A FEW weeks ago, Engender released a report making the case for gender quotas in Scotland’s parliament, councils, and public sector boardrooms. It caused a bit of a stir, as calls for quotas often do.

People, understandably, want the people who sit in our parliament and council chambers to be elected on merit. So do we. But right now women are being kept out of Holyrood and other decision-making spaces because of factors that have nothing to do with our ability to do the job.

Quotas are a deliberate disruption of deep-rooted assumptions about who should have power and who shouldn’t.

They provide a jolt to systems and ways of working that yield an over-representation of men in political life.

Quotas cut through one of the barriers to our representatives looking more like the people that they represent.

Of course, things have changed a little, and they’ve changed most of all in our Scottish Parliament.

Four of Scotland’s five major parties are led or co-led by women, our First Minister is a woman, and she leads our first gender-balanced cabinet. People, generally, recognise that this is a good thing.

We know that having more women’s voices involved means decisions are taken with a deeper understanding of those they will affect. Having more women around the table changes the conversation.

Opponents of quotas may be surprised to learn that Scotland only has the number of women in parliament it does through gender-balancing mechanisms like all-women shortlists and political accidents.

As we move closer to the Scottish Parliament elections, we’ve been looking at where the parties stand in terms of women’s representation on regional lists and for constituency seats.

It’s no surprise that the three parties which use gender balancing mechanisms, the SNP, Labour and the Greens, are the three parties that are hitting or getting close to the target of 50 per cent women candidates.

The Conservatives and Lib Dems, who selected candidates for this election without taking gender into account, are lagging woefully behind on women’s representation. It’s not just about elected representatives, of course. Parties in Scotland need to be doing much more to ensure equal participation of women at all levels of political activity; challenging the often macho culture which exists in meetings, rethinking the way processes and systems work, and bringing women’s voices into policy development.

Despite it being a recommendation of the Smith Commission, electoral and equalities law – which would allow the Scottish Parliament to set political quotas – has not been devolved to Scotland.

What the Scottish Government will be able to do with the devolved powers which are coming, is to set quotas for public boards.

While this is one small part of the larger problem of engaging women in public life, increasing women’s representation on boards is a key way to see the benefits of changing the composition of leadership teams.

We hope all parties will be pledging to set quotas for public boards in the new parliamentary term.

Until the powers to set parliamentary quotas is devolved, it’s up to political parties to embed measures for women’s representation.

With the local elections coming up in 2017, and the current level of women councillors in Scotland sitting at 23 per cent it is a vital time for parties to take the issue of women’s equality in politics seriously.

We’ll be watching.

Emma Ritch

Emma Ritch is the executive director of Engender, Scotland’s feminist organisation

I REFER to the reports “PM is urged to tell the truth over US nuclear exports”, The National April 6) and the report referring to the same plans to transport 750 kg of uranium from Dounreay to the US and for another type of uranium to be returned from the US to Europe to be used in the manufacture of medical isotopes (Enriched uranium from ex-Soviet site part of UK-US deal, The National, April 7).

Both these plans, hatched in total secrecy by the UK and US Governments and announced at a nuclear summit in Washington last week are totally irresponsible and unnecessary – there is no shortage of medical isotopes in Europe.

Since 2013, HANT (Highlands Against Nuclear Transport) has been campaigning to stop the transport of any nuclear waste from Dounreay arguing that the current safest solution to deal with the stockpile of waste at Dounreay is to store it on site under constant security and monitoring and more information about HANT can be found on its website: hant.co.uk

The long-term UK plan is to build a new underground depository for waste but this plan has been thwarted for many years as no community in the UK has agreed to host such a facility.

Sellafield is the destination for most waste from Dounreay and transports have already started by sea and rail despite the absence of an Emergency Towing Vessel on the west coast and with the Far North Line described as not fit for purpose.

And now yet another announcement which was made without any information being provided to the Dounreay Stakeholder Group or to any local authority in the Highlands and Islands – and this time both air and sea transport are being considered.

This demonstrates a contempt by the current UK Government for local democracy and any scrutiny of the proposed plans and Caithness MP Paul Monaghan has rightly called for “full transparency”. Mr Monaghan was the keynote speaker at HANT’s recent AGM and provided a useful insight into current UK and Scottish Government nuclear and nuclear waste policies.

As a member of CND and a prominent participant with the First Minister at the recent anti-Trident demo in London he is right to be concerned about the end us of the uranium and wanting guarantees that it will not be used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

HANT would now urge him to take the next logical step which would be to demand a halt to all movements of nuclear waste so that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority can finally reveal what waste remains at Dounreay and what it plans to do with it.

The drip feed of information every few months from the NDA and now directly from the Prime Minister is not transparent or open - a claim made by the nuclear industry.

The risks involved with these transports are well documented and the consequences of any accident would be catastrophic for the environment and industries reliant on a pollution free land, air and sea.

HANT’s concerns are shared by many campaigning groups including Friends of the Earth Scotland and CORE (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment) and in the US by Savannah River Site Watch in Tennessee which is where the uranium will be sent if the deal proceeds

This is now an imminent threat to Scotland and HANT calls on all concerned individuals and groups to raise this matter with their MPs to halt this dangerous and undemocratic deal.

Tor Justad, Chair of Highlands Against Nuclear Transport

HOLYROOD should be renovated into flats for asylum seekers.

Egg, Edinburgh via text

LIKE many in my southside community, I was shocked by the tragic murder of Asad Shah.

To learn that the motive for his murder was religious intolerance is troubling (Man accused of killing shopkeeper issues statement, The National, April 7).

But we must put this in context.

We live in a city with a sad history of religiously-motivated violence. Without in anyway minimising the role of religion in this case, we must be careful not to conflate it with wider conflicts.

The positive story here is of a community pulling together. This gives us hope.

David Carr, Govanhill, Glasgow