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The government’s ambition is to have three million more apprentices by 2020. The newness of degree apprenticeships and insufficient data make it difficult to assess their relative importance in boosting the UK economy, meeting higher skills needs of employers, closing educational attainment gaps, increasing social mobility and supporting under-represented groups into professional employment. The purpose of this paper, led by the University of Winchester and delivered by a new collaboration of private and public sector partners, is to build a pipeline between those currently failing to progress to, or engage with, degree apprenticeships and employers seeking higher skills and a broader pool of applicants.

The paper provides an analysis of collaborative initiatives and related research in England as the context for university involvement in degree apprenticeships. The case study illustrates the benefits of collaboration in targeted outreach initiatives within the local region to address gaps in progression to degree apprenticeships.

This paper illustrates how establishing a regional picture of degree apprenticeship provision, access and participation can inform effective partnerships and build capacity locally to deliver the higher skills employers need, further demonstrating the potential benefits of university involvement in degree apprenticeship provision in contributing to local and national policy ambition. It also shows how effective targeted interventions can help under-achieving groups, including those in social care and women in digital enterprises.

The authors believe this paper is the only academic analysis of the impact of Degree Apprenticeship Development Fund activity in the region.

An emerging market in human milk exists for both nutritional and biomedical research purposes. This commercialisation of human milk, however, raises issues about the exploitation and violence against women.

This paper explores the framing of the issues as one of human rights, and whether the shifting of gender issues away from gender-specific spaces in legal and ethical debates, makes their ethical consideration and the tangible consequences from these considerations, into a potential further sources of exploitation and other forms of violence against women.

The authors find the commoditisation of human milk as a nutritional product deprives women from the centrality of their roles and, therefore, from the upholding of women rights and the adequate prevention of violence against women. They identify an emerging space where trafficking in women and girls can occur for their milk as part of a broader set of practices of reproductive exploitation. They also identify that existing legal, ethical and research discussions often frame labour or organ trafficking as the appropriate framework but find this inadequate to address the inherently gendered aspect of reproductive exploitation. The current response makes trafficking in women for their milk a potential practice while concealing the structural inequalities that underpin women’s experiences as the buyers and sellers of human milk.

The regulation of human milk sale should therefore move from a public health paradigm focused on safety to one of health and women’s rights, whereas human trafficking laws around the world should explicitly address reproductive exploitation.

Emerging forms of exploitation, such as human milk sale remain underdiscussed alongside other more prominent forms of reproductive exploitation, such as surrogacy. The authors call for explicit consideration of the emerging trade as its burdens fall exclusively on women and existing frameworks for addressing exploitation often overlook these emerging practices and the structural inequalities faced by women that drive these trades.