A WOMAN leaves her car, smart casual, in a navy hoodie, bright white trainers and skinny jeans, her face is relaxed, her smile easy. Another woman is dancing in a living room with a gaggle of equally beautiful friends, laughing with her head thrown back.

In London, a woman sits on a train after a long day but she’s finally getting some time to scroll through her phone, to crack open a can of M&S Mojito. In a New York conference room, a woman kisses her baby and passes it to her waiting partner, before getting back to work.

These are women I know. They could be my pals. I could be any one of them. Looking forward to some time off work. Seeing my uni mates for the first time in ages and dancing like we’re 20 again. Sneaking a wee treat of a canned cocktail as I scroll through TikTok after a long week. Holding my kid until the last minute before a meeting, kissing their soft cheek to remind me why I am away from them and doing the work I do.

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These women, newly-resigned First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Finnish PM Sanna Marin at a party, Diane Abbot cracking an M&S can on her commute home and New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern holding her baby at a UN Nelson Mandela Peace Summit, they’re politicians at the top of their game with enviable careers.

They’re also gloriously, deeply human. The trouble is, women aren’t allowed to be human in any public sphere let alone politics. If you’re a woman in politics, prepare to have every aspect of yourself scrutinised from the price of your neat, sartorially acceptable, trouser suits to, as with MP Angela Rayner, the fact you cross your legs too often for the Tories' liking.

Nicola Sturgeon spoke about there being a "brutality to life as a politician", in her resignation speech while Jacinda Ardern simply said she no longer had "enough in the tank to do it justice". Diane Abbott, being both black and a woman, revealed she receives "ten times more abuse online than any other MP, and some of it contains death threats". MP Jess Phillips has been receiving rape threats on Twitter since as far back as 2015.

The Herald: Amnesty International revealed that Labour MP Diane Abbott alone received almost half of all the abusive tweets sent to female MPs in the run-up to the 2017 general electionAmnesty International revealed that Labour MP Diane Abbott alone received almost half of all the abusive tweets sent to female MPs in the run-up to the 2017 general election (Image: Newsquest)

Indeed, despite the fact that female political figures are constantly harassed and threatened with violence, and an arrest being made for the threat of assassination against Ms Sturgeon in recent months, The Independent still published a cartoon of her decapitated body playing bagpipes while her severed head watched on.

None of these women are perfect and not all of their policies were perfect either but they were esteemed because they showed a different side of politics. For me this was a more humane side; Ms Sturgeon and Ms Ardern in particular have enjoyed both global and local popularity and are leaving long before they might have been ousted in a vote of no confidence with no careerist bandwagon-jumping clinging to the vestiges of some power unlike Boris Johnson – which he inherited rather than earned anyway.

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Like many writers in Scotland, I once sat on a panel with Nicola Sturgeon at the Edinburgh Book Festival. I’d just published my memoir, Lowborn, about the trauma, legacy and politics of growing up poor. As I was talking about the dislocation of finding yourself on stage with the First Minister when you'd left school at 15 to work as a waitress and when you’d grown up in bed & breakfasts and on the schemes, she looked up from her cue cards, turned to me, and said: "You know, I was a hairdressers assistant once too’.

In my 10-year career I've met a lot of people in influential positions or high-profile jobs who are meant to be the grown-ups who’ll fix things for us. I've almost always come away thinking "Well, they're just people. They're not special at all."

But when I left that event with Nicola, I told my husband: ‘You really get the impression that she cares and she'll do anything she can to make things better.’ There's been speculation about whether or not Kate Forbes. who has announced her intention to run for First Minister, can attend to the role as she is returning from maternity leave and already has a young family. The fear being, I assume, that she’ll be distracted, too full of hormones and breast milk, to do a good job.

There are a few reasons, not least her declaring that she would not have voted to allow same-sex marriage as a "matter of conscience", that would make me pause in my support for Kate Forbes but her motherhood is not one of them. I can tell you that I have never been more motivated to make sure the world is not the same flaming bin fire in five years as it is now since having a child of my own.

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I hope that these women, those still toiling at the patriarchal political cliff face, and those who are happily going back to whatever a normal life looks like after being prime or first minister, know that they have forged a path for a new kind of politics. A path on which being human, relatable and where your life is at least a little recognisable to the people you're meant to serve and represent is admired and and seen as truly valuable.

Nicola, Jacinda, Sanna, Diane, I wrote this song for you. I’d dance around a living room with you anytime but I wouldn't want to do your job for all the canned mojitos in the world.