The Young Women’s Movement is Scotland’s national organisation for young women and girls’ leadership and rights. Young women are at the heart of everything we do – they inform, shape and lead our work. We exist to ensure that young women and girls’ needs and rights are met, and to amplify their voices in decision-making spaces.
In practice, we support young women and equip them for leading change on issues that matter to them, and we develop research that is shaped and informed by young women to make sure their voices, opinions and insights are heard and understood. We create ways for businesses, organisations and policy-makers to connect with that research and hear these voices.
Do you have difficulty attracting, retaining or progressing young women in your organisation, despite your efforts to develop better EDI practices? Do you struggle to engage with young women in your customer base? The Young Women’s Movement offer unparalleled expertise in the issues facing young women in Scotland. We know it’s not always easy, so we’ve developed innovative participatory research and dynamic training to identify the barriers facing young women and provide your team with the tools to remove them.
We offer a variety of services that can be tailored to individual organisations, including:
- Consultation
- HR policy reviewing and support
- A whole organisation audit
- Recommendations tailored to your needs
- Bespoke gender inclusion training
- Participatory research
The Young Women’s Movement has worked with partners across the third and private sectors delivering bespoke training and engaging directly with young women to provide recommendations on you can increase your audience of young women. Some key examples of this are The Rise Report, a collaborative project with Scottish Women’s Aid to understand the views of young women in Scotland around what a healthy relationship looks like, and what domestic abuse is, and Young Women Code, a project to deliver gender inclusion training in the tech sector.
If you’d like to discuss what your organisational needs are and how The Young Women’s Movement can help, you can book a 1-1 Expert Pod with Elena Soper, Partnership and Events Lead at the Women’s Business Conference on the 29th October 2024. You can also get in touch directly by emailing [email protected]
Please see testimonials and feedback below from past partners.
Testimonial from third sector community organisation where The Young Women’s Movement delivered training to staff and volunteers on conducting participatory research:
“The Young Women’s Movement facilitators have been extremely accommodating to our community’s needs. Delivering sessions that were accessible, engaging, and included important content tailored to our specific project. Our participatory projects involve a diverse range of people with varying abilities, skills, and backgrounds, necessitating a special focus on content accessibility, which The Young Women’s Movement team has always accomplished. Similarly, communication and contact between the organisations’ staff in order to carry out the collaborations has been excellent and clear. The Young Women’s Movement hold meetings prior to every delivery to become acquainted with our project and be able to design the different sessions.
“Facilitators have proven to be diligent, punctual, and open to the group’s needs. Above all, the quality of the content selected for each session has been excellent and critical to the development of our projects. After the sessions, the knowledge has been put into practise, and the community has developed a keen interest in going beyond the initial goal. This indicates that the knowledge cycle was successfully completed, and that the satisfaction level was high.
“The Young Women’s Movement’s delivery strategy has allowed everyone who attends their sessions to participate. The content has proven to be inclusive, diverse, and critical, but most importantly, it has been delivered in a kind and clear manner, which aligns with our values and ethos.
“Finally, one of the reasons we have returned to The Young Women’s Movement for the delivery of these types of sessions is that the attendees have been blown away by the facilitators’ ability to convey such important information with such a fun and engaging manner. It has left us wanting to learn more and discuss the issues raised during the sessions.
“We are eternally grateful for The Young Women’s Movement team’s professional work; you are an inspiration to all of us!”
Feedback from private sector organisations where The Young Women’s Movement delivered gender equality training:
- “I’m less scared of saying or doing the ‘wrong’ thing. It feels like we’re all learning and trying to get better at understanding EDI.”
- “I remember on the days that we had the trainings, those conversations carrying on when we were at lunch or across the next few days […] people saying ‘you know I hadn’t realised x, y, z, but I’m going to take that forward, I’m going to change the language I use, make sure it’s not too gendered’ […] ultimately I feel like the project had a really wonderful impact on the community.”
- “I think the training did a good job at highlighting the bias that exists and the barriers women face in the workplace.”
- “I will try to be more supportive for everyone that reports to me – and not make any assumptions.”