Equality, diversity and the Speaker of the House of Commons

On Friday 25^th May I was fortunate enough to co-chair an event featuring the Rt. Hon. John Bercow MP, Speaker of the House of Commons. For those who aren’t sure the Speaker of the House of Commons is that fellow who sits in the big chair in the House of Commons and tells MP’s off when they over step the mark (like when David Cameron called Ed Balls a ‘muttering idiot' on PM’s question time last week). His role is to stay impartial and maintain order. As well as this he’s also doing some rather excellent work with the Parliamentary Outreach service to help improve public engagement in politics and improve equality and diversity in the House itself.

The event in question was a W.A.I.T.S (Women Acting in Today’s Society) Policy Forum on the opportunities for and barriers facing women wanting to get involved in politics (see my previous blog post http://henshouse1.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/whats-problem-women-in-politics.html for a brief overview of the situation). Aside from Mr Speaker being delayed in traffic and arriving half an hour late the event was a great success, with the Policy Forum speakers and Mr Speaker himself delivering engaging, informative and occasionally amusing speeches and deftly answering challenging questions.

Our first speaker was Sharon Thompson. Sharon is currently a magistrate and has a vast amount of first-hand experience of the issues women, and especially mothers, face with wanting to get involved in politics. The key points that I took away from her presentation were:

1) There are two kinds of women local parties need to consider: those that are already engaged in politics and those that would make a fantastic contribution to the political scene but feel that they lack the knowledge (‘I don’t watch the politics show!’), skills or ability to make it. To help engage these women we need more successful female politicians to act as mentors and ‘pass the baton on’ to the next aspiring generation and more family and female friendly events. Things like low key, welcoming coffee mornings where women can get together in a friendly environment and chat about what makes them tick and how they can get more involved in party politics.

2) Parties need to raise awareness of political positions beyond just councillors and MP’s. Sharon made the point that there are loads of local party positions (such as women’s officer) that can represent fantastic ways for women who are interested in politics to gain a bit more experience without being shoved in at the deep end of the  MP or Councillor candidate selection and campaigning process. But hardly anyone knows about them.

Our next speaker was Ally Sultana. Ally is the Coordinator for Saheli Women's Group Empowerment Project which works to increase the understanding of politics and political structures amongst women in South Birmingham. She spoke passionately about the importance of politics and the difficult experiences of the women she had delivered training to on how to become a local councillor.

1) Ally began by talking about the experiences of the women she had worked with, saying that it’s not just the women who have to change but the parties themselves. After helping deliver training to South Birmingham women on how to become a local councillor, in line with parliamentary guidelines on the matter, many of the women were put off the political process by the in-fighting, pettiness and bickering that they had witnessed. If parties are serious about improving equality and diversity in their numbers, they need to be serious about changing their ways too.

2) Next Ally made the point that, if you’re going to run for candidacy you need to 1) know yourself and be confident that whatever the barrier you can get through, 2) build a vast support network around you. It’s a tough process and will involve a load of highs and lows, so you really can’t do it alone. Despite these difficulties and barriers, though, Ally concluded with an impassioned plea to the audience: get involved. Things won’t change until we make it happen so whatever you come up against, keep going and it’ll be worth it in the end.

Our final W.A.I.T.S Policy Forum speaker was Nura Ally. Nura is currently the Community Development Officer for the Hodge Hill constituency and founder and director of the Allies Network; a community organisation set up by women for disadvantaged women from ethnic minority backgrounds and communities in the West Midlands. She had some interesting advice and feedback based on her own experiences of competing for candidate selection:

1) The ‘tick box’ approach to equality is not always helpful. Nura felt that during the selection process there was far too much emphasis placed on the external qualities gender, race, sexuality, and not enough on what an individual can truly offer. She believed that a stronger set of guidelines to go alongside the process, weighting the importance of these external qualities against the individual’s personality and experience would help make the system fairer for all.

2) Like Ally, Nura called for all of the assembled audience to get more involved. Her own experiences may not have been difficulty free but that does not change that fact that she believes that it is every woman’s (and man’s) civic duty to get involved in politics. She asked that every audience member join a political party of their choice and start participating as it’s only through participation that change is going to occur.

Our final speaker of the morning was Mr Speaker himself, the Rt. Hon. John Bercow MP. Mr Bercow attended the W.A.I.T.S Policy forum as part of a series of events he was participating in in Birmingham that day as part of the Parliamentary outreach programme, aiming to bring Parliament to the people and helping make national politics national, not just London centric. The main theme of his speech was what Parliament is already doing, and what still needs to be done, to help make it more accessible to women.

1) He discussed changes he had insisted on already such as the creation of a nursery within the Houses of Parliament to help female employees and MP’s with young children. He also referred to the creation of ParliAble (a Parliamentary Disability Equality Network) and ParliOut (a support group for LGBT individuals) before talking about the female ‘movers and shakers’ of Parliament.

2) He then referred to what he felt were still key barriers facing women wanting to get involved in politics. First the anti-social work hours (on Mondays and Thursdays, for instance, Parliament opens at 2:30pm and ends at 10:30pm) which he felt should be swiftly dealt with. Secondly the ‘ya-boo’ (heckling) atmosphere of the House of Commons itself and the masculine ‘boys club’ attitude it can portray, which he hopes will be changed by more women striving to become candidates and thus more women making it into Parliament.

After this we moved onto a brief question and answer session in which the assembled audience excelled, asking tough and poignant questions and suggesting improvements to the system Mr Bercow should take back with him to Parliament. There were too many to list here so here’s just a few:

1) Job share MP’s? One lady had an interesting suggestion: in order to make high profile political positions more attractive to women Parliament could look a job share scheme. She argued that many women, especially in the public sector, manage to juggle advancing their careers with looking after young children by opting in to a job share position, so how about applying the idea to MP’s, divvying up the role so that one individual does the local constituency work and the other the Westminster role/varying combinations of the two?

2) How can we guarantee that the hard work Mr Speaker has put in to improving equality and Parliament outreach will be continued by his successor? This highly apt question had a very simple answer from Mr Bercow: we can’t. But on the plus side he plans on sticking around for a good few more years.

3) The selection process for MP’s is ridiculously expensive, requires a large amount of travelling and favours candidates with public speaking training and experience (i.e. private school or Ox-Bridge), what about a hardship fund and how about making the selection process as much about the person’s other abilities as it is about public speaking? Mr Bercow agreed with this statement but discussed the difficulties of getting either Parliament (and the public) to agree to putting a portion of tax payer’s money aside to help candidates of any party in dire financial need, or individual parties to put a portion of their funds towards an in party scheme.

At this point Mr Bercow was whisked off to his next appointment, already a little on the late side, and myself and the assembled audience were left to reflect on what had been said and what still needs to be done.

For me, I was personally genuinely impressed with Mr Bercow’s down to earth, often amusing approach to his role as speaker and his dedication to going out in to the community to engage with harder to reach groups. However, despite the leaps being made forward, I was left feeling that the fight for more women in Parliament is still an uphill struggle. Mr Speaker himself stated that just getting a nursery facility in place in Parliament came up against opposition and apathy, with many colleagues complaining ‘there’s nowhere we could put one’ (a statement proved glaringly untrue by the fact that there is now one in place). Likewise, the W.A.I.T.S Policy Forum speakers all depicted an image of local party politics that really needs to make more of an effort to become more approachable for women in ways that really would not require too much effort on their half (coffee mornings, mentoring, family friendly event times, fairer selection process). 93 years on from when the first female MP took her seat the proportion of women in Parliament remains stubbornly at just 22%. Only 37 out of Birmingham’s 120 local councillors are female. I’m very glad that someone is standing up for common sense policies to get more women involved in the political process but there’s a heck of a lot more work still to be done.

Fortunately the W.A.I.T.S Policy forum speakers seem more than willing to take on the challenge. Sharon, Ally and Nura are all carrying on their fantastic work either by running for political roles themselves or helping many other women discover their potential and take on greater roles of responsibility. On top of this in the post event networking several of the audience members declared their intention to get more involved in local politics and even go for candidate selection before the next local election too. We need more dedicated and inspiring women like these to keep building up the momentum and pushing for positive change in the UK. Luckily for us, if this event is anything to go by, we’ve got them in abundance.

H.B.

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W.A.I.T.S. Women in Politics Event

So I haven't done any blog posts in a while, but it's not because I haven't been doing anything interesting; quite the contrary, it's been hectic. First up tomorrow morning I'm co-chairing a W.A.I.T.S Policy Forum event with the Speaker of the House of Commons, Rt. Hon. John Bercow MP. More details to follow after but, for now, here's  the press release for what's set to be a rather interesting event.

PRESS RELEASE

Women Acting In Today’ s Society ( WAITS)   is hosting a vist of  The Speaker of the House of Commons Rt Hon John Bercow MP   Friday May 25^th  

Speaker of the House Of Commons Rt Hon John Bercow MP will be visiting Women Acting in Today’s Society (WAITS) as part of an outreach visit to Birmingham and Dudley.

The speaker will be hearing from members of WAITS Policy Forum who have experience of being involved in local politics and the most recent Council elections. 

                         

The speaker Rt Hon John Bercow MP will also be speaking at the Football League Community Trust Annual Conference at the NEC, attending a session of the Dudley Youth Council, and delivering the Frank Foley Memorial Lecture in Stourbridge. 

House of Commons Speaker, Rt Hon John Bercow MP said: “WAITS is involved in crucial work building the leadership skills of local women and supporting women affected by domestic abuse. For all the progress made in recent years to increase female participation in politics, we still have a long way to go. I am very much looking forward to the WAITS event and hearing the personal experiences of women involved in politics”.

About Women Acting In Todays Society WAITS:

WAITS is a registered charity established in 1993. WAITS mission is to enable women from diverse communities within the West Midlands to develop themselves and others. WAITS two main areas of work are:

1. Empowering Women- building the leadership skills of local women to engage more effectively with other women, groups, networks, policy makers and service providers.

2.  Women’s Support and Development Services – supporting women affected by domestic abuse, in particular BAME and Chinese women, through advocacy, counselling and Accommodation

For more information Contact Marcia Lewinson WAITS CEO marcia@waitsaction.org

Elite Professionals Archive: Tech Stars Under 30 - Hugh Hopkins and SO News

It's March! So it's time for my next article for http://eliteprofessionals.org/ on UK based young professionals. This time it's Hugh Hopkins and Selly Oak News. Are you from a Brummie business looking to target advertising at University of Birmingham Students? Give them a shout ;)

If there is one thing that my generation have had relentlessly drummed into them it’s the amazing potential of social media. Yet actually meeting young people who have turned this potential into a viable business is a surprisingly rare experience. This is where Hugh Hopkins and Selly Oak News come in.
Hugh (the one in the pink), was in the same halls of residence as I was in my first year at uni. He’s always struck me as a highly ambitious and capable future businessman, so it was no surprise to me when I heard that, together with co-founders Nick Day and Jonathan Craven, he had set up his own business. And, unlike many student businesses, it was going places.

Selly Oak News is an online platform for student news, media and opinion. It started out as a twitter feed and now, just over a year later, it’s a fully-fledged online service complete with a vast and ever growing following.Not bad for a bunch of university students.
So, eager to find out what’s next on the agenda, I caught up with Hugh earlier this week.

Tell us a bit about you and your background, what are your main interests and aspirations?
I’m in my third and final year at Birmingham University reading Business Management with Communications. In my first year I was elected the Entertainments Officer for my hall and it started a growing interest, as well as my confidence, in starting large projects and seeing them through. This also intertwined with my interest in the News and Media industry and how the internet is revolutionising the production and communication of content.

I have big aspirations, perhaps some of them are a little crazy and I’m cautious of actually listing them. I can say that it involves the creation of an international business.

In a few sentences, sum up what your company does and your role within it
SO News provides instant news tailored to University of Birmingham students on an interactive and unbiased platform. Nick Day, Jonathan Craven and I founded the business about a year ago and we’ve already managed to turn a profit. We each have specialised roles but mine is to run day to day operations of the news and just push the business forward.

Where did the idea for your company come from?
The idea came to us in a fast food shop. We were just chatting about Selly Oak and how information for students is fragmented and often out of date. Starting a news site to solve this seemed simple and since then the initial concept has grown significantly. We’ve created a platform on which we can create some truly great services and SO News is just the start.

What would you say has been your single greatest challenge in getting this far?
It’s hard to pinpoint a moment but at times it has been a challenge to keep momentum. All three of us are still students and apart from our own desire to create a great service there are very few reasons why we should start and run our own business.

What’s been your high point?
When we were awarded a £2,000 grant from Birmingham University’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation centre it transformed us into a serious business. It gave us a huge moral boost, meant we could invest in producing better content and organise ourselves as tangible business.

Where do you see you and your company in five years time?
The future of SO News is highly dependent on the next few months but we aim to be the most innovative source of high quality news and media. We would have established offices in Shoreditch and launched our side projects SO TV, SO Film and SO Music. We hope by then for SO news to have gained an international audience and we would be considering expansion outside of Europe. As for myself, remaining instrumental and innovating the business.

If you could give other budding professionals one piece of advice what would it be?
Be part of a business you enjoy.

For more information on Selly Oak News or to request some advertising space check out http://www.sonews.co.uk .

The Fourth Wall Theatre Network

I'm 21. I'm a massive nerd about my course, work part time in a rather nice student job, do a lot of extracurricular and voluntary activities and have met a wide range of prestigious leaders from a variety of fields. I thought this was pretty impressive. Then I heard about what a friend of mine, Dan Bridgewater, has been up to.

I know Dan through the UpRising Leadership programme, he's in his first year at uni and I've known for a while that he's working on a social enterprise aimed at making theatre companies in schools called the Fourth Wall Theatre Network. He's a pretty motivated, entrepreneurial guy so I figured it'd be pretty good but I've got to admit, after attending the launch of The Fourth Wall Theatre Network at the Custard Factory on Thursday, I was really impressed.

The Fourth Wall Theatre Network is a group of young people, lead by Dan, who aim to create a network of sustainable theatre companies within schools. The team offer a variety of competitive packages which involve them coming into schools, offering 24 weeks of a couple of hours of drama and business workshops per week and offering a small group of interested 'leaders' within the school 4 weeks of mentoring and leadership training to enable them to set up their own theatre company. At the end of the programme the kids put on a showcase of whatever drama they decided to create and, depending on which package the school selects and pays for, even get to keep a portion of the ticket sales. And on the subject of fees The Fourth Wall Theatre Network's top package costs just a minuscule £500, not bad for 28 weeks of stuff!

To me, it's a really great idea. It teaches kids invaluable skills at every level, whether they are interested in performing, lighting, set design, costume, producing, directing, setting up a business or anything in between it provides opportunities for young people to take initiative and learn how to lead. It's not just about a nice bit of drama, it's about creating leaders and giving kids the skills they need to make it in this tough economic climate, whilst having a lot of fun in the process.

What Dan and his team have put together isn't just good for a group of young people, it's good full stop. The business plan makes sense on every level and what they've come up with is both original and good value for money. There's no one doing exactly what they are in Birmingham and the equivalent cost per hour of drama workshops offered by their nearest competitor would be close to £4000 where The Fourth Wall Theatre Network's top package is a mere £500.

It's pretty awesome stuff! And if you fancy finding out a bit more about who these guys are and what they can offer for schools check out their website http://www.fourthwalltheatre.co.uk

H.B.

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You Know What, I Like Nick Clegg

Today I met Nick Clegg. I'm not joking. Thanks to the amazing UpRising programme I was invited to take part in a presentation on said programme to the Deputy Prime Minister.

When I was told I was going to be doing this I assumed that the venue would be some massive conference hall and the UpRising Alumni Advisory Board would just shuffle on stage, say our bit, be vaguely acknowledged, get a brief round of applause and shuffle off again before a representative from another programme took the floor and the discourse moved on.  I couldn't have been more wrong.

The event took place in the intimately small Nomad Room at the Custard factory and a relatively entourage free Nick Clegg sat front and centre, mere feet from those presenting. On top of this Nick, who has been a patron of the UpRising programme for the last three years, revealed that not only was this the first event he's attended in Birmingham this visit (before even his own party conference) but in fact the only non party related event he's going to be going to. And that's not for want of invitations. It was also being filmed and beamed out live to BBC and Sky News 24.

There was a brief introduction from Zehra Zaidi, the brilliant Birmingham UpRising co-ordinator followed by the UAAB presentations in which I took part (and sneakily managed to promote the gender equality project I'm working on). At this point I should probably explain what the UAAB is: it's the UpRising Alumni Advisory Board: the board is made up of committed UpRisers who were selected out of a range of applicants for their dedication to the programme, we now work with the organisers to act as a sounding board for the programme and represent UpRisers at amazing events like this.

The UAAB presentations took the form of each of us talking for 2minutes about what the programme means to us and what our best moments from it were. Each did ourselves proud (if I do say so myself) but the highlights for me were Michael Olajide talking about his journey from Nigeria, to innercity London to Birmingham and the UpRising programme, Jessica Woodley talking about the programmes dedication to diversity and how coming from a mixed race, working class, innercity background it's helped her believe in herself and her own potential and Daniel Bridgewater talking about how its helped him gain the confidence, know-how and networks to set up his own company/social enterprise: the North Wall Theatre Company before he's even started uni. Their stories really summed up what UpRising is all about.

Then it was Nick's turn; he offered his response to the programme and, after a couple of pre-selected questions from chair and UAAB member Mobeen Amin, he opened the Q&A session up to the floor. Prior to the event we'd been told that all questions had to be cleared by his office first. In fact just before he arrived we were given a sheet of paper with said questions on and told to hand them out to other non-UAAB UpRisers to ask. So you can imagine my surprise when, instead of merely taking questions from the designated people he just picked whoever had their hand up, including me. I wont bore you with the details of all that was asked and said (I believe the event went out live on BBC and Sky News 24 so if you're interested I'm sure you can dig out the whole thing somewhere) but I will give you some edited highlights:

In response to my question of 'the latest statistics show 3/4 of those convicted in the recent riots already had numerous criminal convictions, what do you think the government can do to identify wayward individuals, preferably after their first offence, and educate them and help get them out of that lifestyle and involved in their communities before they become habitual offenders?' (originally even more poorly phrased and in a nervous manner of course) Nick told us about his views, some of which are already being made into policy:
- He agreed with the need to educate, not just condemn and abandon convicts calling the current prison system 'university for criminals...all it does is churn out better more hardened criminals'
- Stated that 'all prisoners are now met on release by someone whose job it is to keep them on the straight and narrow, the coalition government pays for them'
- And talked about wanting to implement 'restorative justice' whereby criminals are forced to meet their victims, apologise and help rebuild their lives. He also talked about putting criminals to work, paying them a wage and teaching them skills but having a portion of their wage go into a 'victims fund'
- He stated that whilst it is important to help criminals so they don't repeat offend, you can't overlook the fact that they have committed a crime and should be punished accordingly, and you can't ignore those who come from tough backgrounds and don't commit crimes; they should get just as much, if not more extra help.

In response to questions about how to improve the diversity of political parties, both ethnically and in gender terms, he stated:
- He couldn't agree more, the major political parties are too much like him 'pale and male' and he's implementing programmes within the Lib Dems to try and address this issue within his own party

And of course there were the inevitable questions about education and tuition fees:
-Whilst he didn't necessarily defend the obscene hike in tuition fees he did say that he hoped it would do some good to the country; he believes that we place far too much importance on academic qualifications and we should also be focusing on sorting out vocational qualifications which he referred to as currently being a 'spaghetti' like 'mess' and 'mistrusted by employers'.
- He brought up a new coalition policy which provides all very young children 15 hours free pre-schooling a week to help take some of the strain off working parents and give them a better start in life. (In my opinion it's a damn good policy and, bless him, he clearly thought so too saying 'I wish the people would talk about some of our other policies like this one sometimes')

Overall Nick Clegg came across as a really nice guy. During the speeches he was attentive and I know that during mine whenever I made eye-contact with him he smiled encouragingly, which was much appreciated given the pre-presentation nerves I'd been suffering from! He even made jokes about his own and the lib dem's reputation commenting 'Up Rising would a be good slogan for my party given what's happening to us at the moment!'. And even without all that, he took an hour out of his obscenely busy schedule just to come and talk to us. After the event he made no attempt to network with prominent individuals, promote his own policies or anything like that he just posed for some photos with us UpRisers and left. Admittedly, having some nice soft press about how Nick cares about young people may of been part of his motive for coming, but it certainly didn't come across like that. He seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself and eager to meet and help inspire young people, as well as support the UpRising programme as a whole.

So in short, whatever his successes and failures in parliament, when it comes to personality I like Nick Clegg. And regardless of his motives, the media coverage he's afforded the UpRising programme just by meeting with us will do a heck of a lot of good when it comes to recruitment and finding funding. Ta Nick!

H.B.
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Oh for a brief bit of news footage covering the event check this out:

International Women's Week

Another big part of my life is campaigning for human rights and against gender based on discrimination. I am also part of the rather fantastic UpRising Leadership programme (expect a massively nerdy blog post about how awesome it is in the next few days, but until then for more info check out: http://www.uprising.org.uk/). So I am currently combining these parts of life to create a Social Action Project with fellow UpRiser Dominica Kaczkowska. We want to work on rebranding 'feminism', defeating the negative stereotypes associated with the word and raise awareness of gender inequality issues across the world. And this is step one of the our plan: to create an 'International Women's Week' at the University of Birmingham surrounding International Women's Day on the 8th March 2012.


I am a feminist. But contrary to the negative and unrepresentative stereotype I don't hate men and, to be honest, if women actively choose to stay home, not work and raise kids or whatever good for them, all I have a problem with are the statistics:


UK:


- On average female managers are paid £10,000 less per annum then male colleagues doing identical jobs. (http://www.myfinances.co.uk/pensions/2011/08/31/cmi-report-reveals-gender-pay-gap-will-take-98-years-to-equa)


- The second highest reported crime in the UK is domestic abuse, accounting for 25% of all reports. On average a woman will be beaten 32 times before she seeks help. On average women approach between 5-12 agencies for help before receiving an appropriate and sympathetic response. (http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite?c=Page&childpagename=Equalities%2FPageLayout&cid=1223092717880&pagename=BCC%2FCommon%2FWrapper%2FWrapper)


Around the world:


- Female genital mutilation is practised in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia. Worldwide an estimated 135million girls experience genital cutting. Predominantly it is not a religious but a cultural practice to sublimate female sexuality. Girls generally undergo the procedure between the age of 7-12. Many develop uncontrollable bleeding and some do not survive. It is often women who perform the procedures and perpetuate the cycle.  http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-female-genital-mutilation


- .Gender-based violence is one of the biggest causes of injury and death to women across the world causing more deaths and disability among women aged 15 to 44 than cancer, malaria, traffic accident, and war.


- In China and India parents often use sex determination tests to find out if their foetus is a girl. Of 8,000 fetuses aborted at one Bombay clinic, 7,999 were female. There is also rising concern about mass infanticide of new born and baby girls across the two nations. (http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-poignant-facts-about-women-around-world )
(For a particularly harrowing description of how apparently common the murder of newborn baby girls is in modern rural China, and some to the point facts check out: http://www.economist.com/node/15636231?story_id=15636231)


Many people think Women's Rights is a dead and irrelevant issue. Plenty also assume that to be a feminist is to be a man-hating, boot wearing, bra burning nutter. Dominika and I plan on doing everything we can to change these two entirely erroneous assumptions, starting with students at the University of Birmingham.


Our Plan:

We are going to start by organising a week of events surrounding International Women’s Day on the 8^th March 2012. Each day we will be raising money for different charities (to be decided in a meeting with interested groups) and highlighting a different issue. We will also be inviting in external organisations and charities to provide workshops and information on issues relevant to that particular day's theme. We also want to work with University of Birmingham societies to put on an array of student friendly events and get as many different sections of uni society involved as possible. We'd love to work with as many different groups as possible, men, women, transgender and everyone inbetween, I know it's not only women who think arbitrary discrimination based on gender is wrong.

We also plan on reserving International Women's Day (8th March) itself for celebrating just how far we have come down the road to securing gender equality and raising awareness of the amazing work individual women and women's organisations do world wide.

It will be University of Birmingham based this coming year but we are already starting to forge contacts with women’s groups across Birmingham to bring in outside speakers and find local charities to fundraise for. We want to make International Women’s Week an annual event and to, eventually, help extend it to a Birmingham wide event by working with existing groups with similar aims.

What do societies have to do to get involved?


We will ask all interested groups to fundraise a small amount (amount to be determined later) each in preparation for International Women's Week then donate at least 50% of the profits from their individual events to their selected charity.


Why would societies get involved?


If the facts aren't enough to tempt you to help create change this might: the amount per group raised in advance will go towards printing brochures for the week containing a listing of 'International Women's Week' associated events combined with selected short facts and statistics about gender discrimination. We plan on handing out these brochures in the weeks prior to the event, promoting it online and running an info stall and bake sale outside the library every day of International Women's Week. In short it's excellent publicity for the society and event in question and since only 50% of the profits are required to go to the selected charities the society will earn some money too.


We want to get as many societies involved as possible. So I'm starting recruiting and advertising as soon as term starts. If you're a University of Birmingham society council member you will probably hear from me via email or at guild forums in a month or so but if you're interested and you'd like to contact me before then comment on this post and I'll send you my email address :)

Contrary to what too many believe gender inequality is still an issue. The world needs modern feminists. In this mass information age ignorance is no excuse. And you don’t even have to be a woman to think that getting paid 10grand less than a colleague simply for having a pair of tits, or the systematic destruction of babies purely for having the audacity to be born a particular gender is wrong.

I believe fighting gender discrimination world wide is an important issue. I hope that, even if you'd never thought about it before, after reading this you do too.


H.B.
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