Young Women Lead

Young Women Lead gives young women from across Scotland an opportunity to make real change in the lives of young women and girls, while developing their leadership skills, knowledge and confidence.

Current Young Women Lead projects

Young Women Lead 2024 is supporting young women to co-design a short report on young women’s democratic wellbeing (the extent to which we have a voice in decisions that affect us) in collaboration with Scottish Parliament.

This topic highlights the importance of young women’s voices being both heard and valued, and supports a process where policies and decisions reflect the diverse experiences and perspectives of young women.

Developing young women’s democratic wellbeing involves:

dismantling the barriers that limit engagement
amplifying political agency
creating inclusive spaces where concerns and aspirations can shape the democratic landscape.

The Young Women Lead 2024 cohort will engage in a series of nine interactive workshops and training sessions focused on learning, developing skills, and networking with relevant professionals and guest speakers.

We will share outputs from Young Women Lead 2024 when the programme concludes.

Previous editions of Young Women Lead

From 2017–2020, Young Women Lead was delivered in partnership with the Scottish Parliament, focusing on increasing political participation. This was created from a need to address the underrepresentation of young women in politics. Participants created a committee to conduct an inquiry into a topic of their choosing. They worked alongside then Deputy Presiding Officer Linda Fabiani, committee clerks and the Scottish Parliament outreach team to write recommendations to the Scottish Government.

In 2021–2023, Young Women Lead ran in specific regions of Scotland to investigate and campaign on local issues.