Why I will be thinking of my two grannies this International Women's Day

At the event, Scottish Minister Kirsty McNeill told the women present to think about the women who had come before them and made the changes possible to allow women today to lead the lives they do.

This is something I think about a lot as a woman working in politics. While there is still evidently a long way to go, there are lots of women of all ages and backgrounds wandering the corridors of power in Holyrood.

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The parliament’s presiding officer is a woman. Several cabinet ministers are women. There are countless other women working in the building in a range of non-elected positions.

That would not have been the case in the not-so-distant past. I am well aware that not so long ago, my own presence in parliament would have been an anomaly.

All of this has got me thinking about my two grannies, Helen and Isabel.

Both died before I started working in parliament, but I wonder how they would be reflecting on the impact their lives had on me getting to lead the life I enjoy now.

In some ways these two women were very similar, and yet completely different at the same time. Both had their own unique resilience and determination as women that I hope I can in some way emulate myself.

My granny Helen spent her entire life in Pitlochry. She was incredibly well known and well liked in the town, to the point where some people still know me as “Helen’s granddaughter”, even though she died 18 years ago.

My cousin once described her as the “perfect granny” because she was exactly how a child would build one from scratch if they could.

I only ever heard stories about one of the most challenging points in her life - when my mum was young, my granny had a brain haemorrhage and had to learn to live a different life afterwards. How difficult this must have been is probably something I never truly appreciated as a child looking up at my granny.

She and grandad had a small family - just mum and I. I have managed to trace one line of her family back to the late 1700s, where they came from Ross-shire and Lewis. As of 1900, which is really not that long before she was born, the family only spoke Gaelic and were illiterate.

It only took a generation to master the English language and lose the ability to speak Gaelic in return.

My granny Isabel on the other hand moved around Perthshire a lot as a child as her family worked on farms. I always remember her telling me her teachers would take whatever she made in home economics to eat themselves because she was the only one during rationing that had real eggs.

Once she was old enough, she went off to join the Wrens (women’s branch of the Royal Navy).

There are times in my line of work where I am the only woman in the room, which does draw some parallels to what my granny would have experienced 75 years ago.

She had a large family - I have actually lost track of just how many grandchildren and great-grandchildren there are now.

Two different lives, and it feels wrong to distil such important legacies down into just a few sentences, but I will be thinking of them this weekend.