The Young Women’s Movement (The Young Women’s Movement) is appreciative of the opportunity to contribute to this important discussion on what the overall shared vision should be for mainstreaming equality and human rights in policy and service delivery in Scotland.

The Young Women’s Movement is Scotland’s national organisation for young women’s leadership and rights. We work to build a movement embedded in safe spaces and wellbeing for young women and girls to come together and access resources, networks and platforms to collectively challenge inequality, lead radical social change and re-imagine our world. The Young Women’s Movement therefore plays a vital role in amplifying young women’s voices and ensuring their lived experiences are at the core of decision-making in Scotland.

The Young Women’s Movement believes that the Scottish Government’s mainstreaming Strategy presents a vital opportunity to embed and strengthen equality and human rights and tackle the persistent inequalities that hold too many young women back from exercising their rights. The Strategy clearly presents an important opportunity for progress. Nonetheless, we are concerned about the lack of critical detail throughout the Strategy. Overall, the absence of specific, realistic and achievable outcomes on how to achieve and sustain equality and human rights mainstreaming across policy and service delivery makes it difficult to recommend specific actions.

Given the difficult financial circumstances faced by the Scottish Government, it is essential that decision making is clearly linked to outcomes. This allows for the better identification of priorities and increases accountability and transparency. This would also help ensure that resources are being used most effectively and efficiently, allowing for better monitoring of impact. Without additional resource or investment for building skills, resources and capacity across the Scottish Government and the public sector, it is difficult for The Young Women’s Movement to envision how the Strategy will remove systemic barriers and embed equality and human rights in policy and service delivery.

The vision is ambitious but perhaps not entirely realistic. Overall, the vision appears quite high-level and externally focused, with the Scottish Government noting they are “committed to tackling the persistent and entrenched inequalities that still exist in Scotland” with limited detail on how this will be achieved. While the consultation paper notes that the Strategy advocates heterogenisation in policy, practice and service delivery, the vision appears to be based on the homogenisation of equality and human rights issues. For example, while the vision describes a Scotland where communities will be “safe”, but there is no mention of Delivering Equally Safe in the consultation paper. There needs to be stronger links to the Equally Safe strategy, which is the closest thing we have to a gender equality strategy at present.

The Young Women’s Movement also think it is important that the Strategy acknowledges the climate we are currently operating within in Scotland and beyond, particularly in relation to increasing hostility towards achieving gender equality and the rollback of diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) practices and initiatives in the workplace. As a result, The Young Women’s Movement are concerned that the Strategy has the potential to overpromise and under-deliver, which could damage trust and ultimately cause more harm than good. Overall, there needs to be much more emphasis on the critical role of the third sector in shaping and delivering the Strategy. A bold, progressive mainstreaming Strategy much reflect people’s lives realities and prioritise specific actions that address the systemic inequalities that the Scottish Government has struggled to confront in recent decades.