I am privileged to be able to contribute to this important debate, and I thank the Scottish Government for lodging it. According to Engender, the root cause of violence against women is gender inequality, which continues to impact all aspects of women’s lives in Scotland.

I think that we would all agree that we have come some way, at least in my lifetime, in recognising the inequalities that exist in our society and we have begun to take the positive steps that we need to take to tackle them. Even in my background of sport—I have to get sport in here, Deputy Presiding Officer—women have closed the gap significantly considering the inequalities that existed. It was only in 1984 that women contested the Olympic marathon for the first time. They could not run further than 3,000m on the track, and they did not do the steeplechase, the hammer throw, the triple jump or the pole vault. Now, women have equality in the events that they can compete in.

However, let us not kid ourselves on here that we are anywhere near the journey’s end when it comes to inequality. So—what can men do? We can listen. We can start these conversations, we can take part in these conversations and, most importantly, we can speak out.

It is important that we recognise that violence is not only physical; it is actions or words that cause harm. We need to get to the root of violence and assess it throughout our society. It is key that we address the myths around violence against women head on. Violence is not a one-off, isolated incident but a structural problem that is built into our society, so I will talk about structural violence—the anthropological term used to describe violence committed by structures in our society. It is the violence that is inherent in unjust social, political and economic systems. That violence cannot be traced back to or blamed on one individual; rather, it is represented by a complex web of interdependent relationships. These are the laws that we make and the belief systems that our society operates under.

Women make up just over 45 per cent of this Parliament, with men in the majority, so we need to listen when we make laws, and I have to mention here—as my colleague Pam Gosal did—the gender recognition bill. I believe that, as it is currently structured, it continues a cycle of inequality and opens up the opportunity for physical and structural violence.