Talat Yaqoob is a Scottish campaigner, researcher, writer and commentator focused on women's equality, anti-racism and intersectional analysis of policy.
Yaqoob was educated at Heriot-Watt University [1] and earned her master's degree at the University of Edinburgh. [ citation needed ]
She is an independent consultant and commentator. [2] [3] [4] She launched Pass the Mic in October 2019, the first and only directory of women of colour experts in Scotland. [5] She was the director of Equate Scotland from 2016 to 2020, [6] working on women's equality across the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) sectors. During this time she conducted and published the first intersectional analysis of women's experiences in STEM in Scotland [6] She is co-founder and chair [7] of the cross-party campaign group Women 50:50. [8] She is also a member of the First Minister’s Advisory Council on Women and Girls [9] since 2017 and became co-chair of this council in 2022 with Anna Ritchie Allan. [10] She is a member of Gender Equal Media Scotland [11] and the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Post-COVID-19 Futures Commission. [12]
In 2017 Yaqoob was awarded the Best Blog and Comment category of the Write to End Violence Against Women Awards [13] for her blog 'Just Ignore it'. [14] She was awarded 2018 Outstanding Women of Scotland award from the Saltire Society. [15]
She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2020 [16] and a mural of her was sited in Edinburgh as part of a celebration of women in STEM in 2021 [17]
Kathleen Jamie FRSL is a Scottish poet and essayist. In 2021 she became Scotland's fourth Makar.
Boroughmuir High School is a non-denominational secondary school in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Jane Elizabeth Hillston is a British computer scientist who is professor of quantitative modelling and former head of school in the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Professor Dame Joan Kathleen Stringer, DBE, FRSE, FRSA is a British political scientist and former Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Edinburgh Napier University and Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.
Joan McAlpine is a former Scottish journalist and former Scottish National Party politician. She was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the South Scotland region from 2011 to 2021. McAlpine is known for her opposition to the provisions of the legislation which sought to reform the Gender Recognition Act and for her views on sex and gender.
Ailsa McKay was a Scottish economist, government policy adviser, a leading feminist economist and Professor of Economics at Glasgow Caledonian University.
Lillian Mary Pickford was a pioneering British neuroendocrinologist. She was the first woman to be elected to the Pharmacological Society and the first woman appointed to a medical professorship at the University of Edinburgh.
Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, is a British businesswoman. She is the Founder and Executive Chair of the fintech Snoop. She was the CEO of Virgin Money from 2007 to 2018.
Equate Scotland is an organisation established to promote and encourage the advancement of women in science, engineering, technology and the built environment. It is based at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland.
Joanna Catherine Cherry is a Scottish politician and lawyer who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Edinburgh South West from 2015 until 2024. A member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), she was the party's Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Secretary of State for Justice in the House of Commons from 2015 to 2021.
Dame Susan Ilene Rice, Lady Rice, is a British banker, company and charity director and Chair of Scottish Water, Business Stream, North American Income Trust, and non-executive director of the Office for Budget Responsibility. In 2000 she became the first women to lead a British clearing bank.
Edith Philip Smith FLS FRSE was a botanist and teacher who became a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Head of the Botany Department at Queen's College, Dundee.
Alice Brown is a Scottish academic who is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Edinburgh and Chancellor of the University of Abertay as of 2019. She was on the consultative steering group that advised on procedural aspects when the new Scottish Parliament was being set up. Her work included promoting the equal representation of women. She was the first Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, serving for two terms between 2002 and 2009, and was a member of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council 2008–2012. She was a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life 1998–2003 and was elected as the first female General Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) 2011–2013. She was chair of the Scottish Funding Council since until her term of office ended on October 2, 2017.
Christine Anne Jardine is a Scottish Liberal Democrat politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Edinburgh West since 2017. She has been the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Women and Equalities, the Cabinet Office and Scotland since July 2022.
Ethel Marian Scott, is a Scottish statistician, author and academic, specialising in environmental statistics and statistical modelling. She is Professor of Environmental Statistics at the University of Glasgow. She is additionally vice-president (International) of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a member of the Scottish Science Advisory Council.
Rebecca Jane Lunn is a Professor and Head of the Centre for Ground Engineering and Energy Geosciences at the University of Strathclyde. I
Magdalen Berns was a British YouTuber, boxer, and software developer. Berns, a lesbian radical feminist, produced a series of YouTube vlogs in the late 2010s concerning topics such as women's rights and gender identity. Berns's vlogs attracted attention from transgender rights activists, some of whom characterized her as being transphobic and a TERF. Berns co-founded the non-profit organisation For Women Scotland, which campaigns against possible changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004, among other things.
While STEM fields all over the world are dominated by men, the number of Pakistani women in 'STEM' is low due to one of the highest gender gaps in STEM fields. However, over the time, some Pakistani women have emerged as scientists in fields like Physics, Biology and computer sciences.
Emma Ritch was a Scottish women's rights campaigner who was the executive director of Engender, a feminist policy organisation working on women’s social, economic, and political equality in Scotland. She had been working there for 13 years when she died on 9 July 2021.
Louise Macdonald, OBE, FRSE became the National Director of the Institute of Directors (IOD) in Scotland, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) in 2021. Her appointment has made her the first female to hold the role of National Director. For ten years she was the CEO of Young Scot, the award-winning national charitable organisation for citizenship for people in Scotland, aged 11–26. She was awarded an OBE for her services to youth, in the 2015 New Years Honours.