This week we went to the launch of The Young Women’s Movement‘s Status of Young Women in Scotland 2016 report.

The day was fantastic with a variety of speakers, the amazing slam poet Layla Josephine and a lot of food for thought from the report itself which Elspeth Parsons, from social research organisation The Lines Between, explained.

The report focuses on hidden conversations and hidden voices to ensure that perspectives we might not hear ordinarily were included, like those of young women in rural areas. We know from our Rural Wisdom project how difficult it can be to be an older person living in a rural area so it was interesting to compare this to the difficulties faced by younger women living in these areas.

It was telling to compare this with the difficulties faced by young mothers that were shared in the report and realising how similar many of these issues are to those we work on in our Peer Support for Parents project. We found it encouraging to know that certain projects we are working on are addressing some of the problems that women have reported having in this study.

A number of the perspectives that were shared were quite difficult to hear, like Erin McAuley who explained how she was homeless at 16 and experiencing disordered eating but it was fantastic to hear of the huge impact these women are having on the world through standing up for what they believe in. Tazmina Ahmed-Sheikh MP OBE talked about her experience as an Equalities Officer for the SNP and Amal Azzudin spoke about the impact she has had as one of the Glasgow Girls who fought against dawn raids and deportation. Finally, Donna Shaw shared how she formed Jeanfield Swifts, an all-female football club, after being told that ‘girls can’t play football’. Although all the speakers we heard were from different walks of life, we were touched to hear how, in their own different ways, they had all spoken out about injustices they had seen and had changed many people’s lives through their activism.

We left the day feeling shocked by some of the things we heard but encouraged by all the amazing things being done to make life better for young women in Scotland. Thank you to The Young Women’s Movement for producing such an important report and for hosting such an interesting event!