Children’s Perceptions of Their Access to Rights in Wales: The Relevance of Gender and Age

Jacky Tyrie,Gary Beauchamp

doi:10.1163/15718182-02604005

Abstract

This paper explores children’s perceptions of gender and age as factors in accessing their rights. While much is known about the policy agenda and legal rights of children in Wales (Williams 2013), there is limited evidence about the experiences of children themselves. This article uses the child-friendly, ten Extending Entitlements (The National Assembly for Wales, 2000) to measure children’s experiences of accessing their rights. Data presented was collected from an online quantitative survey (2,043 participants) and qualitative focus groups (180 participants) with young people aged 11 to 17. Findings suggest that a child’s age and gender are related to how much young people felt able to access their rights. A number of other key trends emerged: the lack of knowledge regarding rights of young people; the difficulty of accessing rights for older young people; and adults’ treatment of young people in propagating gender stereotypes. It could be suggested that if these equality issues exist in Wales, where the legal and policy framework is supportive of children’s rights, that in other nations where a rights based agenda has less political influence, that children’s experiences of rights will be further limited.

Highlights

The discourse around children’s rights has developed since the ratification of the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989 (Williams, 2013; Reynaert et al, 2009; Alderson, 2000)
Some young people suggested that boys were better at being heard, while others felt that girls were better at being heard
Moving Forward We have examined the relationship between gender, age and young people’s perceived access to their entitlements and found evidence that the age and gender of a young person can have a major impact on how able young people feel accessing their entitlements

Summary

Introduction

The discourse around children’s rights has developed since the ratification of the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989 (Williams, 2013; Reynaert et al, 2009; Alderson, 2000). In the UK as a whole, the ideals of children’s rights are well established in policy and law (Case, 2005; Williams, 2013), some have argued that they have been poorly implemented (Croke and Crowley, 2006, Williamson, 2007; Lewis et al, 2017). What is often missing in this debate, is the voices of children themselves This is despite the fact that participation in decision making and the “voice” of the child have been long recognised as important within society (Lansdown, 2001; Tisdall et al, 2014). There is evidence that children are still unable to access all their UNCRC rights (Croke and Crowley, 2007; Croke, 2013; Croke and Williams, 2015; UK Children’s Commissioners, 2015). It is worth noting that the terms children and young people are both used, where children refers to all people from birth to the age of 18, and young people refers to those between 11 and 18 years of age

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion