Dr Fiona McKay
University of Strathclyde
Lecturer and Programme Director of Journalism at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Her interests relate to media, gender and politics, with a focus on the representation and experiences of women politicians and journalists in the Scottish context.
Email: fiona.mckay@strath.ac.u
Melody House
PhD candidate studying gender representation in the media at University of Strathclyde. Her research explores how topics such as sexual violence, politics, and celebrity are discussed in the media.
Email: melody.house@strath.ac.uk
UK Election 2024
Section 3: The nations and regions
25. Have voters fallen out of love with the SNP? (Dr Lynn Bennie)
26. The spectre of Sturgeon still looms large in gendered coverage in Scotland (Melody House, Dr Fiona McKay)
27. The personalisation of Scottish politics in a UK General Election (Dr Michael Higgins, Dr Maike Dinger)
28. Competence, change and continuity: a tale of two nations (Dr Will Kitson)
29. Election success, but problems remain for Labour in Wales (Dr Nye Davies)
30. Four ways in which Northern Ireland’s own seismic results will affect the new Parliament (Prof Katy Hayward)
31. Bringing People together or pulling them apart? What Facebook ads say about the NI campaign (Dr Paul Reilly)
32. A New Dawn For Levelling Up? (Prof Arianna Giovannini)
33. Who defines Britain? National identity at the heart of the 2024 UK General Election (Dr Tabitha Baker)
This election saw an historic milestone for women in politics, not just in the UK, but in Scotland, with the biggest representation of women MPs in history: a record breaking 40.6% (a jump from the previous record of 34.2% in 2019). In Scotland’s case, it didn’t quite meet the UK’s benchmark overall, but there was still a positive shift with 20 women elected, making it 35.1% of the total 57 seats, despite the fact that in Scotland, fewer women candidates were put forward than in 2019. These figures compare favourably to the 18 elected in 2019 (30.5%), and 19 sitting (32.2%) by 2023. As Fowler and Hanretty remind us, the last time there was a large swing from Conservative to Labour in 1997, this also brought a substantial rise in women’s descriptive representation. Though widely celebrated at the time, the moniker ‘Blair’s Babes’ was quickly bestowed upon the women by the UK press, speaking to the complexity and often pejorative gendered reporting women have experienced at the hands of the British media. This time around, however, an increased representation of women was met with much less fanfare in the mainstream news coverage, including Scotland. Gender and politics organisations and experts, such as Professor Rainbow Murray, rightly celebrated this gain with a pinch of salt: the election was a “good day for women’s representation in politics” but “not entirely rosy”, reiterating that an overall shift in figures was only part of the story.
Examination of the diversity of the women elected presents a more nuanced – and less positive – picture as there were no women of colour elected in Scotland (and just one man of colour). This provides some context for the findings of preliminary research conducted by the University of Strathclyde which explores the representation of women of colour in Scottish election coverage. Undertaken on behalf of Pass the Mic, an organisation dedicated to championing women of colour in Scottish media, initial research sees women of colour appear in a meagre 1.5% of the election coverage in the four weeks leading to election day. This includes candidates, commentators and the wider public who appear in election stories in the Scottish press and TV channels. This ongoing work shows that women of colour are not only under-represented in UK politics in Scotland descriptively, but also in the wider Scottish public sphere. This is reflected in the lower proportion of women we found in the Scottish election coverage overall (23.9%), echoing similar trends found in UK-wide analyses.
When women did appear in the coverage, the story often centred on their gender (and in the few instances of women of colour MPs, their race), for example, The Herald’s profile of Scottish Greens candidate Iris Duane, who would have been the first trans woman of colour MP. Commentary otherwise focused on the lack of women, both in the leadership debates where, notably, Scotland’s only female leader Lorna Slater was excluded from the STV line-up, or as candidates, noted by the Ferret Scotland. The resignation of Nicola Sturgeon helped occasion the shift away from the praiseworthy ‘female face’ of Scottish leadership for the previous decade. The first debate drew comments on social media that it gave off “manel [man-only panel] vibes” alongside the Scotsman’s Susan Dalgety deeming it a “man-fest” saying the election campaign in Scotland “ha[d] placed women back lurking in the political equivalent of the kitchen”. This follows on the increasing focus on leadership in news coverage at the expense of parties and candidates, made all the more perverse by the fact that most Scottish leaders participating (apart from Douglas Ross) were not even standing in the election, a point made by Higgins and Dinger in this volume.
Most of the gendered media coverage in Scotland focused on Sturgeon – still as a key figure in the campaign, despite no longer being First Minister – or else discussion related to the sensitive topic of trans rights. Sturgeon’s role in the cataclysmic setback that the SNP incurred (which lost a “damaging” 38 seats) has since been a point of contention across the media in Scotland, particularly after her role as a pundit on ITV’s live election night coverage. This has included focus on her role in the misuse of party funds and even more so on her and the party’s stance related to the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. These localised debates took centre stage, crowding out space for coverage on candidates and meaningful information on a wider range of gendered policies and concerns for voters. In doing so, arguably, this gives a false sense that gendered issues are sufficiently represented in the Scottish public sphere, while perpetuating narratives affixed to female politicians that they nurse a political fixation on issues around gender. Although there has been a positive shift in the representation of women in Parliament, this hasn’t been reflected in the proportion of media coverage of women, with the Scottish media distracted from its own issues with diversity. It has an ongoing responsibility to reflect on its practices to better represent the communities it serves.
