News item 1

On 8^th March 2011, Linking London held an event to celebrate International Women’s Day. The event was attended by women working in education who came together to celebrate the day. At the event Sue Betts and Kate Burrell talked about the Linking London project, called “Social class, gender, participation and lifelong learning” which has just been submitted to the EU for potential funding.

We then shared a number of statistics about some of the difficulties that women face today as a reminder of the importance of the International Day for women. These facts included:

Women perform two-thirds of the world’s work and produce half the world’s food, but earn just 10% of the income and own 1% of of the property.

64% of the world’s illiterate adults are women, 41 million girls are still denied a primary education.

There followed a very personal and interesting discussion about the use of the word feminism, raising boys and women in work. There were also some positive discussions about how we might be able to work together to bring about changes in the workplace, including having a regular meeting to discuss these issues, we will bring you details of the next event soon.

Attendees at the event were asked to recommend a book that had influenced their understanding of gender issues, the bibliography of these great suggestions is below.