Scottish Parliament removes male/female MSP data from website

The Scottish Parliament has removed information on whether MSPs are male or female from its website.

Until this week, the official site provided an option to list MSPs by factors including party affiliation and gender.

Last session, the options were male or female. After the return of the first transgender MSPs in the 7 May election, that was expanded to include a nonbinary option for Q Manivannan, with Green partymate Iris Duane included in the female list.

The facility has now been removed altogether in a change that also applies to MSPs from previous sessions, prompting complaint from some campaigners.

For Women Scotland – the organisation which established through the Supreme Court that ‘male’ and ‘female’ in the Equality Act refers to sex, not gender – said that “the option to search for female MSPs vanished overnight, and along with it, the record of women’s current and historical representation in parliament”.

The group said: “We are calling for women’s representation to be visible again on the parliament’s website. Women are 51 per cent of the population and our parliament should reflect that fact. Women count… so count women.”

Academic Dr Kath Murray, of policy collective Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, said the change had the effect of “obscuring” female representation.

A Scottish Parliament spokesperson said: “As part of the Inclusive Parliament Review, our systems and processes are currently under review. The online filter function on our website is a legacy system and we have taken steps to remove it.

“The review will also consider what personal information on members we need to publish and in what format.”