This report from the Young Women’s Movement explores young women’s human rights in Scotland. It covers topics such as access to healthcare, justice, equality between young women and young men, threats to human rights and how young women participate in politics and the barriers to doing so.
2025 marks ten years since the publication of the first Status of Young Women in Scotland research. The first report intended to fill a glaring gap in research, policy influencing and reporting in Scotland – a holistic, evidence-based and intersectional picture of what it was like to be a young woman in Scotland.
The first report in 2015 centred around what gender equality meant to young women, their ‘gender lightbulb moment’ – when they first realised they were experiencing life differently because of their gender. In doing so it covered a broad brush of environments and explored the ways in which young women were experiencing gender inequality in their everyday lives in Scotland. Ten years on, this report returns to many of these issues by exploring young women’s feelings about their human rights in Scotland in a markedly different world and context.