Aimee Challenor has raised her sights since she became a Green party member three years ago. She didn’t think she was suited to politics then. “I’d stopped going out because I was worried about how the world saw me. But politics has been a kind of rehabilitation,” she says. “I was a 17-year-old trans girl in Coventry. I thought I’d deliver leaflets at the general election.”

Far from not suiting politics, she is now standing to be deputy leader of the Green party. Voting takes place in August, when members will also select a new leader, after Caroline Lucas, the party’s first and only MP, announced last week that she was stepping down as the party’s co-leader. If elected, Challenor will be the first transgender person to hold the deputy role – and easily the youngest, at the age of 20. Is her age not a barrier? Challenor understands that people might see her as too young. “But just look,” she says, “at the amazing work that is being done by young people: by the SNP’s Mhairi Black in parliament; by young volunteers; by students coming together and campaigning.”

Challenor became involved in politics towards the end of the 2010-2015 coalition government. “That threw out the Conservatives and the Lib Dems for me because of tuition fees, austerity and a lack of action on climate change. I looked at other manifestos and the Greens’ stood out. I agreed with all of it.” The party was also “miles ahead of the competition” on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues at the time, she says.

Because of the way HMRC record gender on their systems, trans people especially have more hurdles to jump through

Shortly after joining the Green party in 2015, Challenor became its equality spokeswoman, – a position she has held since 2016 – speaking mostly about LGBT issues. “I want us to get to a place where a young person doesn’t have to wonder if they’ll be bullied or made homeless when they come out,” she says. To start with, Challenor is campaigning to make it easier for non-binary and trans people under 18 to get legal recognition: “Without that change to the birth certificate, misgendering can lead to stress and other difficulties at school.” This would involve reform to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), on which the then-education secretary Justine Greening promised a consultation last year. “Theresa May says she wants to stamp out homophobia, transphobia, biphobia. But the government needs to act rather than make empty statements on equality. Reform was promised last August, but we are still no further forward today,” she says.

Challenor is clear that equality for LGBT people is not just about legal status. She also wants to tackle other forms of inequality: “We have to address homelessness, job security, healthcare; they impact on each other.” She points to a recent report by the LGBT charity Stonewall, which found that 25% of trans people have experienced homelessness, compared to 14% of the wider population. Reasons include being forced to leave the family home after coming out as transgender and employment discrimination leading to financial difficulties.

And the legacy of austerity means that help with accommodation is increasingly hard to find. “It’s all caused by the government’s cuts to welfare services, to benefits … This government is leaving society behind,” says Challenor, who also suspects that LGBT people have their benefits disproportionately sanctioned. “Because of the way HMRC records gender on their systems, trans people especially have more hurdles to jump through. The hassle can lead to complications in other areas of life.”

It is 30 years since the Tories banned the “promotion” of same-sex relationships in local authorities – and that moral panic resembles transphobia today, says Aimee Challenor. Photograph: Photofusion/REX/Shutterstock

She compares trans people’s struggles to those of gay people when Section 28 of the local government act was introduced. It is 30 years since Margaret Thatcher’s government banned the “promotion” of same-sex relationships in local authorities – and that moral panic resembles transphobia today, she says. Unlike gay people in the 80s, politicians recognise trans rights, but she says prejudice is still common in society at large. “You sometimes still hear trans people being described as sexual predators,” she says. And despite progress, gay and lesbian people remain unsafe. “The government is trying to deport those who have sought asylum in the UK to avoid persecution for being gay. Sometimes the punishment is death. That is horrific.”

And Challenor has experienced prejudice herself. It started on the night she came out as trans at her school prom, aged 16. She wasn’t allowed to wear a dress, her headteacher told her, because it was “unnecessarily attention-seeking” and would make the school “look stupid”. (The school back-pedalled after a complaint from Challenor’s parents.) Since then she has been attacked mostly via social media: her mental health began to suffer after a recent barrage of abusive tweets. “One of the things that has helped me ignore the hate is the fact that yes, I’m trans, but I’m a Green party politician – and I’m achieving at something I’m damn well proud of.”

Challenor lives with her parents in Coventry and was a Green party parliamentary candidate for Coventry South in 2017. Although she only got 1.3% of the vote, she says support is growing. She has “campaigned tirelessly” on local green issues and the economy: “We need to look at Coventry’s plastic waste incinerator, which is a horrific abuse of our local environment. We need to ensure we have weekly recycling bin collections, not fortnightly. We need to see the green belt in our area protected – and development of the brown belt areas and the inner city.”

Her anger about cuts to benefits and local public services is also personal: she helps care for her mother, who uses a wheelchair. “The move from the disability living allowance to the personal independence payment has been a shambles. My mum has not been able to get the support she needs.”

Challenor insists that making politics more diverse can only be good for the UK. Political institutions must be more representative, she says, and this can be achieved “by proposing inspirational, radical solutions that people can get behind”. She points to Amelia Womack, who was elected deputy leader of the Green party aged 29. Although Womack has “led the charge” in making politics reflect society, Challenor says there is a lot more progress to be made – especially in the other parties. “I think it says quite a lot that 30 is seen as young in politics. We need more young people to break that mould.”

Curriculum vitae

Age: 20.

Lives: Coventry.

Family: In a relationship, lives with her parents.

Education: Lewis Charlton school, Ashby-de-la-Zouch; Open University (in first year of politics, philosophy and economics BA).

Career: 2017 to present: co-convener, Global Greens LGBT+ network; 2017 to present: publications coordinator, Green party executive; 2016 to present: equalities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersexual, queer, asexual) spokeswoman, Green party of England and Wales.

Interests: Charity volunteering, photography and computing.