History was made Thursday in Scotland's Parliament. Not just when Nicola Sturgeon was sworn in as the first woman to hold the First Minister's post, but also in the 18 minutes of parliamentary to-and-fro that followed.

Jackie Baillie, acting leader of the Scottish Labour Party, asked the opening set of questions, pressing the new First Minister to improve the system for providing drugs to cancer patients. Then Ruth Davidson, the leader of Scotland's Conservatives, prodded Ms. Sturgeon about the justice system's release of violent offenders before their full sentence was served.

In answering both women, Ms. Sturgeon pledged to work constructively with the opposition. All the while, Tricia Marwick, the first woman to serve as the presiding officer, or speaker, of Scotland's Parliament, moved proceedings briskly along.

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In what might have been a first in a Western democracy, eight questions and 18 minutes of parliamentary debate passed without a male voice being heard.

When a man finally did get a chance to ask a question, Willie Rennie of the Liberal Democrats said he was "tempted to get in touch with the 50/50 Campaign" – a joking reference to a group that lobbies for gender equality in European parliaments.

The remarkable exchange represented the culmination of a process that began in 1999, when the British government first devolved some powers to a newly created 129-seat Scottish Parliament, and the Scottish Labour Party immediately pledged that 50 per cent of its candidates for the chamber would be women. Women won 40 per cent of the seats in the 1999 election.

Though that share has since dipped to 35 per cent (compared to 23 per cent in the British Parliament in London and 25 per cent in Canada's House of Commons), women continue to play more and more prominent roles in Scottish politics. Earlier this year, Alex Salmond, Ms. Sturgeon's predecessor as First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), set an informal quota of having women make up 40 per cent of his cabinet.

"[Ms. Sturgeon's] elevation represents a snowball that is gathering momentum, a long overdue and welcome trend that we might call the feminization of Scotland," columnist Rosemary Goring wrote in The Herald, a Glasgow-based newspaper. It was no mean feat in a rugged country where much of the economy is driven by male-dominated industries like oil extraction, fishing and banking.

The parliamentary and cabinet quotas, Ms. Goring said in an interview, helped women climb in politics by setting "a bar below which things can no longer slip."

Ms. Sturgeon used her inaugural speech as First Minister this week to say she hoped her rise would send a message to Scottish women and girls that "no glass ceiling should ever stop you from achieving your dreams."

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She immediately positioned herself as a family-friendly leader, telling parliament that, if the SNP is re-elected in 2016, her government would increase the scope of Scotland's publicly funded child-care program to 30 hours a week from the current 16.

But the change in tenor inside Parliament on Thursday was perhaps more remarkable than the substance of what was said. First Minister's Questions, a half hour of debate held every Thursday at noon in Scotland's post-modern parliament building, was an often raucous affair during the seven years Mr. Salmond lead the SNP government. Mr. Salmond's opponents would attack his plans to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom and the combative Mr. Salmond would attack his opponents right back.

But Mr. Salmond stepped aside after the pro-independence side lost a September referendum, clearing the way for his long-time deputy, the 44-year-old Ms. Sturgeon, to take the helm.

"This is my first day in office. I could stand up here and, in response to any of the questions that I am asked, engage in the usual defensive ding-dong. … But I want to come to this job with an open mind and a willingness to hear proposals from members on all sides of the chamber," Ms. Sturgeon told Parliament in response to one of Ms. Baillie's opening questions.

Her opponents say they plan to take Ms. Sturgeon at her word. Several said they hoped a Parliament run by women would remain the more constructive and less combative place it seemed to be on Thursday.

"It was indeed quite consensual and quite polite. … I think the new First Minister was at pains to try and suggest that there will be a different way of doing things under her regime," said Patricia Ferguson, a long-time Labour parliamentarian.

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But Ms. Ferguson said she wasn't convinced Ms. Sturgeon – who in the past has shown she can be just as combative as Mr. Salmond, famously getting into a televised shouting match with former Labour leader Johann Lamont during the referendum campaign – had changed her stripes for good. "I think time will tell. [Ms. Sturgeon] is not unknown for getting into robust debates."

And the era of a female-dominated Scottish Parliament may not be a long one. Ms. Lamont resigned the Labour leadership last month, clearing the way for a leadership contest next month in which the lone female candidate is considered a long-shot to win the three-way race.

"Unfortunately," Ms. Ferguson sighed, "we're going to elect a man."