A group of us went with some friends from Motherwell Women’s Charity to visit the Pankhurst Museum and hear from Manchester Women’s Aid which is also based there. Beforehand we had a lovely lunch at The Whitworth Art Gallery. The museum itself stands incongruously as a victorian house in the middle of the modern buildings of Central Manchester Hospital, and was where Emmeline Pankhurst lived and started the suffragette movement from her parlour there. We learned a lot about the birth of the suffragette movement and Emmeline’s role in this, which was very interesting. It was also very useful to hear about Manchester Women’s Aid, supporting 5 refuges and a range of outreach services for women subject to domestic abuse. we were pleased to hear that they are in contact with, and learning from our local service Cheshire Without Abuse, which is considered a model

We understand how important education is to enabling women and girls achieve their potential in all areas of their lives, it is a theme of our previous articles about women in the law and women in health, and well researched. We are especially pleased then to have two speakers at our conference who are inspirational women from the education sector – a Primary Academy Principal, Joanna Young, and at the other end of the education journey in Higher Education, Professor Dame Janet Finch, former Vice-Chancellor of Keele University. We are looking forward to hearing about their own stories as well as their thoughts on educating women and girls in the modern millennial age.   There are many inspirational role models promoting education; we have chosen to highlight two women who have worldwide impact, but not just because they are famous for their roles or titles,

Who are some of the amazing women in the law? What can we learn from them? Well, nowadays there is a reasonable gender balance amongst judges, with over half of judges under 40 being women, but just over 100 years ago it was a different story…   In 1904, Emmeline Pankhurst’s daughter Christabel was refused admission to the bar because of her gender. Much fun was had at the prospect of women barristers, with an image of a woman in crinolines, muffs and wigs sub-titled “probably the next absurdity” in Punch magazine from 1910 – some 12 years before the first generation of women was called to the Bar.   Carrie Morrison, Mary Pickup, Mary Sykes and Maud Crofts were the first women to pass the Law Society’s examinations to qualify as solicitors in 1922. Like many other early women solicitors, all except Maud Crofts

Nantwich Soroptimists have been applauded for their anti slavery initiative: a report by Helen Piddock – Jones In mid November  2018 three members of SI Nantwich (Anne Thompson, Anne Barnard and Helen Piddock-Jones) attended a Modern Slavery Awareness event held at the Civic Hall in Nantwich. It was an excellent event, sponsored by the South Cheshire Chamber of Commerce and the Mayor of Nantwich, among others. The Speakers included the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, the UK border force, the police and some big businesses who had discovered numerous slaves within their own workforce. In every town in the UK slaves are hidden in plain sight. They do their job but nobody knows where they live and their pay goes into somebody else’s pocket.  The Police and other authorities are now all set up and ready to act and move in, but they can only

Caroline Marsh writes – My First SIGBI Conference – Liverpool 2018 – the tidied up twitter version! Off for a bit of social action at Soroptimists conference in Liverpool! That was my first tweet as we were on the train to Liverpool. I tweeted and re-tweeted over 100 tweets over the course of the conference, and they are really my notes of the event. I am sharing some of these with you to give a flavour of what went on and my reaction to the sessions. I didn’t tweet from every session, and here I have put a comment to say what some of these talks were about. Tweets / re-tweets in italics. Twitter is immediate, opinionated and personal. Inevitably this report back is all of those things. I also hope that doing it this way makes it mercifully shorter! Opening ceremony Great to be

    16 days of Action to Orange the World! Soroptimists said NO to violence against Women –  25 November- 10 December 2018.                 International day for the Elimination of Violence against Women: 25 November Violence against women and girls affects one in three women worldwide. Whether at home, on the streets or during war, violence against women and girls is a human rights violation of pandemic proportions. Women and girls who experience violence are often blamed and their testimonies put in doubt. The fear of reprisals, of not being believed, and the stigma borne by the survivor has silenced the voices of millions of survivors of violence and masked the true extent of women’s continued horrific experiences. Not until the half of our population represented by women and girls can live free of fear, violence and everyday insecurity, can we truly

Our Club meeting in October 2018 has prompted a blog by Caroline Marsh…. What is supportive, lifts you up, and always close to your heart? Yes, it could be your best friend, but we are talking about bras here, lots of them, through the ages and social twists and turns of the last century. Our dinner speaker in October was Janet Blake who brought lots of garments for us to see and gave a gentle and informative talk about bras, slips, petticoats pyjamas and other undergarments. It was an opportunity for a history lesson for some and to reminisce for others – one of our members even shared that she had even been a model for Spirella corsets! It got me thinking though – what have bras ever done for women? Are they a vital undergarment for style and comfort or a symbol of male

Mary’s Meals is an exciting charity that provides a meal a day in a place of education for nearly 1 million children in third world countries.  This ensures that the children have a good diet which gives them the strength to concentrate, learn and attain an education; academic performance and attendance rates dramatically increase when the provision of meals is introduced. We have been supporting this charity for the last three years through fundraising events such as Quiz Nights, Treasure Hunts, Coffee Mornings and Jewellery Parties as the money raised is used by the charity to buy locally grown food which helps the small-holder farmers in each region.  The average cost to feed a child for a whole school year is just £12.20.  For many children this is the only meal they receive that day.   The children also need the tools to assist them in their studies and the Backpack