An exploration of the discourse of female identity developed within Scottish Playwright Sharman Macdonald’s plays When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout (1984) and The Girl With Red Hair (2005) and the affects this has on female equality.

This study examines the topic of female identity within Scottish society in two of Sharman Macdonald’s plays When I Was a Girl, I Used to Scream and Shout (1984) and The Girl With Red Hair (2005). It explores how female characters have developed in Scottish theatre between the 1980’s and 2005 and how this has affected female equality in Scottish society. The historical background covers the changes to female equality that took place between 1980 and 2005. The discussion within this dissertation examines the topics that Sharman Macdonald covers in her plays including fertility, sexuality, relationships and employment. She incorporates the views of women of all ages, from young teenagers to older women in their sixties allowing for the representation of females of all generations on stage. In the conclusion we can see that many changes to female equality have taken place in Scottish society and how this correlates with these two Scottish plays. It appears that both theatre and society have an effect on each other and continue to mold each other simultaneously. This study’s methods consist of textual analysis of Sharman Macdonald’s plays