SCOTLAND may give a good first impression of being a place in which women can rise easily to the top. This is a country with a female first minister and in which the leaders of the two other main political parties are women. But anyone who assumed therefore that the feminist fight had been won here, should take a look at the Sex & Power study which we report on today. Far from a utopia of gender balance, the Scotland revealed here is one in which women are largely absent from positions of power in business, culture, media and politics.

This is a Scotland in which, in some areas, progress towards gender equality has stalled or is regressing. None of the CEOs of our top businesses are women and on many fronts, we are stagnating, while other countries race ahead. The Sex & Power report makes grim reading for anyone who aspires to create a gender-balanced society. It presents a portrait of men’s sustained dominance, even where we might have expected to see more progress. There are fewer female MSPs in Holyrood than there were at the high point of the 2003 election. The gender balance in our parliaments now lags behind that of many other countries across the world.

There are many reasons why women continue to be locked out of the world of power. Statistically, women are more likely to be carers, and workplaces are not structured to enable them to balance work and those duties. Culturally, the odds are still stacked against women when it comes to the impact on a career of a child being born. Mothers are still away from the workplace much longer than fathers and so a woman's career takes a much bigger hit than a man. Then there is negative stereotyping; and lack of confidence among women themselves that they have the necessary skills. Ironically, the research also shows that more diversity in the boardroom leads to greater innovation and better decision-making. Even the corporate world is waking up to the fact more women may be good for the bottom line. Thus it is vital therefore that we don’t let the progress towards gender balance stagnate.

There are ways of fast-tracking the process. Mandatory quotas have been successful in many other countries. Whether applied to party politics or in balancing the boardrooms of both public bodies and private companies, they have been shown to result in highly-qualified women coming through, less-qualified men being squeezed out, and a higher calibre overall. But quotas are only part of the solution. The path to a more gender-balanced Scotland will require much more. It will require targeted training of women, the challenging of sexist behaviours and stereotypes, more mentoring and more family-friendly working hours and structures. And above all, commitment by both women and men to challenging the barriers that are holding half the population back.