Like my colleague Paul O’Kane, I will spend my time focusing on the problem: men, and structural and systemic inequality.

For too long, violence against women and girls has been viewed as a women’s issue, with some men offering their support. Today’s debate has shown why men must step up—and it has shown that we all agree on that.

We are taught, from an early age, ways to protect ourselves from violent men. We are taught to beware of strangers and always to watch our drink in a pub. We text one another when we get home safely—and there is real fear that we might not get home safely. We change our behaviour, our body language and the ways in which we talk and dress, to protect ourselves.

We do all that from a young age, because it starts at a young age, as Pauline McNeill, Martin Whitfield and Collette Stevenson said when they talked about schools.

As with many harms, we must act early, robustly and comprehensively to end the problem. The burden of violence has lain heavily on women’s shoulders for far too long. That is simply unfair and unacceptable. Men must take responsibility and do better.

The Government and this Parliament must also take responsibility for effecting change in men’s attitudes and behaviours. Scotland’s equally safe strategy recognises that the root cause of violence against women and girls is inequality and highlights many primary prevention measures as being key to tackling the issue, but it is painfully clear that we are not there yet.

A report from the UK Government equalities office revealed that men’s use of pornography, especially violent pornography, results in men viewing women as sex objects, an acceptance of sexual aggression towards women and an increased likelihood of men committing verbal and physical acts of sexual aggression.

The Scottish Government must take steps to challenge the harms of violent pornography, for example through more education—starting at school—on consent and healthy relationships, about which we heard in the debate, and by tackling online and cybercrime, as the Labour amendment that I am proud to support highlights.

According to the Scottish social attitudes survey in 2014, only 58 per cent of people in Scotland believe that a women who wears revealing clothing on a night out is “not at all” to blame if she is raped, and nearly two in five Scots believe that rape

“results from men being unable to control their need for sex”.

Last week, I visited the Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis Centre and met fantastic women who run the projects there as well as the incredible support to report team, which supports women who report gender-based violence as they go through the criminal justice system. We discussed the potential biases that women face as they go through the legal process, such as the rape myths that members of the jury might believe. We heard a bit about such myths today. What the survivor was wearing when the rape took place, her relationship with the accused and the emotion she shows in court can all influence juries, as my colleague Martin Whitfield explained perfectly when he talked about the role of men.

Last year, Lady Dorrian’s review report recommended a series of reforms of the system in the context of violence against women, including a specialist court with trauma-informed practices and a pilot programme that is equivalent to the programme in England and Wales that communicates to juries information about common rape myths. We must consider the recommendations seriously, and we should look at ways of incorporating training about the matter across the criminal justice system.

Measures must go further. There must be preventative action to target gender inequality. Primary prevention strategies are crucial to ending violence against women and girls, as my colleague Kaukab Stewart said.

If measures are to be effective, they must be implemented across all policies and systems—Rona Mackay and other members spoke eloquently about the structural inequality that is in place. Of course, such an approach is a core objective of equally safe, but it is not being adopted consistently in all policy making. Despite domestic abuse being the most common reason for women’s homelessness—it accounts for 26 per cent of homelessness applications and the proportion is rising—work from Crisis Scotland reveals that women who experience domestic abuse are frequently let down by services and that opportunities for early intervention are overlooked. The Government’s 2018 “Ending homelessness and rough sleeping: action plan” did not include a gendered analysis.

Last year, the Parliament unanimously passed the Domestic Abuse (Protection) (Scotland) Act 2021, which gives police and courts the power to remove an abuser from the home and gives social landlords greater control when it comes to transferring tenancies. However, 18 months on, we have not implemented the legislation and some women are still forced to present as homeless to escape abuse.