Readers' Letters: Scotland must get serious about women and create a system that welcomes them in, not keep them out

Forbes may have raised a chuckle at the Scotland 2050 conference with her anecdote about pregnancy nausea cutting short a budget meeting, but behind the laughter was a stubborn truth: our institutions still treat women’s needs – whether physical, emotional or practical – as inconveniences.

More than a century after the first woman MP was elected, women in politics are still made to justify their biology, their family life and often, their very presence.

I’m not a mother, but as a woman who has been in public life, I’ve seen too many brilliant women step back – or never step forward – because the cost is too high. And every time a mother is pushed out by a system that won’t bend, it sends a message to the rest of us: don’t ask for too much, don’t take up space, and be grateful you’re allowed in at all.

The Holyrood crèche is held up as a symbol of progress, but three hours of childcare, three days a week, is not a family-friendly workplace. It’s window dressing. Now, with the Scottish Government closing its Victoria Quay nursery, we’re not moving forwards – we’re going backwards.

This isn’t about nurseries. It’s about power. When women’s basic needs are treated as optional extras, it tells us everything we need to know about how welcome we really are

Society still doesn’t support women. Full stop.

If Scotland is serious about its future, then it must get serious about women and create a system that welcomes us in, not keeps us out. That means childcare that actually works, a social care system that values its workforce and zero tolerance for misogyny – online, in the media and on the chamber floor.

Anything less is just noise.

Elizabeth Carr-Ellis, Tayport, Fife

Dualling ideas

I rarely disagree with Brian Wilson's viewpoints, but like so many commentators – and so many politicians – he fails to set delays in A9 dualling in a wider transport context (“Fergus Ewing, man who gave devolution a kick up the A9”, 21 June).

In all the furore over dualling, barely a mention has been made of the scope to substantially upgrade the parallel railway – reducing carbon emissions, and cutting deaths and injuries on the road. The A9 to Inverness was completely rebuilt in the 1970s and ’80s – and is nowhere less than two-lane, with substantial stretches of dual carriageway – yet two-thirds of the Highland Main Line from Perth remain single-track, and its infrastructure capacity today is less than it was 40 years ago.

Over the last decade, Scottish Government investment in the railway has been a very modest £57 million (spent on minor upgrades at Aviemore and Pitlochry), whereas £451m has been sunk in the A9. A total estimated bill of £3.7 billion is planned for road dualling, but pledges to significantly upgrade the railway have been conveniently forgotten.

In 2008, First Minister Alex Salmond made a commitment to reduce train journey times between Inverness and Edinburgh to at least two hours 45 minutes, and an average of three hours, with the aim of making “railway travel to the heart of the Highlands, in terms of time, competitive with roads… by a mixture of projects, including line improvement, additional passing loops, double-tracking and signalling upgrades… the timescale for implementation is 2011-12”.

Nearly 17 years later, the average train journey time between Inverness and Glasgow/Edinburgh is three hours 32 minutes, and the fastest is three hours 18 minutes. This failure to encourage a switch from road to rail is scandalous.

David Spaven, Comrie, Perth and Kinross

Who is the enemy?

The Scotsman letters page, June 21, published the usual one-sided diatribes from readers Crawford Mackie and Ken Gow heaping blame on only Israel. This is grossly unfair.

The current plight of the Palestinians was initiated by Iran's proxy Hamas on October 7, 2023. The reason we need Donald Trump to intervene in Iran is because otherwise it will gain nuclear weapons sooner rather than later.

Given that Iran has been fomenting trouble in the Middle East since the Ayatollahs took over in 1979 then one question is pertinent. Who is more likely to bring genuine peace to the region, Israel or Iran?

Only the hard left want Iran to emerge victorious and that would spell disaster for Europe as well as America. Israel is not the only target in Iran’s sights. Suggesting the Scottish government block flights that aid Israel is very short sighted indeed but don’t ask the Scottish Greens who seem to only see red when it comes to Israel.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Strange days

Palestine Action stage a protest at an RAF base and the Home Secretary announces she plans to proscribe them.

The IDF slaughters in excess of 55,000 Palestinians and we give them armaments and surveillance assistance! In the US, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified before congress in March that Iran had a stock of materials but was not building nuclear weapons.

President Trump did not challenge this but just a day or so ago said she was “wrong” and that intelligence showed Iran had a “tremendous amount of material” and could have a nuclear weapon “within months”. Ms Gabbard has now made a statement to the effect that Iran could produce nuclear weapons “within weeks” and that her March testimony (which seemed crystal clear at the time) had been taken out of context by “dishonest media”! To paraphrase the Doors from 1967 – strange days indeed!

Alan Woodcock, Dundee

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