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

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.