Here's a rough list of what I've been up to - in no particular order:

Getting the 'Being a Women's Officer Handbook' ready for publication, being the Lead Officer at Liberation 2004, sorting out the design for our first set of posters, chairing Women's Committee meetings (two so far), arranging Women's Committee training, writing proposals for our priority campaigns, planning our priority campaigns, going to NEC meetings, going to meetings with external organisations, making a note of the other external orgs that we need to meet with this year, answering hundreds of emails, meeting officers, going on college visits, setting up college visits, getting very well acquainted with Virgin trains (they have power points! Me a happy Jo!), discovering where in the UK I can and most definitely cannot get a phone signal, sending in our response to the consultation about the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR), looking at and coming up with ideas about how we can best utilise NUSonline and OfficerOnline, getting used to the expenses system, finding my way in and around London (if you know my incredible lack of sense of direction, you'll understand what an achievement this is!), setting up a e-group for Women's Committee, writing articles for various SU handbooks and magazines, and about a million other things that aren't listed in my diary…

Phew!

I guess a more detailed account is in order...

Women's Committee

At the time of writing (though not necessarily at the time of your reading it...) we've had 2 Committee meetings - the first as part of the Women's Committee training, and the second just before 'Women and Campaigns', though that one had to be cut short due to unforseen circumstances. We're currently in the process of scheduling the next one.

Women's Committee training went really well - thanks to Leeds for hosting us. We spent two days examining our roles on committee, learning how to deliver workshops, getting to know each other – and for this, we produced a handbook for committee members.

We also held our first committee meeting where we set the priority campaigns for 2004-2005...

Priority Campaigns

Check out the Women's Campaign pages on NUSonline and OfficerOnline for more details about our two priority campaigns, which are called A Woman's Place and Pro-Choice and Proud of it.

'A Woman's Place' is looking at gender segregation, among other things, and will be aiming to empower women to take on non-traditional roles in terms of their course and career choices, as well as getting directly involved in the politics of their student union.

The Pro-Choice campaign will be looking to defend and extend a woman's right to choose, as well as tackling sexual health and access to childcare, and looking at women's reproductive rights (or lack of) from an international perspective (George W's Global Gag Rule, etc)

Materials and Briefings

We've already been busy preparing materials for student unions, with an updated version of the 'Being a Women's Officer' handbook and designing new posters as part of the 'A Woman's Place' campaign – contact us to make sure you get your copy! I’m really impressed with the posters, especially as Jacky Fleming allowed us to use the famous ‘never give up’ woman illustration… thank you! The slogan is ‘a woman’s place is in her union’, and they really drive home the message that if women want their views and needs to be represented, then women need to get involved!

Commission for Equality and Human Rights

A few years ago, the government announced that they want to merge the three existing equality Commissions (Equal Opportunties Commission; Commission for Racial Equality; Disability Rights Commission) and give the single equality commission additional responsibility for sexuality, age, religion/belief, and human rights, in addition to the three existing strands of gender, race and disability.

At the start of this summer they launched a public consultation about the creation of a Commission for Equality and Human Rights, which closed on 6 August 2004.

At Women's Conference 2002, we passed policy supporting the creation of a Single Equalities Body (the title 'CEHR' had yet to reach the public domain, though SEB is a lot easier to say!)... Where was I? Oh yeah, we decided we agreed with the SEB in principle but essentially on one condition - that they harmonise the equality legislation, not just the commissions.

Although the current proposals don't mention anything about updating existing legislation, we were very assertive about this in our response. The reason we think this is so important is that, to take gender 'equality' as an example, the Sex Discrimination Act - a pioneering set of legislation - was passed in 1975. Twenty-nine years ago... not even in this decade, let alone century - or even millennium! The Women's Campaign would like to see legislation surrounding sexism updated and based upon the needs of women in the 21st Century, not the 1970s!

In fact, there is an EDM calling for the harmonisation of legislation, and we're going to send out a plea for women's officers and women's groups to lobby their MPs to get them to sign up too...

Ok, I'm going to wrap things up here as this entry is more of an essay than a blog... More soon!!

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