14-15th March

I’ve just spent 2 days at women’s conference and thoroughly enjoyed it even though it was all a bit hectic. I arrived at the conference late because I’d been speaking at London Institute of Education about disability before I hopped onto a train. When I arrived at the conference it was in full swing with lots of debate happening about women representatives and officers. Then it was tea before we heard Jo salmon’s informal hustings speech. I was well impressed with it- yay Jo to you. Then for me it was bedtime as I was shattered and in need of a day off.

Tuesday was a bit more hectic for me as I was facilitating a number of different workshops and also wanted to be present at the different caucuses. It actually ended up that we had to change the workshop around- ah the joys of being the swd officer and the lead officer for FE.

The FE caucuses went really well and it really gave me a chance to explain what has been happening with the priority campaign and the FE advocates. It also hopefully enabled me to persuade some of the female Fe students to become FE advocates. We have around 15 advocates and only a couple of them are women. It just seems that all the FE officers I meet are men- but hopefully this will start to change and more women in FE will want to get involved in the advocate scheme. Get in touch if you do.

After the FE caucus I then rushed off to do a women and mental health workshop and now I will admit something even though I was facilitating this workshop it really did make me think. The one thing that I have been really proud of this year has been the way that all the liberation groups have worked closely together but for me it was this workshop that really bought things home for me. I realised how being a woman actually affects my disability and maybe in some way it was the way that I was treated as a woman that actually caused some of my disability. Am I sprouting complete and utter shite; I don’t think so.

You see part of my mental health or rather my mental ill health comes from my self-esteem and my perception of my body. You see when I was 18 I had a bust reduction operation. And why did I have this operation? Because of all the bullying and sexual harassment I received from the age of 10. The looks, the comments, the jokes and the humour. But it was oh so much worse than that. The touching up in the street, being man handled groups of lads thinking it was funny to touch me up. There was this one time in my textiles class when 3 lads in my form decided that they were going to see actually how big I was- 1 sat on my legs, 1 sat on my arms and 1 took a tape measure and tried to measure my chest whilst no one came to my rescue. People may shrug their shoulders and say it was boys being boys- you know what teenage lads are like but even now that incident has had a huge impact upon me, my self-image and therefore my mental health. The strange thing was that it wasn’t until today’s session on women and mental health that I actually realised how me being a woman and my woman’s shape had impacted upon me. If the bullying hadn’t happened would I know suffer mental health issues- to be honest I can’t say but what I do know is that it hasn’t helped. What I do know is that by being a woman with a curvy figure seems to make some men feel that they have the right to make comments, touch me up, stare etc. I want to live in a society where this doesn’t happen and for me for a personal reason that is why the women’s campaign exists. To fight for equality and to ensure that I can go dressed, as I want without having to be ready for comments and gropes!

After the mental health workshop it was the swd caucus, the FE workshop on how to get more women in FE involved and the swd workshop. Plus lots of debate about being pro choice, women in society and of course elections. Well done to Jo Salmon for getting re-elected. Her speech was awesome and she deserves the re-election.

For me the conference ended with dinner and a disco because I had to get to London for the AoC (www.aoc.org.uk) lobby of parliament. I enjoyed the conference- a huge congrats to Jo; women’s committee and the women’s unit for a great conference which totally reaffirmed to me why we need a women’s campaign. We still have a long to go before women are equal and its great that NUS is at the forefront of fighting for true equality for women.

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