Progressive Women » Women

We’re Back – New dates for Leadership training!

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:10:19 +0000

Join Progressive Women for Leadership training workshops. We’ve got three new and unique sessions available in partnership with professional leadership coaches ANKLe

We had some great feedback from our sessions last year

“Really worthwhile” ”The facilitator was lovely!”

“Thanks I really appreciate your effort to organise this” “Excellent value for money”

Find out more about our new sessions for February 2012 and how to reserve your place below. All tickets must be purchased in advance

Understanding Change and Transition

Weds 8 Feb, 6.30pm-8.30pm, Friends Meeting House, 173 Euston Road, NW1 2BJ

Life these days is always changing – whether it’s a change in your career circumstances or a new personal relationship. It helps to understand the inner psychological transition that we humans need to make if we are to really realise the potential of the new change. Judy Oliver, founder of ANKLe, promises that her session will offer solutions – at home or at work it works!

Who is Judy Oliver? Judy Oliver (BA Hons Barrister, FIPD, FRSA) specialises in leadership development, strategic thinking, and transition planning. Judy is founder of A New Kind of Leadership (ANKLe). In addition to providing bespoke development programmes for Boards and Executive Teams, she has successfully designed and delivered key strategic development programmes for clinical leaders in the NHS, directors and senior managers which have contributed to more effective collaboration. Before setting up her own company JudyOliverandCo ,Judy worked for 17 years with BP and 9 years in local government. Read feedback from Judy’s clients here

Reserve your place by purchasing your ticket here

Communication skills: Embracing the hidden potential of your voice

Weds 22nd Feb, Friends Meeting House, 173 Euston Road, NW1 2BJ

Communication is the key to successful leadership and this workshop will focus on new tools and techniques to help you use your voice to the best of your ability.

Julia Williams will work with individual issues that hold us back, which everyone can find useful. This can be dealing with nerves, speaking too quickly, focusing a creative chaotic mind, not daring to speak, fearing to be too emotional – whatever you think is holding you back.

Julia has extensive experience of helping people working across all sectors to find their voice and maximise their impact. Many of us secretly don’t like something about our voice or speaking manner, especially if it occasionally lets us down. Julia has worked with a number of high profile UK and international companies such as Accenture, JP Morgan, Barclays, HSBC, Shell and BT, as well as government bodies such as the Ministry of Defence, TFL and HM Treasury. You can find out more about Julia’s success stories on her company website www.personalimpact.com

Reserve your place by purchasing your ticket for this event here

Designing Effective Events and Meetings

Weds 29th Feb, 6.30pm – 8.30pm, Friends Meeting House, 173 Euston Road, NW1 2BJ

Key to successful leadership is effective time management. Do you want to optimise the effectiveness of your events and maximise the results from your meetings? If you’re fed up of spending too much time at work in ’talking shops’ this session will help you learn how to make the most from meetings and events.

Professional Leadership coach Judy Oliver will lead this workshop. She will apply the Nancy Kline method of developing a Thinking Environment where people can give their best, for constructive results.

You can reserve your place for this workshop by purchasing your ticket here

Join our mailing list for news on future Progressive Women events email progress@progressivewomen.org.uk follow us on twitter @sylviapankhurst

Progressive Women launch Leadership series

admin — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:03:23 +0000

Progressive Women are delighted to announce a series of Leadership Development workshops in partnership with ANKLe (a New Kind of Leadership).

Following on from our mentoring events earlier this year we will be hosting a series of top quality training sessions with experienced professional trainers to help women develop their leadership skills. This is a unique opportunity to experience top quality training (normally +£300!) at a non-profit price.

The aim of the workshop series is for top quality, inspiring, women trainers to share practical tools and techniques to help you become a successful leader. This series is a unique opportunity to experience expert professional training in a small group tailored specifically for women at a non profit price.

9 November Women’s Leadership – Why it’s different and how to sustain it with Isobel Gowan.

6.30pm-8.30pm, YWCA Central Club, 44 Portland Place, London, W1B 1NE. Tickets £20. Buy your ticket here.

Isobel will facilitate a workshop on women’s leadership where she will focus on what you want to achieve from leadership and how you can get there. Isobel is a highly skilled leadership coach with extensive experience in the NHS latterly as Chief Executive of a large acute and community Trust. Isobel now runs her own company and works with Boards to develop their effectiveness.

Find out more and buy your ticket for this workshop here

30 November What makes me tick? -deepening awareness for planning your career with Lindsay Wittenberg.

6.30pm-8.30pm. YWCA Central Club, 44 Portland Place, London, W1B 1NE. Tickets £20. Purchase your ticket here.

Lindsay’s workshop will focus on the question ’how can I be productive at work and still be myself?’. The workshop will help you identify your strengths and values and how you can use these to succeed in planning your career.

Lindsay Wittenberg (BA Hons, MIBC, CMC, FRSA, MBTI Certified Practitioner) has been an executive coach and career coach since 2003. She is founder and Managing Director of her own leadership development and coaching company.

Find out more about this workshop and book your place here.

7 December The Key to Success: Getting to know yourself and others with Suzy Phillips.

6.30pm-8.30pm. YWCA Central Club, 44 Portland Place, London, W1B 1NE. Tickets £20. Purchase your ticket here

The workshop will focus on using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator to help you to understand how you prefer to operate. Greater self-awareness can help you to be more effective in your professional and personal life and help you interact most effectively with others. The workshop aims to give you practical tools to help you be successul and influential in all aspects of your life.

More details are available and to book your place click here

Contact Progressive Women to be added to our mailing list caroline@progressivewomen.org.uk. Follow us on twitter @sylviapankhurst #WomenLead

Thinking Better Together

admin — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 12:57:10 +0000

I’m afraid this workshop session is now full. If you want to register for the waiting list then do email Caroline at the address below or if you want to be updated about the mentoring scheme once it is up and running then please do get in touch.

Progressive Women are looking for 8 women to join us on Wednesday 2nd February for a free workshop with ANKLE (A New Kind of Leadership) Network. To be held at: RSA, John Adam St, London, WC2N 6EZ

The aim of the meeting is to

Share what ANKLE have learned about the importance of creating a thinking environment which enables us to think well, based on the amazing work of Nancy Kline (www.timetothink.com)
Learn some very practical techniques which can be directly applied at work and at home to help relationships and work processes be more effective;
Look at a proposal for a co-mentoring system between our two networks which would enable us to set up a range of cross-generation mentoring partnerships in 2011, using Thinking Environment methods;
Agree next steps.

If you want to participate in this workshop on 2nd February please email caroline@progressivewomen.org.uk by Wednesday 26th January.

“For Bodies Sake – Let’s Change the Future”

admin — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:41:31 +0000

Caroline Watson, Co-founder of Progressive Women, writes about the first Progressive Women event of 2011

“Virtually all feminist debate on body image and beauty imagery owes its existence to Susie Orbach” – Naomi Wolf.

Progressive Women’s year was officially kick started last night at our New Year’s Feminist Resolution Party. Professor Susie Orbach was our guest speaker and she certainly got us thinking, discussing, motivated and committed to some great new year’s resolutions (read on to find out what some of these are).

Although Susie started by saying she didn’t necessarily believe in resolutions she said that we should all resolve to be comfortable with ourselves and support other women to be comfortable with their appearance and their bodies. Constantly worrying about eating and dieting, and criticising ourselves for not being thin enough, or being the right size or shape is violence against ourselves. There is a culture of a fear of food and much of this is pedalled by the diet industry which makes a profit from people failing. Diets are designed for people to fail to lose weight so they will then try the next diet and keep on abusing their bodies in this way while making the diet industry rich. Susie proclaimed the diet industry should be prosecuted!

Susie told us about her campaign Endangered Species.

“The woman who can walk, dress, talk, eat, swim, work, without losing energy and time over the anxiety of looking good enough, is an Endangered Species.” The Endangered Species campaign is a global initiative and the first summit will be held on 4th March at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

Susie spoke of the need for a sustainable mind and sustainable body. We had a thought provoking discussion and then we asked everyone to commit to a resolution some of which are here – many inspired by Susie’s messsage.

“Get involved with more activism”

“Don’t let the bastards get you down”

“Don’t give up!”

“Do more stuff like this”

“Be kinder to myself”

“Join Twitter and use as a force for good to promote feminist issues”

“Be more proactive when ranting about the treatment of women in the media etc (ie write letter to the editor etc rather than ranting at friends”

“Be mindful”

“Boycott trashy gossip magazines or anything that has the word diet on the cover”

“To challenge pseudo-feminist to be actual feminists.”

Delusions of Gender

admin — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 21:55:16 +0000

Lucy James, fellow Progressive Woman, reviews Cordelia Fine’s book on real differences between the genders.

At the end of last year, James May aired his new TV programme Man Lab. Fearing that men were losing ‘vital skills’ that were so ‘cherished by their forefathers’, the series sought to re-masculate the modern man by educating him in traditionally ‘male’ tasks such as navigation, changing a tyre and building a pub.

If anyone else finds the show’s concept a little archaic (perhaps Nick Clegg would call it ‘Edwardian’), I would highly recommend reading Cordelia Fine’s new book, Delusions of Gender: the real science behind sex differences. Fine, an Australian psychologist, intelligently and absorbingly dissects the commonly held assumption that male and female brains are hard-wired for different tasks. Adding to the increasingly vocal body of thought that has sought to defy ‘pseudo-scientific’ claims of an inherent gender difference, Fine destroys the basic premise behind the James May school of thought. In so doing, she helps to progress gender equality at its most fundamental level.

One particularly powerful argument put forward in the book is that of the ‘stereotype threat’. This is when an individual member of a negatively stereotyped social group subconsciously conforms to the group’s stereotype and performs a task to a lesser degree than they would have done otherwise. In the past, psychologists have applied this theory to all social groups and contexts – particularly ethnic minorities. Fine, however, examines its implications for women in male-dominated professions (specifically maths) using a range of scientific evidence to support the claim.

For example, she cites the case of an American psychologist who gave male and female students a calculus test under both threat and non-threat conditions. In the stereotype threat condition, students were told that the test was intended to evaluate what makes some students better at maths than others (thus putting female students under an implicit threat condition as men are stereotypically perceived to be more able at maths). In the non-threat condition, the students were told that men and women perform equally well at the test. Under the threat condition, female students achieved a disproportionately poor result. However, under the non-threat condition, the female students performed significantly better. Fine argues that the reason for this is that a group under stereotype threat is forced to suppress unwanted thoughts and anxieties, which uses up mental resources that could be put to better use elsewhere.

If this is the case, how do we improve the performance of women in male-dominated professions, such as banking, science, and politics, where they are implicitly under stereotype threat? Evidently, we need to eliminate some of the threat conditions – so what factors have been found to raise the threat levels? Fine explains that, so far, stereotype threats have been seen in women who:

record their sex at the beginning of a test
are in the minority as they take a test
have just watched women acting in air-headed ways in commercials
who have instructors or peers who hold (consciously or otherwise) sexist attitudes

Firstly then, taking each factor to its logical conclusion, to succeed in traditionally male environments women need to avoid demarcating themselves on the basis of their gender. Even by ticking a gender box, an individual subconsciously raises the threat level and reinforces negative gender stereotypes to the detriment of their abilities. Secondly, these findings emphasise the need to increase female representation and the number of positive female role models in male-dominated professional environments in order to lower the threat levels and to encourage other women to follow suit. Thirdly, the negative impact that viewing women ‘air-heads’ in TV adverts had on female participants illustrates the dire need to have a large scale overhaul of gender stereotyping in wider society. Finally, the impact of sexist attitudes reinforces the importance of challenging implicit and explicit sexual discrimination in the workplace, as well as sexism more broadly.

These findings make it clear that threat levels are affected by what Fine refers to as ‘subtle triggers’, as well as more obvious ones. Unfortunately, this only makes the task of reducing threat levels harder as it is not just a case of eradicating overt sexual discrimination, but overhauling implicit gender stereotypes that pervade all areas of society. However, the first step is to be able to undermine the likes of James May and to better understand the psychological impact of certain social environments on gender equality. In order to do this, Fine’s book, though at times scientifically dense, is a great starting point and a highly recommended and gripping read.

Want to meet fellow Progressive Women and listen to phenomenal feminist writer & psychoanalyst Susie Orbach? Come to our New Year’s Resolution Party this Wednesday 19th January at 6.30pm, The Old Star, 66 Broadway, SW1H 9DB. Hope to see you there and hear what your new ear’s feminist resolution will be!

Happy 2011 – Let’s Party!

admin — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:35:55 +0000

Caroline Watson, Co-founder of Progressive Women, writes about why she is excited about 2011 and what this means for Progressive Women

A belated Happy New Year. I am extremely excited about 2011. Progressive Women are about to kick off their year with our first ever feminist resolution party! The idea is that we wanted to have an event where progressive women can come together and talk about our individual plans for the year ahead. What are we doing individually and what can we do collectively to empower ourselves and each other and make progress towards equality.

What makes the event so incredible is that we are lucky enough to have the legendary Susie Orbach as our guest speaker. Psycho-analyst and writer of seminal feminist text Fat is a Feminist Issue will be speaking about why her theories on body image that she first published in the ’70s are as relevant today as they were then. She will be sharing with us her AnyBody campaign.

Having Susie speak is perfect for the theme of our evening. January is so often the time we are beating ourselves up about over-indulging in too much christmas pud, the temptation is great to try to start a fitness regime and healthy eating plan. But how much of this is focused on what we look like and trying to keep up with a media pressure to be a certain way and not about our own quality of life and good health? I know I can be guilty of this. The culture of beauty and physical perfection that we are constantly bombarded with on the cover of magazines only serves to suggest that what women look like and weigh is more important than their personality and what they do to contribute to their place of work, family, friends and community. I am starting to believe that all this attention of physical perfection is a distraction from the things that really matter, and the things we should really be taking notice of (let’s just start with lack of female leadership and representation in government). So let’s keep this in mind when thinking of our resolutions for the rest of the year. Let’s reject this notion of physical perfection and let’s celebrate who we are, what we believe to be our strongest assets (whatever these may be) and how we can use those to the betterment of ourselves and each other in 2011.

I look forward to hearing what your new year’s resolutions are at our New Year’s Party on Wednesday 19th January, upstairs at the Old Star, 66 the Broadway, SW1H 0DB. Be there from 6.30 to make sure you don’t miss our amazing speaker. RSVP to caroline@progressivewomen.org.uk

The Feminist Resolution Party will be just the start of a line up of Progressive Women events in 2011, we are also working hard to pull together a mentoring event which we hope will bring inspirational women together to share knowledge, experience and encourage each other. Watch this space!

Feminist New Year’s Resolution party!

admin — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:40:52 +0000

Progressive Women are having a party…

Join us for the Feminist New Year’s Resolution party!

Wednesday 19th January 2011
6.30pm for 7pm upstairs at the Old Star, 66 Broadway, Victoria, SW1H ODB

We are delighted to announce that the phenomenal leading feminist Professor Susie Orbach, psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, social critic, and author of ‘Fat is a Feminist Issue’ and ‘Bodies’ will be our guest speaker.

We can’t wait to see you and hear what your new year’s feminist resolution will be!

Please RSVP to caroline@progressivewomen.org.uk.

Government champion announced

admin — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 10:04:22 +0000

Lee Webster is Campaigns Manager for CARE International UK. She runs the Voices Against Violence campaign, which calls for an end to violence against women in conflict.

Yesterday (25 November) was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women – a key date in the diaries of women’s rights campaigners around the world. This year in the UK it has been even busier than usual, with a raft of meetings, government announcements and events.

Top of the announcements, and music to the ears of all those who have been working on this issue for months, was that Lynne Featherstone MP will become the government Champion for tackling international violence against women. CARE International, along with Action Aid and One World Action, has been campaigning for the post since the elections in May. Our supporters have written to their MPs, left voice messages for William Hague, and contacted local newspapers.

There is no time to stop and pat ourselves on the back however. We need to keep the pressure on, and ensure that the government gives Ms Featherstone the funding, access and authority to drive forward real change in the lives of women.

CARE works alongside and in solidarity with women in countries affected by conflict, who campaign in their communities for protection from violence, and to participate in peace building. A few weeks ago I visited Rwanda, to work on a strategy for grassroots mobilisation with women activists, in order to improve the health and justice services that are available to women survivors of violence. There, in local communities and at national level, women are organising, mobilising and demanding action.

The least we can do in the international community is to stand by them. Please sign CARE’s petition today, to make sure the UK government plays its part.

Set back for equal pay in the USA

admin — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:38:08 +0000

This week the latest attempt to fix the pay gap between men and women in the USA was stalled, after the Paycheck Fairness Act failed to get past the Republicans in the Senate.

Women in the US earn, on average, 80% of men’s median pay. And the gap is much greater for African-American women, who earn 61cents for every $1 a white man earns, and Hispanic women who earn 52 cents for every $1 a white man earns.

The US first passed equal pay legislation in 1963, seven years before the UK. The Paycheck Fairness Act was designed to amend the historic Equal Pay Act to make it easier for the law to be enforced.

Among other measures it would have prevented employers from punishing employees who ask about pay practices or who disclose their own rate of pay. As part of tackling the problem of secrecy around individuals’ pay (a notorious and difficult barrier to achieving equality in the US) the Government would have been required to collect information on the sex, race and national origin of employees. The Act would also have limited the allowed reasons for different rates of pay to reasons such as differences in education and experience.

For the Act to pass the Senate it first needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. To get past this procedural motion and be debated, the bill needed 60 members needed to vote in favour. The vote split down party lines with all the Republicans voting against. In the end Senators voted 58-41 in favour of debating the measures, two votes short. Meaning that the Act could not be debated and could not pass. The House of Representatives passed the Bill almost two years ago.

With the US Congress now in what is colloquially known as “the lame duck” session, before the newly elected members (from the recent November elections) take their seats in January, it is unlikely that further progress on the Act and overcoming this historic disparity in pay will be made in the near future.

The US is ranked 64 out of 130 for wage equality between men and women. (The UK is ranked 60). There are currently 17 women and 83 men in the US Senate.

Inspiring Leaders: Our fab Inspiring Leaders partner Laura Nelson over at Delilah has put together some great podcasts from the event. You can listen to them here:http://bit.ly/aYujBB

Rape: It’s our dirty little secret

admin — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:04:02 +0000

Sarah Learmonth is Policy Officer at Coventry Rape & Sexual Abuse Centre.

Did you know that after you are raped it is very unlikely you will have a female Forensic Medical Examiner, the vast majority are men, in some areas of the country all are male? Did you also know that the British Medical Association have stated that rapists are escaping conviction because of a lack of adequately trained doctors to deal with victims and that this is a contributing factor to the low UK rape conviction rate, currently standing at around 6.5%?

No? Well it’s not surprising, rape is reported nationally only as individual cases, mostly those which are going to trial or have achieved conviction, not as an issue for society to acknowledge and understand.

I work for the Rape Crisis Centre in Coventry which supports around 3,000 victims of rape and abuse. Around a quarter of our clients are children and nearly half of the adult clients were sexually abused first as children. More women and girls are raped in the UK than suffer diabetes or coronary heart disease, but the level of support for victims is nowhere near the same.

An Amnesty International survey found that third of people in the UK believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she has behaved in a flirtatious manner, these people are doctors, police officers, A & E nurses, jury members; the latest Crown Prosecution Service figures show that if you go to trial it is twice as likely you will get a not guilty verdict than a conviction.

No wonder then that we end up in a situation where David Cameron supports the proposal for rape anonymity for defendants based on ‘the significant number of false allegations.’ The evidence for that? Well there isn’t any. The Stern Review of the criminal justice response to rape victims states false reporting is ‘extremely rare’, but as a society the knowledge that women lie about rape is an undisputed myth, a stereotype not only unchallenged by the government but adopted within a proposal initially for legislation.

I was on a train recently with a woman who was interested in doing some pro bono work for us, explaining our services for victims when the man next to me told me to ‘Shut up’ and looking around the carriage I wondered how many other people agreed with his sentiments and how many realised that this is exactly what our victims are told to do.

When we ask the Practise Managers at our local GP surgeries to put our leaflets out some explain they can’t because they might offend people.

In March of this year a report came out called Taskforce Alberti, a review of the health response to rape victims, it states that in the UK an estimated 16% of children between 0 to 16 years old have experienced sexual abuse. There was no media attention given to this report, no interviews, nothing.

Rape and sexual abuse are in epidemic proportions and as a society our reaction is to distance ourselves with disbelief, the victim is blamed and a focus put on helping the abusers. As a whole our society would rather that organisations like Rape Crisis picked up the pieces invisibly and silently.

“My uncle used to ask for me to bring him tea in the morning that was the signal, I knew what would happen. He showed me pictures of my aunt after he’d beaten her up and told me if I didn’t do what he said then he would beat her again. I was 9 years old.”

So maybe after what I’ve told you we can decide that it’s no longer going to be a secret, that together we will effect the monumental change in our society’s attitudes that is needed towards rape and its’ victims. If we have to do it one person at a time, then we will.

If you would like to donate to Coventry Rape Crisis Centre please click here: www.crasac.org.uk/donations
We are on Facebook (CRASAC) and Twitter (@CRASAC)
Helpline Number: 024 7627777
National rape crisis website