"SCOTTISH women of any historical importance or interest are curiously rare," Hugh MacDiarmid once said. It would be a brave if ill-advised Scotsman who echoed the poet’s view in 2018, when formidable, history-making women dominate the landscape. And, of course, he would be plain wrong, as MacDiarmid was plain wrong.

Any page opened randomly in the wonderful Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women proves that. Here’s one. Flora, "The General" Drummond, born 1878, died 1949; qualified as a postmistress but was refused entry as her height was below the regulation 5’ 2”; became a leading member of the Women’s Social and Political Union campaigning for equal rights; was known as The General because she rode astride a huge charger on WSPU marches, dressed in quasi-military uniform with a peaked cap of purple, white and green; imprisoned nine times, where she taught other suffragist inmates Morse code so they could communicate. Later set up an anti-communist, anti-fascist group which had more than 30 branches across the UK.

Alison Rowat: It’s not the end of film industry abuses but the beginning of the end

Let’s try another. Jessie Stephen, born 1893, died 1979; sold the Labour Woman pamphlet outside St Andrew’s Hall in Glasgow from age 12, then became vice-chair of her local Independent Labour Party branch at 16; forced to work in domestic service, she organised her fellow maidservants into the Scottish Domestic Workers’ Federation to tackle poor conditions and abuse; later became a journalist and columnist for the Glasgow Herald.

One more. Isabel Gunn, nee Fubister, born 1781, died 1861; entered the exclusively male employ of the Hudson Bay Company under the alias "John Fubister", and sailed for Hudson Bay on the Prince of Wales in 1806; worked as a labourer in Canada, and made regular trips with trade goods up the Albany River, returning with furs; in 1807 took ill and was discovered to be in labour. Returned to Stromness where she lived as a pauper with her son until her death.

Women of historical importance or interest are there – in fact they’re everywhere, if you only bother to look. Trailblazers, world-shapers, fearless and thrawn pioneers. Bloody difficult women, of the very best kind. What wouldn’t you give to sit down for a drink with one of them?

Their battles for recognition, equality and the right to live the lives they chose are still being fought in infinite variety today. But if they were in there at the beginning, is it possible that we are finally moving towards the beginning of the end – towards their final victory?

Alison Rowat: It’s not the end of film industry abuses but the beginning of the end

In the three months since the first allegations were made against Harvey Weinstein, the firestorm has spread wildly. Men who have behaved inappropriately or worse have fallen from great heights across the worlds of entertainment, politics and the media. Many more will follow. At Sunday night’s Golden Globes, Oprah Winfrey made a memorable speech to an audience of millions, in which she spoke of living in "a culture broken by brutally powerful men… but their time is up. I want all the girls watching here and now to know that a new day is on the horizon. Speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have."

That truth is being spoken, and will not be unspoken. There are small acts of courage taking place daily. Yesterday, it emerged the BBC’s China Editor Carrie Gracie had resigned her prestigious role in protest over pay discrimination, saying "it is painful to leave my post abruptly and to say goodbye to the team in the BBC’s Beijing bureau. But most of them are brilliant young women. I don’t want their generation to have to fight this battle in the future because my generation failed to win it now."

As traumatic as it must be for the victims who are speaking up, and for those making personal sacrifices for the greater good, there is something glorious about this uprising, and we should cheer it on. It will undoubtedly prove transformative in all sorts of unpredictable and exciting ways. Things can and must never go back to the way they were. Why should anyone want them to?

Alison Rowat: It’s not the end of film industry abuses but the beginning of the end

This march towards equality will not be stopped and will only gain momentum. Warty trolls like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage and the Tory backwoodsmen who attempt to block the way are reactionary bigots who have no answers and will fail. The arc of progress bends instead towards liberalism and fairness. In the past few decades, one dusty, secretive institution after another has trembled under the pitiless glare of public scrutiny – the Royals, MPs and the Lords, newspapers and the BBC, the banks and the secret services and so on. There’s still plenty to resolve there, of course, but our gaze is already probing deeper, towards issues of gender, class, race and sexuality.

The straight white male, the dominant figure in Western society, is being forced to face up to some unpalatable truths about how he acquired his power, how he has kept it and how inevitably he must relinquish – or at least share – it. He is being forced to understand and empathise with alternative perspectives, to acknowledge his inherited, unexamined arrogance and the jerry-rigged structures that have sustained his hegemony, and to figure out his non-exceptional role in a future, more balanced society. This is all good and necessary.

Alison Rowat: It’s not the end of film industry abuses but the beginning of the end

I recently interviewed Darren McGarvey, author of the essential book on class, Poverty Safari, and as we discussed the gender debate he said something that struck me as both prophetic and heartening. "I think people will go through the same sort of realisation process on a range of issues, whether it be class or race, and that we’re all going to have our wee turn of being the ones educating people and being the ones having to sit down and listen. It’ll get us through some difficult shit. And as long as everyone gets a turn to do that I think it’s going to be OK."

We will work it out and, in doing so, we will learn to live better together.