“Every woman and girl, no matter where she lives in Scotland, has the right to safety, dignity and equality."
Councillor Maureen Chalmers, COSLA’s Community Wellbeing Spokesperson and co-Chair of the Equally Safe Joint Strategic Board, writes about Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) in rural and island areas, encouraging Elected Members to read the Improvement Service’s and COSLA’s new Briefing written to support them in their local leadership role to prevent and tackle VAWG.
Equally Safe: Scotland’s Strategy for Preventing and Eradicating all forms of Violence Against Women and Girls is co-owned by COSLA with the Scottish Government, and it provides us all in Scotland with a clear, human‑rights‑based vision and framework for action. It recognises violence against women and girls as both a cause and a consequence of deep‑rooted gender inequality and as a major public health issue requiring a preventative, systemic, whole‑society response.
Progress happens in real communities, shaped by real geographies and changing populations. In rural and island Scotland, women often face distinct challenges: long travel distances, limited transport, digital blackspots, tied housing, and a rural premium on fuel, food and childcare. With some new demographic movement into rural and island communities, women may also lack trusted local networks and increased isolation. These factors intensify vulnerability and make it harder for women to access safety, support or anonymity. Specialist services in rural and island areas can also be fragile or stretched, relying on outreach models that depend on long‑term funding. These inequalities are not just barriers to recovery; they are risk factors for further harm.
Violence Against Women Partnerships across Scotland bring partners together to understand local needs and plan collaboratively so that services remain trauma‑informed, equitable and responsive. Through the Verity House Agreement, COSLA champions the flexibility needed to design solutions shaped by local circumstances, not urban assumptions.
Advancing women’s access to power and resources is central to COSLA’s mission and is recognised by local government leaders as a pre-requisite for driving gender equality. This is particularly important in rural and island Scotland, where women are disproportionately employed in part‑time and lower‑paid work, particularly in care, education, retail, community services and tourism. We are seeing positive leadership from rural industries. The Women in Agriculture programme, and the growing involvement of young people - including Scotland’s Young Farmers - are helping challenge stereotypes, expand training opportunities and strengthen women’s leadership in rural settings.
Across every sector, the role of men and boys is vital. Preventing violence against women and girls requires men to challenge misogyny, call out harmful behaviour, model respect and equality, and use their influence to shift the norms that allow gendered harm to persist. In rural and island communities, tight‑knit networks, limited anonymity and traditional gender expectations can make harmful attitudes harder to challenge. In these communities, the visible leadership of men - speaking up, modelling respect, challenging peers - has an amplified impact. When men actively counter harmful norms, they help create environments where women feel safer, where silence is no longer the default, and where equality becomes part of everyday community life.
A new Briefing for Elected Members has been published by COSLA and the Improvement Service, working with the National Violence Against Women Network. It is one of a number of Briefings that have been developed to inform and empower Elected Members in their leadership role in local councils to prevent violence and abuse and to ensure that survivors of gender-based harms have access to the support they need.
This Briefing offers you the opportunity to deepen your understanding of rural women’s experiences. It will also help you better understand how perpetrators adapt their tactics across physical, economic and digital spaces, and allows us to consider what this evidence means for our collective practice and planning - locally, nationally and across sectors.
The challenges faced in rural and island Scotland are distinct, but they are not insurmountable. We have strong foundations: a refreshed national strategy; developing Istanbul Convention compliance workplan; tools for gender‑sensitive planning; expert specialist services; and strong multi‑agency partnerships. Above all, we have a shared belief that safety should never depend on a postcode.
Our task now is to translate insight into action: strengthening early intervention; ensuring accessible, specialist, sustainable support; building capacity across mainstream services; and removing the structural barriers that allow gendered harm to persist. COSLA’s White Paper on VAWG outlines each of these actions in more detail.
Key contacts, information and resources
The Improvement Service coordinates the National Violence Against Women Network, which provides support to multi-agency VAW Partnerships across Scotland. Please contact vaw@improvementservice.org.uk for more details on the work of your local VAW Partnership, and how you can support their work.
No-one in Scotland should have to suffer or live in fear. If you, or someone you know, has been subject to abuse of any kind there are support services available. Please visit the Safer Scotland website for information about support you can access right now.