(c) smartchristianwoman
From one of our favourite sources of evidence-based optimism for Scotland, Insider, today:
‘Women-owned businesses contribute £8.8 billion to the Scottish economy and £105 billion to the UK economy, according to new research from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). Their contribution to the Scottish economy grew by a staggering 76 per cent from £5 billion GVA in 2012 to £8.8 billion figure in 2015. The increase in the contribution to the UK economy was 40 per cent over that period. Scotland’s women-owned businesses are now responsible for creating 231,000 Scottish jobs, up from 153,000 in 2012.’
https://www.insider.co.uk/news/fsb-womens-enterprise-scotland-business-13579854
Now, this is the bit where I usually list earlier reports on the same topic so after searching TuS for reports mentioning ‘women’ or even the retrograde bio-essentialist (!) term ‘female’, we find:
Abuse of women and the disabled far higher in England than in Scotland
BBC Scotland once more hide SNP Government’s policy success to create scare on obesity in women
Scottish politics is third best in world for women’s empowerment and well ahead of UK
Scotland first again, again and again: women on public boards?
East Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire best places in UK for women to live in
Could do better, I think. Not enough on women controlling their own lives.
My only and last use of ‘female’ (I’ll stop now) was:
Maybe we’ll beat England now as the number of female footballers in Scotland has doubled since 2011
Talking-up Scotland 
This is definitely good news for things going in the right direction, it will hopefully start giving women more & more confidence – because that’s all that’s lacking.
And thank you for pointing out that ‘female’ is an adjective (I.e. A describing word for a noun) NOT a noun – the Nomedia started this, making out that calling women ‘females’ is somehow PC, it’s not, it’s denigrating women to describe them as more like animals and it is grammatically incorrect. It absolutely enrages me. Unfortunately no one else agrees with me. I have had one agreement that using ‘female’ as a noun is infuriating (and ‘male’ for that matter, but that’s strangely less frequent). You CANNOT say -females-, you CAN say -females of a species- . Female human is acceptable. When one woman said to me ‘I am a female’ ,,, I went into full on rant mode, ‘ a female what? A female goat? Are you a female goat?!’ Etc. I bite my tongue these days, but inside I seethe anytime I hear it, and seethe even more that no one else cares.
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