Breakthroughs and Backlash

In the final episode, Kirsty Wark explores the devolution era and discovers what happens when women take the lead and seize control of the megaphone – in politics, in communities and in the workplace. During these years, there have been many breakthroughs to celebrate, some of which Kirsty discusses when meeting our first female first minister, Nicola Sturgeon.
But as their conversation reveals, such breakthroughs have frequently been accompanied by a backlash: as more women have put their heads above the parapet, they have also had to face new forms of hostility, including threats and abuse on social media and the manipulation of new technologies to coerce and control.
In her exploration of these highs and lows, Kirsty meets with women who campaigned passionately and persistently for better representation in the new Scottish Parliament, and celebrates the fact that more women were elected to represent Scotland on a single day in 1999 than had been elected over the 80 years since women were first eligible to stand for parliament. She goes on to explore how having more women in positions of political power has transformed all of our lives – whether through shining a light on period poverty, or passing new domestic abuse legislation which is now revered as a global gold standard. She also speaks to women who, in different ways, have put Scotland and its history on the map, reclaiming our past as well as our present. At Doune Castle, one of the filming locations for the TV series Outlander, she meets Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series of novels, to discuss the boost that the ‘Outlander Effect' has given to Scotland's tourist industry.
Kirsty also hears from Scottish nursery nurses who, in 2003, began what would become the largest and longest all-out strike since the miner's strike of the 1980s and asks what this strike can tell us about how the caring work traditionally done by women is valued in our society. But the nursery nurses weren't the only women to find their voice in recent years, as Kirsty discovers when she seeks out a new generation of young Scottish activists who continue to push for change. These include Pinar Aksu who fights for the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, and Back Off Scotland's Alice Murray and Lucy Grieve who are responding to anti-abortion protests by campaigning for buffer zones to be established around women's healthcare facilities.