Soroptimists work to transform the lives of women and girls through education, empowerment and enabling opportunities. We do this through raising awareness, advocating for change and taking action.
SI Lichfield recognised that advocating for change was an area we could do more in and a new sub group started in October 2020.
Our key themes are:
- Violence against Women and Girls (which includes Domestic Abuse; Female Genital Mutilation, Forced Marriage and Honour based abuse)
- Modern Day Slavery and Human Trafficking
- Our Environment (including Climate Change, use of plastics and recycling)
- Equality (such as encouraging girls into STEM based careers and healthy relationships)
We do this through democratic systems including:
- Bills that are working through Parliament (Parliamentary Bills – UK Parliament) falling within areas that can impact on the lives of women and girls. From this we can work with various organisations to lobby for amendments or petition to influence decisions.
- Planning or other changes our local councils are looking to make and work with them and/or other organisations such as Transition Lichfield
- Petitions that UKPAC have identified that could affect women and girls on a national or international basis – https://sigbi.org/get-involved/sign-a-petition
In the short time we have been working in this area we have:
- marched through Lichfield City Centre to publicise the UN’s 16 days of activism 16 Days of Activism 2019 on violence against women
- written to our MPs about amendments to the Domestic Abuse Bill and helped to get Non-Fatal Strangulation made into an offence in the Domestic Abuse Act 2020
- supported other organisations such as Age UK, Greenpeace and private individuals who have placed petitions on the UK Parliament petitions website
- talked to the Leader of Lichfield District Council who has agreed to raise our campaigns with the council with the aim for them to show their support.
- learnt how the UK Parliament works and how best to use our voices
- attended webinars on such subjects as ‘women who kill’ with the Centre for Women’s Justice on how the justice system disproportionately negatively affects women.