Part of Questions to the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip – in the Senedd at 3:16 pm on 13 October 2020.
As you will know, Sunday was the International Day of the Girl, and in many places in the world girls are still a commodity, to be used, to be abused and to be trafficked. In many places, Minister, you will know that girls have little education, become pregnant too young, feel abusive relationships are their only route, are pressured to marry, suffer genital mutilation, and are treated as sex objects, and, in this toxic day of ours, suffer disproportionately the effects of negative social media. I know that you're really committed to this agenda, but when I say 'many places', it also is many places in Wales and many girls that feel this. What I was wanting to know was what you are doing to learn from best practice within other countries—some of the poorer countries in the world, who actually have made astonishing strides in being able to better educate not just young girls, but young boys, young men, in how women and men have equality and parity of esteem. What can we do to learn from those kinds of areas and bring that learning into Wales because—and I speak as somebody who was in that wave of feminism in the 1970s and 1980s—I have to say that I'm deeply saddened because I think that women's rights have taken a bit of a battering just recently?