No young woman left behind

Young women need the £20 lifeline back

1.5 million young women lost income during the pandemic and many claimed benefits for the first time.

The £20 Universal Credit uplift the government introduced in April 2020 has been a lifeline for 1000s of young women. It has been the difference between young women getting medications, feeding their children, buying period products and even being able to remove themselves from abusive situations.

The government have made the decision to take that lifeline away.

Young Women’s Trust are campaigning to bring back the £20 Universal Credit uplift.

The government must not abandon young women at this crucial time. 

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I’m struggling to save any money for my future and now will have to make really daunting decisions about whether I can afford to put the heating on and attend regular counselling to support my mental health, both of which are essential for me.

Kristie

Hear from young women

In this video made in April 2020, we meet Amie, Freya, Mehvash and Morgan. They talk honestly about the impact the pandemic has had on their lives.

No young woman left behind video transcript

A young woman stands infront of a brick building. She holds her hair out of her eyes with one hand. She looks confident yet defiant.

Our research

A year on from the first Covid-19 lockdown, 86% of young women said they felt that the government response to the pandemic had made things worse for people like them.

Our report, Lockdown One Year On shows the deep impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on society and the devastating effect on young women’s work, finances, and mental health.

Read the report

Our calls to the government

As the country recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic, the government must take steps to make sure that no young woman is left behind.

That means

  • Bringing back the £20 uplift to Universal Credit
  • Investing in jobs and training. Make sure that government schemes, including Kickstart, deliver for young women
  • Introduce statutory flexible working from day 1
  • Making employers publish their redundancy data by protected characteristics like age, sex or race so we can see who is being impacted by job losses

Explore the issues

Woman at a microphone

Smashing career stereotypes

We want to break down barriers to opportunities for young women, so they can smash career stereotypes and be anything they want to be.

Young women working together at a table

Building equal workplaces

Young women face discrimination at work every day. A third of young women have faced discrimination when looking for work or while working.

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