Advice for dealing with negative comments about your looks from the women of the Scottish cabinet

Women clearly get more of a hard time than men in the media in relation to their looks and what they are wearing, how do you deal with that kind of attention?

RC: The only way you can, really - develop a thick skin.

AC: I don’t bother much about positive or negative comments as I dress to please myself. For me, I have a genuine interest in clothes and I admire the skills and creativity behind the fashion industry. For me, clothes and your attire are an important part of self-expression and I suppose it’s also a way of putting on your armour to face the world.

FH: I try and ignore it – I am more concerned about what my teenage daughter says.

SR: That’s difficult and often quite unpleasant, particularly on social media where people think they can make derogatory comments about your appearance with impunity. I block them!

NS: If the media are going to comment on what I wear then I use that opportunity to promote young Scottish designers – what annoys me is the derogatory comments and the impact they might have on other younger women and girls thinking about entering public life.

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Q&A with Scotland's female cabinet members part 1: have they ever played the 'woman's card' to get on in life? 

Q&A with the female cabinet members part 3: is feminism still relevant?

Shona Robison, Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Sport: I think it enables you to have a better understanding of some of the societal barriers and attitudes facing you which can hold you back, which gives you an empathy with others who may face similar barriers.

Nicola Sturgeon, The First Minister of Scotland: It doesn’t make me more qualified but I think with more women in senior positions the impact of inequality on women has moved further up the agenda.

Does being a woman qualify you to understand issues of inequality any better than anyone else?

Roseanna Cunningham, Cabinet Secretary for Fair Work, Skills and Training: Some issues, maybe, but I think that can be overstated!

Angela Constance, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning: No, not necessarily, although I do think in some instances it can give you a better insight.

Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Europe and External Affairs: It gives me a perspective about power and inequality that men may not have. For most of my childhood, I was brought up by my mum on her own and that gave me an acute awareness of the challenges of inequality.

Do you think women need to ape men to get on? 

RC: Not now, no - but that would have been seen as more necessary in the past.

AC: No, I think it’s really important that women aren’t just men in dresses – mind you, I would never rule out playing men at their own game (Lol)!

FH: No – and they shouldn’t, but for many women in different fields, that is easier said than done.

SR: No, I think in politics it’s not necessary to be more aggressive than men and indeed by approaching things differently [you] can have broader appeal. Having said that, politics is not for shrinking violets, people come into politics to effect change and get their political point across as well and robustly as possible. 

NS: In my early career I thought that you had to fit in, and being in politics that meant fitting in with the men who dominated politics when I started out. But as you grow more comfortable in what you do and in your role, you learn to do it your way and be comfortable with it.

Growing up, were you aware that there were obvious differences between the way girls and boys were treated?

RC: Yes. It was very obvious in the 60s and 70s.

AC: Yes. I was born in 1970, so being a child in the 1970s and a teenager in the 1980s, you were very aware that there were different issues and expectations around risk, freedom and stereotyping. I grew up in an era when boys were still given more freedom than girls and some of that was around the perceived vulnerability of women. It wasn’t uncommon for me to have school friends complain about having to help out more at home rather than their brothers and their brothers being given more freedom to go out at night or at the weekends.

FH: Yes, there were separate gym and sewing classes for girls at school. Girls were ridiculed for daring to be first finished in science experiments.

SR: Yes, 1970s working-class village life in Scotland was a different place than it is now. There weren’t as many women working as role models and although encouraged to do well by supportive parents and teachers, there were limits in the expectations on the type of job you would have. That has really changed for my daughter who thinks she can be anything she wants to be!

NS: When it came to secondary school there were certain classes which were meant for the boys (technical drawing) and girls (home economics), but once you got to choose your own subjects in third year, it really was up to you. But there was no getting away from the fact more boys were steered towards science and engineering careers, while girls were all about languages and secretarial subjects.

How important was your own mother or other women in your family in terms of influencing your own feelings about what you, as a woman, could achieve?

RC: My mother never had a career or a profession but she fought very hard to ensure I got to stay on at school. Without her making that stand I’d have been out of school at 15. She cleaned people’s houses and always said it was so I didn’t have to!  So, although she wasn’t a role model in the way people think of that, she was absolutely pivotal to any successes I had in my life. She always supported me in whatever it was I wanted to do.

AC: My mother was absolutely central in terms of ensuring that I stuck in at school. On more than one occasion she had very blunt discussions with me about why you need a good education. It was certainly her who instilled in me the ambition to go to university and to be the first person in my family to go to university. I come from a traditional working-class family and my mother has always worked and I have seen her struggles with childcare, low paid work and heavy caring work that has had an impact on her own health. At times she was a single parent so she had to overcome a lot and work very hard for her family, and the one thing she absolutely did instil in all her children was that work ethic.

FH: Very important. My mum was widowed when I was five, and brought up my brother and me for most of our childhoods on her own. One of my proudest moments was when she graduated with a nursing degree from university, aged 60.

SR: My mum is a very intelligent woman who had to leave school at 14 due to her circumstances at the time but who saw education as a way out of poverty and a way of having independence as a woman. She always talked about me going to university from a young age and was very aspirational for my future. I was the first in my family to get a degree.

NS: My parents encouraged me to pursue my aims and not to be put off. My mum has been incredibly supportive from the start and has ended up following me into politics.