? We have from the far right, Kezia Dugdale, the leader of the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament. We have Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservative Party. We have Alice McKinnis MSP. No, we have Alice McKinnis on the left. My script is wrong or you took the wrong seat, Alison. We've got Alice McKinnis from the Scottish Liberal Democrats and Alison Johnson, who is a member of the Scottish Green Party. Can you welcome them very much here? We heard from many inspiring women today and we've invited some of them back to give some feedback from the workshops this morning so it is a great pleasure and it's a great honour to introduce to you once again Cara Henderson from Nill by Mouth and Cara is our Scotswoman of the Year. I'd like to thank the Presiding Officer as well as all the parliamentary staff for organising this wonderful event and I really do mean it when I say that it's wonderful because I speak for myself and I say that I have been smiling all day so much so that I've actually got an aching in my cheeks which clearly means I don't smile enough. I've been asked to sum up my impression of the event in a few words and for me there was probably one incident particular that stood out for me and encapsulated something that underlies all the four key themes to the event. That was when we were in the workshop, we saw this video of a very attractive girl and we watched all the changes that were made to the photograph before the photograph was ready to be put in the magazine and I was really shocked at this but what I was surprised at was a lot of most of the girls in the workshop weren't surprised they knew that this was the case and then we spoke about the fact that whether the same thing happens to men in magazines and the conclusion we reached was it probably did but we then also spoke about the fact that somehow it's not as damaging for men for some reason they don't it doesn't have the same impact and we spoke a little bit about why that was the case and again the conclusion that we reached in our group was that men somehow don't seem to be as critical certainly in physical things but maybe it's wider than that they're not as critical of each other and therefore they don't feel they have to live up to this perfect image and I felt it was quite sad but and it resonated with me because it was something of my own experience in school and later that perhaps as girls and as women sometimes we are our own worst enemies in the sense that we criticise each other and I think the reason that that maybe comes about and this is again what we spoke about was we often criticise ourselves so we're used it's an extension of that really where because we're critical of ourselves we tend to be critical of other women and I think maybe that is something that gets in our way and I think that gets to the heart of what I think is the main issue theme from today's event it's self-confidence that we're always measuring against some perfect image of who we think we should be and at the same time we're always telling ourselves that we're not going to get there and as I said we're our own worst enemies sometimes for doing that and this event as I said is wonderful and I think one of the reasons it's wonderful is because there's a feeling that it's almost the opposite of that it's a feeling of solidarity of support lots of us have been nervous I'm nervous I can hear it in my voice but almost by sharing that there's a sense of empowerment they realise that you're not alone a lot of the things that make us think we're weird and think they're unique to us we're all thinking it deep down and events like this is a way of opening up and realising that we're not alone in these issues and that's why I think it's so positive so thank you and now I'd like to welcome Amal Azudin. Amal is just a truly wonderful young woman she saw an issue in her own community with her school friends being removed as asylum seekers she galvanised her school or community she worked so hard there's been a film about the Glasgow girls they have won awards there's been a stage play as well Amal you are an inspiration thank you very much that was so beautiful thank you Presiding Officer hello everyone it's an absolute pleasure and honour to be here with you all today and can I also say what an amazing event if you guys were not inspired I definitely was by you it's it's absolutely fantastic and I hope that it happens every year and that more and more young people are involved because I think I wish I was young again and sitting where you guys were sitting I think it's starting to become a happy action because last time I was here and speaking in the Chamber was for International Woman's Day in the year 2010 and there was about 400 women here so I'm back here on another woman's event so it's great. The session we focused on was on body image and sexism so the girls looked at a video of a woman and she was about to get a photo shoot done and how the kind of before and after look happened you know she was normal no makeup on and then completely changed you know everything literally every aspect of our face was changed through Photoshop and everything and the discussion kind of focused on how there's an expectation to be perfect all the time there's the kind of peer pressure you know to be looking fantastic and looking like all the people we see on TV and all the celebrities and how unrealistic is and you know some of the young people also mentioned about how angry they felt because you know why should women be put under pressure to look like you know the women we see and in the magazines etc because you know nobody's perfect and if you look at the kind of models or the people on TV in real life without their makeup on they're unrecognisable you know and that's how different is and also how fake is because it's not real you know the after the photoshop and all that you know it just doesn't make any sense and also somebody mentioned the double standards because you know there's not the same expectation of men to be perfect all the time and you know the kind of sometimes there's a stereo types and in the communities it's like yeah it's okay for a man to do this but it's not okay for a woman to do it so we kind of focused on that and I think I'd like to finish off by saying to all the young people here today that actually it's not what you look like that defines you it's your character and what you do I hope you enjoy the rest of the day thank you very much and now we have Khalida Noon I first met Khalida when she was doing such fantastic work with young women in the Sikh community and I found the event that we had in the Scottish Parliament truly inspirational I think Khalida is an inspirational woman too so great pleasure to have Khalida with us today. Khalida, thank you. It is really an honour to be here today in front of all you lovely young people and we really looked at confidence and leadership in our session today the workshop and a lot of girls did were very quiet but a few girls did have the courage to speak up and it was a loved hearing the voices we looked at support getting support from the right people people that can bring out the greatness in you and looking at role models like our two girls here who came along today to talk about their story although Harrow and it was for them they had that wee bit of confidence and really stood up and told their story and have how to come out of something not so nice and lead their own lives having we looked at having faith in yourself as a young lady it's really important that you do find that spec of faith in yourself to become who you want to be a few of the girls also suggested you know finding something different to do finding perhaps getting an instrument or music or dance drama maybe not at first being excellent at it but practicing and showing people what you can do very important being a leader of your own life finding that spec of special something and building upon that because confidence is there is a spec of confidence in there and it does become stronger it does through time it comes stronger and work on it build on that confidence to trust your heart and your intuition and having the courage to trust yourself the issues raised in the workshops that many girls from diverse backgrounds don't have the choice to be leaders many girls here today have got the choice to be leaders it's just maybe confidence that's lacking but many of our girls they don't have the confidence being leaders but they also don't have the choice to be leaders it's taken from them due to cultural barriers girls you know to take action for yourself respectfully finding ways to become your own leader of your life however small it may be we really need to try and think about leadership as part of the curriculum and really focus on engaging with socially excluded girls who are not maybe allowed to attend and be part of extracurriculum activities all of which really build your experience but a lot of girls aren't allowed to do that our organisation we're a charity and we work in partnership with the Royal High School and the Duke of Edinburgh award to develop a model as a curriculum choice so there's there's there's something there that the girls can choose to do at school and they get that leadership qualities and skills to become confident this would then mainstream service and not rely on wee charities like us that we have to rely on funding from places because you know the learning community and the wider community are not aware of issues affecting many girls like Sungita and Jazz and it's you know up to us to make sure there's awareness of what's happening you know there's many Scottish girls slipping through the net in schools and living a life of social exclusion with no options no positive destination and you know there has to be a change girls must have the opportunity to be able to strive and it's really important that all you girls take what you've got what's been said today a lot of inspiring stories that you know the energy has been absolutely amazing incredible and take something with you when you leave here today and think about how you can really truly lead your own life and become and do something totally amazing thank you thanks Khalida thank you very much indeed we're now going to just move swiffle on to a question session i've got all these questions that you've already submitted so we're going to do our absolute best to get through as many as we can can i just say and when i call your name if you put your hand up and then just wait for the red light on the microphone to switch on if you want to ask your question yourself some of you have indicated that you don't want to ask the question i'm more than happy to do it but where you have an eye call your name if you just wait and put your put your hand up wait on the microphone coming and the microphone will find you and then secondly don't be worried about if your voice isn't very loud we've got absolutely fantastic microphones in here and i promise you that the microphone will be able to pick your voice up so don't worry that your voice is really quite low it's a really brilliant friendly place and chamber to be in i've always felt really at home in it and i've got to say looking around here you look as though you're at home as well i think ladies we've got competition in the future right first question is chloe craighead from peter heads academy chloe put your hand right up can we get chloe's microphone on that's it you're on confidence was weakened when entering such a male dominated workplace such as politics did i feel um that your confidence was weakened when entering such a male dominated workplace such as politics is it's definitely intimidating and there's no question about it and i feel nervous every time i come in this chamber even today because there's something just so grand about it it's a parliament it's a really important place and it's such an honor and a responsibility to have the opportunity to speak in it and it's amazing looking at all you and i hope that there are people sitting in the seats today that will be msp's in this chamber one day but yeah i'm always nervous when i'm in here i was talking to a few of you at lunchtime in this morning about that sense of nervousness there's nothing wrong with being nervous it's a good thing it's about your ability to control it and try turning it into an energy that you can use for the better i sit in that seat there first minister's questions on a thursday and i'm always absolutely crapping it but it's like my leg shake it's where my nerves are in my legs like if you saw me standing my leg shake my the top half of my body's fine so i don't necessarily look nervous but it's all about controlling your nerves but you should never not be nervous because the minute you stop being nervous you get arrogant and then you make mistakes so don't be afraid of nerves nerves are a good thing it's about coping with them and using them to your advantage ruth yeah i've always worked in environments where there's been more men than women so i used to be a journalist i was a journalist for 10 years before i became a politician i worked at the bbc i did loads and loads of radio the first time i was asked to present a tour and using current affairs show of an afternoon i've omitted twice on the way to the studio um so like actually literally threw up in a waste paper bin before i went on air that's the kind of nerves that got to me um and outside of that i used to be in the territorial army which is where i did when you talk about leadership that's where i got my leadership training um on on how to be an army officer and some of the skills that i learned there i've transferred over into this job and that's you know definitely more men than women that do that um and it's not just in here i mean when i worked at the bbc i was on radio for ages and i really wanted to try television and one of my good pals like she wasn't being bitchy she wasn't being horrible she was trying to be nice took me aside and said look Ruth if you want to do telly you've got to lose a couple of stone and put on more makeup like that was her advice to me and i said oh well sawd you then i'm sticking in radio and i did um so i'm kind of with kes i've always done stuff that terrifies the living crap out of me but i've always made myself do it and the the buzz and the high that you get afterwards like even when you're on you know a late night telly show when you've got a debate with political opponents or people are criticizing you and you're defending yourself or you're putting forward your point of view the buzz you get from that is enormous one of the coolest things i have ever done in my entire life probably the coolest thing i will ever do in my entire life was doing a debate at the hydro in front of 8 000 young people you know politics shouldn't be like rock music but the referendum was so big and so important it captured everyone's imagination and and you know saying what you wanted to say and having people listen to you like 8 000 people in an auditorium was just you know i didn't sleep i didn't get to sleep till about 3 a.m. that night because it was that cool so yes it is really scary sometimes but other jobs are scary too but just because you're scared it doesn't mean that you can't rock it because all of you can Alison can i ask for the question again just to get to the the nub of it did you find your confidence was weakened when entering such a male dominated workplace such as politics i would say i probably did when i think about some of my first experiences because i came from education which is a world that was probably dominated by women one of my first experiences was in the council chamber just up the road in Edinburgh and i remember a male counsellor basically shouting at me so much that i nearly took my seat again i'm really pleased to say now those meetings are webcast and i hope that behaviour will improve but i think sometimes it's a bit of a testosterone fuelled environment and i'd really like to see more women involved i think if we had more women in this chamber and certainly more women in our council chambers where there's an even bigger shortage we might start to see a different tone of debate now gradually through time i found my feet and my confidence and he certainly wouldn't have be reacting in that manner now but i don't think it's helpful that same debate that same person referred to another a woman senior counsellor as a fishwife and nobody batted an eyelid so you know we have to improve the level of our debate i don't find it any more challenging now because i've got used it but i don't think it should be challenging at all but i absolutely agree with with kezia and ruth it's it's good to have some nerves although the thing that all astonishes me i was involved in athletics for 15 years and whenever i come in here i kind of will say sometimes to the office i don't feel as nervous as i would if i was going to run an 800 meters because this doesn't hurt but i would say what they have in common is the fact that if you're well prepared you will do yourself justice and i think that gives you confidence awesome um yes i think moving into any male dominated area does sap your confidence a little bit to start with this wasn't the most male dominated area that i entered because i've been here for eight years but for 15 years before that i had been in the council as those of you that were in the workshop with me this morning knew that and so 15 years ago on councils they were heavily dominated by men and i was frequently talked over the top of or dismissed and it took a long time to find my feet there so that was a good learning ground for me to come into parliament here and it's not so daunting but like everyone else it's always very nerve wracking in here especially for big important debates thank you allison you could have kept it going another 30 seconds okay next question is from lucie stanage from Preston Lodge high school if you could raise your hand lucie up the very back keep your hand up that your mic's on okay no okay how have you dealt with people who are negative towards your ambitions and tell you that you can't do it or you won't succeed ruth i've gone out and shown them i've been told i can't do stuff forever in lots of different areas of my life and it just is the one thing that really makes me want to stick two fingers up to people i think that's possibly just because i'm a very cussed individual um so there's lots of things i've done that i was told i wasn't allowed to so i wasn't allowed to play football for my local under 14 boys team and then i became the first girl that did i was told i'd probably never walk again when i got run over by a truck and i made damn sure that i could i was told that i would probably never be i would never get elected as a tori in glasgo and i have i was told that i wouldn't be able to be leader of the party within six months to become an msp and i did and that's mostly because i really hate people making assumptions on my back of what i'm able to do that's not for anybody else to tell me what i can and can't do it's up for me to decide what i want to do and then go out and work as hard as i can to achieve it and i was really lucky growing up that my my family was always very supportive and and the one thing that my mum always said it's always stuck with me two things actually the first is that nobody's better than you are and you are better than nobody so you've got to treat everyone as you like to be treated yourself and don't let anybody do you down and the second thing is i don't care how good you are as long as you've tried your best so i got a roll of king absolutely remember this in second year at high school my mum gave me a roll of king because i got a two for effort in science even though i'd got a one for my grade because i could have tried harder and you know that was always the thing it was always about trying your best so people who tell me that i'm not up to something usually find pretty quickly that's the one thing that makes me want to give them a total smackdown allothon i think that's a great question and i do think you know Ruth's given you a fabulous answer there it's all about just being you know quite determined quite focused prepared to put in the time in the effort you know really don't take no for an answer if you want to achieve something and don't necessarily model yourself on someone else you just think about where it is you want to go where you are now and i think get a good team of supportive people around you if there are naysayers just say well you know what if you want to sit there and be negative that's your prerogative but i'm determined i want to achieve something don't take no for an answer and i think we've had a really good discussion this morning about the need for other women to be kind to one another to be supportive to mentor each other to help each other and as we've said you know we're all here and really willing to be contacted and to help you in any way we can because the support is out there if you want to find it but just don't take no for an answer Alison well if someone says no you can't do that to me it tends to have the adverse effect and i do tend to get very determined i'm a different generation from these young women here and i was told much more often in the 1970s that girls didn't do these kind of things and i told you about my physics teacher when i was at school when it was in the 1970s who didn't answer questions when i when a girl asked the question because he told us he couldn't do science and that kind of attitude made me very determined and quite determined to prove a different pathway for myself and for my daughter and to use this parliament to speak up for for young women every opportunity that i could. Alison's right i think if someone says if you're determined you want to do something then ask for help to do it don't be afraid to ask your friends and colleagues for help because actually people are usually more than willing to help you reach your ambitions. Kezia. The last time somebody told me not to do something and i did it anyway you gave me a really big ride and i'm going to tell the story because i think it might tickle people but when i first got elected we had a debate in the chamber about affordable childcare and save the children the charity we're in the building and they gave all the MSPs these simulator babies you know the ones that cry every now and again and that they pee and they exist like real babies and i thought it'd be a really smart idea to bring it into the chamber and do my speech with the baby in my arms and i did it and i got such a row from Trish you wouldn't believe how much i got put in my place for that but and i wouldn't do it again i wouldn't break the rules again because i did disrespect parliament it was against the rules and this is a serious building and but what i was trying to do was to say how hard it was for women to to get involved in life but if they have childcare responsibilities and i cracked a joke trying to say you know i couldn't find any childcare and Trish didn't find it very funny should we expect to be such a bad person right there's no name on this one but i think it's a really really good question so i'm going to pose it anyway do you ever feel like you're not good enough for your job yes i was talking to some of the people in my workshop this morning about something called imposter syndrome and that's when you move into a new area of work or you go to a new course at the university or at the college and you walk into the room and you look around and you think oh my goodness everybody in here is brighter than me or everybody's doing a better job than me and girls in particular do this quite a lot i've talked to teachers and to university lecturers and they say that girls then rather so the next part of that is that they say i'm going to fail i'm not as good as these people and then they talk themselves back out of the door and they themselves remove themselves from that particular arena because they feel they're not good enough and it's a well-known psychological kind of syndrome and we encourage it in ourselves i think particularly those women who are less confident and that's something i struggled with quite a lot when i first came into politics partly because so many other very typical type of politicians were there so the ones that could stand up and make a good speech the ones that could you know debate for for england or for scotland indeed you know and we're very good at that i'm still not a great debater i'm still getting nervous in large situations like this but i've learned to overcome that imposter syndrome and i think that's one of the things that everyone should do just remember that you are good enough you're usually better than the other people in the room you're at least as good as them and you must believe in yourself kes yeah it doesn't happen very often now because i try and control it but it definitely does happen and i'll give you an example about 10 days ago i did question time and it didn't go well like the audience booed me and i was like really struck by that i was really thrown by that i didn't know how to handle that and i went home that night and looked at twitter and pretty much everything people were writing about me was negative and i got really upset about it because i thought you maybe i'm not cut out to be deputy leader of my party maybe this is all gone a bit too fast maybe i need to slow down and for a few days after that i was really low but then i did another interview like a radio interview that went much better and i remembered again that i could do this and i was good at it so it doesn't happen all the time but sometimes things happen they trigger your your your weaknesses if you know you say push your buttons just this has to be a phrase that somebody use or a word or you know memory and it can make you feel really crap doesn't it you can't let it happen all the time but to say you're immune to it in politics is nonsense it hurts everybody at some point Ruth yeah i don't know it's something i've struggled with nobody's all front all the time when i was growing up i've got a big sister she's really smart really thin really pretty she's now a doctor she's a consultant for the nhs she was head girl of the school she got five days i'm none of these things i did none of these things when i went to university i went to university at 17 lots of people i went to Edinburgh lots of people were like came up from england had done A levels i'd done hires they'd all gone off for gap years they were all like 20 had been to posh schools all that sort of stuff and i really struggled in my head i didn't know the difference between the difference between intelligence and knowledge i didn't have the confidence because these people talked louder than me i called them brain yas you know the difference between 17 2021 is quite big the self belief that they had the fact that a lot of the university courses were taught to the A level syllabus meant that they were miles ahead of of where i was i really really struggled at university i was really ill at university because i struggled with it and i'd kind of had to come back from that and it's like ke says that you still have you still have the kind of crying in the night stuff you still have time to get kicked around when i took over as leader of the party i was really green i was really inexperienced there were lots of people that didn't want me to be leader of my party there were lots of people who continued to not want me to be leader of the party after i'd been doing it for a while i'm really proud i'm really competitive i had to make all of my mistakes in public and i got kicked around in the press for a good 18 months after i took on this job and it was tough really really tough but you do build on that and you do decide what's important and what's not important and uh you've got to know yourself when you've you've got to judge yourself rather than let other people judge you so you've got to decide you know what actually that was all right i did ffmqs well today or you know i won that debate on television tonight or you know what i've done this great thing for a constituent and i've got you know i've i've managed to find a special school for their child because they didn't want them in mainstream education or i've been able to deliver for something i've done something well but when you see people on television giving it all front that's not all they are because there's always the questions that go on behind it and i think from what allison said before there is a real man woman difference in this there's a really famous psychological experiment that happened which was putting two job adverts in the papers and asking people whether they wanted to apply for them or not and it had like 10 things you had to do in order to apply for the job and like if men had four they would apply if women had less than eight they wouldn't because women have to think that they're going to be you know they have to think that they already have everything that's being asked for they'll never wing it in the way that men will and i think that probably the sort of self-doubt is is greater or certainly the being able to admit to not being off front is greater amongst women in politics during the referendum i was quite close to the old Labour leader of the Labour Party, Joanne Lamont. I used to work for the old leader of the Conservative Party, Annabelle Goldie and i know that i'm not the only person that questions whether i'm right to be doing this, whether i'm good enough to be doing this, whether my performances are up to scratch, whether there aren't people that could do this better than me, whether i'm letting people down by not being good enough and these questions always come and haunt you always. I think sometimes you might think somebody else you need to have the self confidence to know that although somebody else might do it differently than you they're not necessarily doing it better that's a lesson that's taken me a long while you know a long time to learn and i think you have to take responsibility too for how you feel in a situation because sometimes other people will try to make you feel bad about yourself and i always quote that Eleanor Roosevelt gave all sticks in my mind no one can make me feel inferior without my consent so simply just keep a bit of distance between yourself you know just keep a bit of yourself sort of firm and solid in there and say i'm simply not going to be made to feel bad i mean i personally wouldn't advocate never read the comments under a newspaper article don't get too bogged down in twitter i think it's much harder for you girls now growing up with all the social media because what sticks in your mind see if you got 50 comments and 49 of them were really positive what's the one that you cling on to and think about the most i don't know why that is but we always think about the negative things more we can build them up and give them too much space in our heads so think about all the people who love and support and admire you the people who really are your friends that are there for you and just have that self belief and we all have self doubt we're only human but i think when it comes into your head just say out you go one thing i used to do when i came in here i'd be thinking this is a big day i'm feeling quite nervous about it and then i think to myself regardless of what happens i'm going to do this today so there's two there's two options here i can either enjoy it or i can grip my teeth and sort of fight my way through it so i used to write in quite bold pen at the top of speeches enjoy and i think that helps because think you're doing it it's a huge privilege just try and enjoy it and i think that makes a difference i think you know one of the big problems that we have is that you know if you don't have a lot of self confidence you feel throughout your life i'm going to be found out i'm not good enough that you know people will start saying that and i can remember way back in 1992 because i'm really quite old the first time i ever wanted to stand for election and it took me quite a lot of time to decide that this is what i wanted to do and we went from what was called a vetting weekend where the party decided whether you were good enough and there must have been about 60 or 70 people in this weekend and about two nights before it i took cold feet and i thought i can't do this i'm just not good enough i can't possibly do it i'll be found out all these people are better than me so i decided not to go and a very very good friend of mine said don't be stupid you know you're better than someone i was no no no i'm really awful anyway he persuaded me that i really ought to go so i went and then once i got there i suddenly realised after about 10 minutes that about quarter of the people who were on the course were much much better than me about half of them were absolutely crap and i was probably in the next group so i wasn't the best i certainly wasn't the worst and i assessed myself within you know the sorry next 25 percent and i know at that point the smp were so desperate for candidates they were not going to fail half a course so i decided in that case i was fine and i certainly passed it but you know i was within you know issues of not going because i didn't think i was good enough and i think sometimes you've got to sit back and take encouragement where you can get it and secondly look around you and be honest about yourself and it isn't arrogance to say that you're better than some it just is a fact you know as long as you recognise that you know you might know be the best but you're not the worst either and i think that really helped me enormously and we've got the four subjects and i've got millions of questions so we're going to go into the next section on gender inequality and sexism and we've got a question from Dana Shields or St John Ogilby high school you want to keep your hand up Dana right Giron okay do you feel that particular tv shows and films that include introverted female characters encourage young women to be more like them rather than powerful female leaders sorry if i first i think um Dana you do absorb things that are in popular culture so you absorb things on television and films and everything um i think there's for every kind of Lara Croft out there who's toting guns or barbed wire or you know any of these sort of female superheroes there's always the sort of damsel and distress that needs a man to save them um and i think that that's uh that can can sort of permeate people's views of of sort of gender stereotypes and roles but i mean i think there's a real issue for bright smart articulate young women like yourselves to stand up and to change a script in your own lives and a lot of of the media is a reflection of life itself and like i say i used to work in the bbc we had our own drama department and all the rest of it and the ideas that they were kicking around and the writers in there were ideas that they were and conversations that were having in the pub there were conversations that were having with people in real life and all the rest of it so i mean i think that there is a real incumbency on all of us um to make sure that that we push to get the scripts changed if you know i mean just even in our own lives as well as as in the sort of media sense of that also i think that's a very good point it was um Denise Mina you know the the novelist i went to hear her speak and she was the first person that would sort of put into my mind it was few years ago at an amnesty event the need to change that narrative because we're all used to reading crime fiction where something dreadful happens to the victim in 95 cases the woman who is then rescued by the big burly detective who you know mostly is a bloke so there is a need to sort of empower women through the media and too often we are you know even if you look at something like an event like the tour de France there's the gallant winner and there's two women and you know bikinis presenting him with his trophy i mean i've always been interested in sport and i think it has a long way to go if you pick up any newspaper today you'll be lucky if you can find a picture of a woman doing sport on the back pages apparently that is just for men and that's because one in ten sports journalists you know is a woman so there's a long way to go part of that starts off at school starts off with things like not having pink lego you know it starts off with just demanding that apprenticeships see equal numbers of men and women in a variety of roles but i think broadcast print media has such an impact that it's really important that we challenge that and maybe you know just let broadcasters know that we'd like more varied fare awesome yeah i mean i think broadcast media in particular has an insidious effect if it doesn't reflect society as it really is and it just obviously reinforces repeatedly reinforces stereotypes and particular cultures and you'll hear many women in the media be they women journalists or actors who say that after a certain age they're not welcome on television and that in itself is also another problem so we must just as Ruth said ask for more demand more just keep changing the channel when you find something that you like with strong women in it cash is really interesting that you mentioned Denise Mina because that's my favourite crime author and she makes a point of writing books set in Glasgow most of them are set in Glasgow where the strong characters are the women and they're crime stories but all the people that die are the men and she kind of highlights the fact that you know crime novels don't have to see women as victims all the time so if you're if you like crime novels look out for Denise Mina but i was picking up my phone there because there's a there's a name for the test for the media and i couldn't remember if it's the best deal test you should have a wee look at that but that's a test you can set against every tv programme every soap opera every film that you watch and you have to look for two women to be talking to each other at the same time about something which isn't another man and they call that the best deal test so the next time you're watching a tv programme or a film see if you can spot that because you won't because the vast majority of the time it's women talking about men on our tv screens sorry just one final point there aren't enough female journalists particularly in political journalism and that reflects in the way that they write about politics because what you end up is lots and lots of stories about today a fight broke out or a row broke out about this you don't get stories in the round i was thinking about this the other day Trish i don't think there's a single political journalist that writes for a Sunday newspaper in Scotland now so every single word you read about politics on a Sunday newspaper has written about a man has written by a man and i think that's fundamentally wrong just going to jump in one more also the media kind of goes through phases so it went through a phase where it liked having women coppers so you had like Jane Tennyson all the rest of it i'm an openly gay women so i always look for gay characters on tv there's much more in terms of lesbians being on television now but i swear to god every single one of them dies tragically so that's the next thing that we have to do like whether it's you know whether that's like a car crash whether that's in lip service whether that's anything else so i've noticed that kind of on twitter people that follow stonewall and and myself and others have now started ragging tv companies every time they have a lesbian die tragically and people have to cry over it so we're trying sort of externally to force there to be openly gay characters who actually survive so that's the next step for me so that's what i'm working on right now all right okay um jessica emory perth academy jessica yes here's jessica right that's your mic on jessica and do you everything full gender equality will be achieved if so how i think i have to believe it well i know i think we have to really be positive about this and assume it's going to happen because it has to happen we need to have an equal fair society but i think we're going to need to see legislation you know parliaments are probably going to have to legislate so that you can't put forward a slate of candidates that isn't gender balanced i think it's fair to say that my own party comes closest to achieving that at the moment but it's not just about saying we've said as a party if it's a winnable seat 50 percent of candidates have to be women and if it's a you know a seat in general it has to be 4040 at least but as well as that you have to put supportive mechanisms in place i think women do find it harder to get involved in all walks of life because they're still primary the primary carers whether it's children or older people you know lots of women are doing unpaid work that stops them getting involved there are barriers around women are simply less well off you know they're less affluent they're impacted more by cuts and so on so some of them don't have that choice so there's a lot that we have to do but i absolutely do believe i feel as if i'm seeing a change myself since i got involved in politics i think this is an issue that's been spoken a lot about more a lot more you know 10 years ago it just really wasn't an issue nobody would have said if there was a panel on tv nobody would have said well look at that panel of men in grey suits where as now people are challenging it even some men are challenging it and i think you know the film with Emma Watson that we saw earlier he for she you know i mean gender equality isn't about pitting the genders you know head to head it's about saying right let's work together so that all our children regardless of gender have got truly equal opportunities well yes like Alison i think we have to strive for it and i think we will get there but the pace of change is glacial at the moment as i said this morning i was um a 16 year old um in the early 1970s and we had the sex discrimination act and there was a great sense of excitement that things were going to change and things have not changed as much as they should have and some of that's our fault that we have taken a vie off the ball that we thought the problem was fixed with the legislation and actually we've got so many institutions that are institutionally biased that bring about gender balance much of the focus i've found in the last decade has been about fixing the women so as women are not confident enough women are not able don't come forward so we need to work with the women well yes there are some of those things that we need to do but the institutions themselves so the universities the colleges these places of power need to also change the way that they work so that they work for women and when we do that then we'll see women taking the rightful place but it's in your hands your young woman and you need to demand that you need to ask us to focus much more trisha said she wanted to hear from you today about what it is that we need to do here to make that change for you and to make the change work faster i have to believe that gender equality is possible but i am fed up waiting and there are generations of women that came before me that are fed up waiting to and how long are we going to have to wait are we just going to do something about it so just after the referendum allison johnston and i set up a campaign called women 50 50 allison voted yes i voted no and we thought straight after the referendum what we wanted to do was to say as two women we could unite together and talk about gender equality and changing the law so that this building this parliament would be 50 50 forever more so the campaign's about saying to parliament that you have to field 50 female candidates 50 male candidates just like they do in eight other european countries so that if this parliament was equal in terms of gender it would make better policy for the whole of the country and i think that would be a really important step and right now you've got you know nicolas sturgeon is our first minister which is fantastic and groundbreaking it's really really going to change young women's attitudes to their place in politics in the world you've got me sitting over there and leading the Labour party in here and Ruth over there speaking for the Tories three women at the front of politics in scotland that's fantastic but four well absolutely but i'm just talking about party politics but it won't always be that way trish one of us is going to screw up it's just a matter of time and then there'll only be two and then what happens so i think our legacy to parliament could be that we have a 50 50 parliament i similar to to the other three i have to believe it's going to happen i think it's to have true gender equality that it goes beyond having to make legislation it's that we've got to a stage where that's no longer needed to either protect empower support or promote um one of the things that makes me excited for the fact that the pace of change could speed up is that we're now seeing more women than men go to university more women than men joining some of the preserves that used to be male preserves or more women than men joining the medical profession more women than men now in britain anyway joining the legal profession and these are they're all gradual ways forward in which they were tearing down the walls but but why god it has been gradual um when i was 11 um margaret thatcher resigned and we got a new prime minister and my my best pals mom my school to my best pals after after school my best pals mom came in has told me that came in and said that the new prime minister was a a guy called john major and i turned to jill and said can a man even be prime minister because in my head i'd only ever known a woman we had the queen we had the prime minister and they were both women and i didn't know that a man could be we to get to the stage where you know hopefully having nicolas surgeon here you know that's a promotion of that and there will be young women going can a man even be first minister you know and we can start making it the norm rather than something that's that's um you know that's remarked upon or remarkable in and of itself and i hope that as we have more women going to university more women going into profession more women coming into politics at all of these other ways we can make this the norm so that it doesn't have to be something that is like i say supported promoted legislated all the rest of it we just get to win because by god we've been waiting long enough in order to win okay um i think it's Courtney layered from Wallace high school somebody layered yeah young lady here what's your name Courtney Courtney I was right do you think the most hurtful things it's said about other women actually come from other women the most hurtful things that are said um about women come from other women uh allison i think you're cutting off this time no i think some of them can be but i don't think the most hurtful things that have been said have to me have been said by other women but i do know that we don't support each other as much as we should and that we should really be much more supportive to each other and less condemnatory less willing to talk about superficial things and criticise other other friends and women on that way but i think for you it's much more difficult i think probably if you were on social media and on your own twitter then it might well be the case that some of the most vicious things are coming from other young women and and that would be that's something that you need to think about and we need to think about ourselves is that is that how you want your own daughters to talk to each other kes i said to this i think it was in our group we were talking about this earlier i think there's something about a society that teaches boys to hurt with their fists and teaches women to hurt with words so i think sometimes women can do more damage with words we get craftier with it we can be bitchier i don't think there's anything inevitable about it i don't think it's you know it doesn't have to be that way but i think because we are viewed as less violent we choose to do more harm with words so i try and be very very careful with the language i use i get it wrong sometimes totally but in the last few months i think we certainly look after each other and nicola and ruth in the last few weeks have looked after each other in particular when they're so exposed to the media yeah i mean i think i am similar to to kes and allison i think women can say the most hurtful things i think sometimes when it comes from another woman it can appear more hurtful to you sometimes i think to though that we have the opportunity to do things that inspire each other more that do the things that really build each other up rather than tear each other down i think some of the best in fact all of the really strong mentors or inspirations in my life whether they were school teachers sort of a you know a minister of mine whether it was um an elder co-worker of mine that really brought me on the people have really spent time with me people have really supported me the people have really pushed me when i was worried about whether i could do something or not they were all women and i've always tried to you know if somebody needs that extra hand to be able to spend the time with them because you know i absolutely fully sign up to and believe as trite as many people say it is that women are the stronger sex in terms of force of will in terms of resilience in terms of determination and in terms of warmth comfort love support we get this better than men we are better supporting each other if we choose to do so the men are we are more articulate we are able to inspire better and i think that each and every one of you has a choice to make many times over in your own life about which road you go down it's whether you tear people down or whether you build them up and i hope everyone in this room chooses to build people up alas we had a discussion about this in one of the the group i was with first this morning and i think the young woman in that group felt that young women weren't necessarily more unkind that they'd had some really you know unpleasant experiences at the hands of young men and they felt it was more of a personality thing an individual choice rather than than a gender one maybe we're more surprised and horrified when we could be supporting other women and we're actually attacking them even if it's verbally because a lot of these names they do kind of stick in your head and you can't get rid of them so i think we need to we need to challenge each other to expect better behaviour and just say you know why would you say that are you feeling a bit low yourself today what's making you you know attack me in that manner do you want to have a chat about this because i really think we could do better than this so i wouldn't accept it i would challenge it because we can get to a situation where supporting one another is the norm and i've been well supported i probably would say again in particular by women throughout my career not to say there haven't been some supportive men but i think the support we can get from one another is truly worth working for so do you challenge anything that's less than supportive also if you answered that one yeah you did it i started with you right i'm seara cunningham castlehead high school seara show me your hand right i say this to my right so nice that's excellent thanks seara um who inspires you the most in your life and why root kes i wanted to but i wondered if they'd asked that who's the most inspirational figure i thought you're gonna ask about computer games we had a good chat earlier about women in doing computer programming um the women it's most inspired me politically is dorine lorrance so um that's where i found my politics was around the death of a guy called steven lorrance he was he was killed in the 90s by a gang of white boys in in london and then she fought back and ran a campaign for the best part of 20 years to prove that the police were institutionally racist and and i did my modern studies projects on it at school and i was interested in it all the way through my law degree and all the way through my life because she managed to take on the system in such a dignified and rational and human way it just it has always inspired me and now she's a how she's in the house of lords she's barnes dorine lorrance and you know i want to get rid of the house of lords it's an archaic institution but my god i'm glad she's there and i just think she's an incredibly inspirational woman if you're not familiar with the story you should google it after today ruth um i guess i was a bit of a weirder growing up and i always kind of like books um more than people and they sort of inspired me so that the biggest inspirations i had growing up were fictional characters one of them was the fictional character of henry the fifth and the shakespeare play and the other one was the fictional character of attacons finch in uh to kill a mockingbird and the thing that that unites them both is they're both about um doing what is right no matter how difficult that is and staying true to your own beliefs and not letting external pressures stop you and what you believe that it is that you should do and i think that's something that everybody should try to live up to if if we're talking about certain politics and real life politicians that are alive today um i guess that the person that i would point to is a woman who leads a country in africa she leads liberia her name is ellen johnson surleaf she um became the president of liberia um and she she had a really tough leadership campaign um she's from liberia she went over and studied in the states was very eminent i think she was a she was an accountant first and then an economist and she came back because she wanted to help her country because her her country was was broken and bleeding and she she ended up running against the most famous footballer that liberia had ever produced a guy called george wea who played in the english premiership and like all the media were interested in him he was wanting to do this kind of as a feather in his cap um in terms of being the most he was the most famous african footballer at the time he just required retired and she won because she went from village to village and set up women in the villages that wanted to vote for mama ellen and it was about being the the sort of embodying the motherhood of our country now liberia is a tough country you know there have been some mistakes that she's made she's she's you know it's it's it's a really really difficult region to operate in with the the the sort of countries that are around it but in terms of how you run a campaign how you empower women who was always seen as second class citizens um who didn't always vote sometimes who gave their votes to the men in their families to vote on their behalf she ran the most fantastic campaign and was the first female democratically elected leader over there and is you know an absolute inspiration for how she managed it allison i'm going to mention another african woman and it's interesting maybe it's because they've had to face such adversity but one gari matai who was a kenyon woman who founded the green belt movement and she started doing that because when the floods came to her to her neighborhood all the produce and everything was being swept away because clearances he just meant there wasn't a tree in sight and she just got a group of women and at first the authorities told them that they didn't even have the know-how to plant a tree and that they needed to go on a special course really i'm not making this up and she got these kenyon women together and they planted thousands of trees and sort of re-established agriculture and were able to make a living from themselves and she went from a really very ordinary impoverished background to becoming a professor and won the nabell peace prize so she's someone who you know who's aims very much at the four of my heart and there's a group of kenyon scots in Edinburgh who meet quite regularly and do a bit of you know planting with them just getting together and sort of reminding ourselves about her legacy and how it's one that could apply to you know a community near you really allison i draw a lot of inspiration from a writer called Maya Angelou who was an activist in America she's worked alongside Martin Luther King she overcame great personal adversity and went on to be a great writer singer actress and i often turned to her words to find a way through difficult situations politically i would say Shirley Williams who's of a different generation again but a woman who set up comprehensive schools that you all will now go to and who's in the liberals and has always championed the individual dignity of people from whichever gender they are but you know what the more i look around and the more i do this job the more i see inspirational women every single day and they're there in your community just look around you look in your schools look in your communities and you'll see people who are doing all sorts of things against the odds and doing it well um we've got one final question um there's no name here um but it's somebody from Danone grammar school um if you're three genuine real wishes anything at all what would you do for teenage girls in today's society who's to start with that one i knew we'd always leave the hard runs to lend all right even one wish what what do you wish for these young women have the strength to know deep down that there is nothing that they can't do but in terms of wishes of things that we can practically do to make things better i think that they're one of the things that i would like to see um a lot of of change in is um won the representation of women in mainstream media so that's some of the things that you're talking about earlier in terms of magazine articles televisions all the rest of it and actually one of the other things that i would i'd quite like to see and and i might not be able to articulate this very well so please bear with me um i think with the advent of video on like mobile phones and tablets and stuff one of the things that's really difficult um is because there's so much pornograph porn around and people watch it all the time and it's funny and people show it to each other in class and all the rest of it i think there's a real difficulty for young boys as well as young women growing up of what is expected of them when they start having relationships and what and how you treat each other in that and even what you're supposed to look like in some ways oh my god there's hair wow who knew um but i mean i think there's a real real difficulty in terms of the sort of self-respect that you have to have in what other people expect of you and some of the names that you're called growing up if you don't do certain things some of the names that you're called if you do do certain things and the pressure that young women and young men have now is so much more than it was you know even when i was at high school when those pressures were there but they're they're much much stronger and with with things like you know sort of texting photos being sent around schools texting videos being sent around schools as well as stuff that you see on root tube or any of these other sort of or pornhub or any of these other sites as well i think the sexualisation that happens really dense a lot of young people's self-respect and what is expected of themselves in their own communities and and i think that's something that nobody is articulating but it's a conversation that we need to have more widely. One of the adolescents. Go for it. I have a teenage daughter and i think if i was to wish anything for her and for you all here i think resilience you know when i go to parents night i'm not so i think leaving school with the ability to bounce back from the difficult situations that you will encounter is massively important you know if you know that you're managing to get through your workload and so on and you're getting your your courses all okay i think school should be about more than that it really should equip you with the tools to bounce back to dare to fail to not be afraid of making mistakes but i would wholeheartedly agree with what ruth said if there's one thing we could challenge in society because i read the figures about bullying this morning it's absolutely horrendous and it's not like the bullying we were subjected to at school i think it's worse because it's more insidious a lot of it's invisible we've heard stories of you know young people who are quite happily walking along the road to school and then they get that text message and they instantly feel sick afraid ashamed just horrible and it's how we go about tackling that culture because you know we're hearing more and more about young people who are self harming feeling suicidal it's having an impact on their whole life so i'd like to have more of a conversation with you about how best to address it is about simply not having access to that technology at school although then there's all the hours out with i think we need to have a big grown-up conversation about how we tackle bullying in this day and age allison i'd like you to walk out of here with your heads held high and to have a sense that you will be true to yourselves and and that you will all believe that there's an individual within you that has the ability to succeed i believe that firmly that everyone has something that they have to give to our community that you will actually actively be involved in the community in making the change that we need to see that you will come and participate in society and in your local community and demand the changes that you need to see kiz i'd agree with that i think it's about seeing the things in the world that make you angry and not just accepting them but recognising that you as an individual and as a collective have the power to change it sometimes that's a political action sometimes that i mean you know we've got examples of that in the room today you can make a real difference but the one thing i'd like to see an end to is this idea that there's jobs for the boys and jobs for the girls it's existed for decades but it's now an economic comparative that we address it because the jobs of the future you've heard me talk about this already today we're going to come from science technology engineering and mass the things that women are least likely to do if we don't help you break down those barriers and access to those jobs you'll be locked out of the future that you're entitled to we simply cannot put up with only 3% of our engineers in scotland being women i met somebody in this room today i can't see them just now who when asked what do you want to do in your work experience at school said they want to go and work on a construction site and they were told by their teacher they couldn't do that like that makes me so angry i want to change it and none of you should face any of those barriers this idea that there's jobs for the boys and jobs for the girls okay can i thank you all very much and can i thank you for the questions i think it's been an absolutely fantastic day thank you all for coming i hope you have been inspired as much as we have been inspired by you your diligence your attention the questions your work within the workshops we have got in front of us an absolutely fantastic young group of women and i know you're going to do brilliant things in the future can you join me in thanking our politicians kestard deal roof davison alice mckinnis and alice johnson and our inspirational woman cara amal calida and in addition pamela gillis who is here today and louise mcdonald who was here earlier today we helped it in the workshops thank you very much this is the first conference we've had i would like to pay special thanks to the scottish parliament's own staff the women across the parliament from various different jobs who have come together who have mentored you who have gone out to your schools and who have helped on the day they've been absolutely wonderful i think they have shown the scottish parliament and the scottish parliament's women's staff in the best possible light so can i pay my personal thanks to the staff of the scottish parliament for all of the work that you've done putting on this event today thank you and can i thank you of course all the parliamentary staff even the ones that aren't women for the work that they have done today i think it's been absolutely fantastic thank you so much for coming um safe journey home but before we break up i understand that andrew our photographer um wants a photograph so andrew i'm sorry we don't have a female photographer but andrew i'm working on it um andrew don't be bad to andrew andrew's going to take a photograph now when andrew tells you to do something you do it right and i'll tell you why it gets the pain over and done with and we just do exactly what we're told um we don't have any place about so andrew would you like to organise us all for the photograph okay can i ask everyone in the two centre sections if you could stay for yard but people in this section if you could move into the spaces there's plenty room behind the seats and people in this section as well if you're able to move just into the spaces behind is somebody in the two centre sections here yes sure quite a bit of space in the centre but just to introduce the funds if you want to come down come down as well if you can build the centre of space here the centre walkway so the pictures are from there