By Stephen Holden Bates.
The Scottish Parliament’s Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee (SPPA) is currently running an inquiry on committee effectiveness with a number of usual (and sometimes unusual) suspects appearing to give evidence. One theme of the inquiry is the structure of committees with SPPA already agreeing that “as a minimum, there should be no single sex committees”. Below I offer a snapshot view of the gendered membership patterns found in the Scottish committee system[ii]. Female MSPS are underrepresented, although sometimes only by a relatively small amount, across the system as a whole in all positions except those which are most junior, where they are overrepresented. Female MSPs are also unevenly spread across the committees. This unevenness, I argue, is problematic and unlikely to be solved unless more radical reforms than currently proposed by SPPA are implemented, such as those recommended in the Scottish Parliament’s 2023 Gender Sensitive Audit (GSA) Report.
Female MSPs in the Committee System
In April 2025, the proportion of committee convenors (chairs) who were female was 37.5% and the proportion of Deputy Convenors was 33.3%, while 42.7% of non-government MSPs were female. Compared to the data published in May 2024 by the Scottish Parliament as part of its commitment to ensuring equal representation and participation, the April 2025 figures show a decrease in female Convenors (from 53%) and an increase in female Deputy Convenors (from 21%).
With regard to members and substitute members (MSPs who cover for committee members of the same party when they are unavailable), the proportion of committee places and substitute positions across the whole system filled by female MSPs was 40.2% and 50.9% respectively.
Given the number of committees and committee positions and the relatively small size of the Scottish Parliament, many MSPs have to sit on more than one committee. When substitute positions are excluded, the average male and female MSP sits on 1.35 and 1.29 committees respectively, suggesting that male MSPs have the (slightly) heavier committee workload. However, when substitute positions are included, a different picture emerges with the average male and female MSP sitting on 1.78 and 1.85 committees respectively.
Overall, then, while recognising that committee turnover is high and membership patterns can change relatively quickly, it remains the case that female MSPs are currently underrepresented in the more senior positions of the committee system compared to their presence in the Scottish Parliament, even if sometimes only by a relatively small amount. As the GSA shows, this has not always been the case, especially in the first two parliaments, but it does appear to be a feature of the sixth. Female MSPs are also overrepresented in what can be considered the least glamourous position, where they both presumably often have to change their work schedule at short notice and have less opportunity to specialise in particular policy areas. These findings suggest that gendered vertical divisions of labour persist in the Scottish committee system.
Female MSPs across the Committee System
If we look at which committees female MSPs tend to be members of, then another gendered pattern emerges, one related to horizontal divisions of labour – the policy areas in which male and female parliamentarians tend to work. Tables 1 and 2 below show the gender of the Convenor for each committee and the proportion of female members. Those committee shaded light blue and light orange cover what can be considered stereotypically masculine and feminine policy areas respectively (with no shading indicating a neutral policy area)[iii].
As can be seen, the spread of female and male convenors and members across committees mostly conforms to what might be expected. There are a couple of exceptions – the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture committee is convened by a female MSP (although she is the only member) and the Education, Children and Young People committee has both a male convenor and a majority male membership – but, in the main, female MSPs are overrepresented in convenorships and committees covering policy areas which are stereotypically viewed as feminine (and perhaps less prestigious) and underrepresented in convenorships and committees covering policy areas which are stereotypically viewed as masculine (and perhaps more prestigious). Again, as shown by the GSA, some of these patterns are long-standing with, for example, male MSPs tending to be over-represented on finance-related committees and female MSPs on equalities- and on health-related committees (especially when the latter are not associated with sport).
Table 1: Gender of Convenor by Committee
Table 2: Proportion of female members by Committee (excluding substitutes)
If we believe that diversity within committees is important and not just within the committee system, then this is a problematic state of affairs. Moreover, the uneven spread of female and male MSPs across committees covering different policy areas (and with differing levels of prestige) is unlikely to be addressed by introducing a reform that stipulates that there must be at least one female and one male MSP on each committee. It is for this reason that my preference is for Big Bang reforms, such as those already recommended by the GSA Board which proposed that there should be a minimum of 40% women for committee convenorships, that every committee should broadly mirror the gender balance in the Parliament as a whole, and that, where parties either elect or appoint more than one member to a committee, the party’s membership must be mixed.
[i] An earlier version of this blog was published in which I did not give enough prominence to ongoing work within the Scottish Parliament regarding equality, representation and participation and, in particular, the work of Fiona McKay in producing the Scottish Gender-Sensitive Parliament Audit. I apologise to those involved in this work for this omission which should not have happened.
[ii] This snapshot is taken from data provided in the SPICe Fact Sheet “Scottish Parliament committees: current committees, remits and membership” published on 30th April 2025.
[iii] These categorisations are adapted from Goodwin et al. (2021) who in turn adapted them from Krook and O’Brien (2012). The categorisations here are not perfectly fitted because of the often large and disparate policy areas that committees cover. For example, using the Krook and O’Brien typology, the Europe and external affairs parts of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture committee can be viewed as masculine, whereas the constitution and culture parts can be considered neutral. In such circumstances, I have categorised the committee in relation to what I assume is the most prominent focus of the committee.
About the author
Dr Stephen Holden Bates is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Birmingham