Celebrating 100 years of Women
Celebrating 100 years of Women's Suffrage

Cambridge Labour Party Women’s Forum

If you’re female and a member of the Labour Party, you are a member of your local Women’s Forum.

The Women’s Forum is here to:

  • support women’s involvement in the local party: from discussing and campaigning on the issues that concern them, to encouraging them to run for elected office;
  • To build links with women in the community, through contact with community organisations and individual women, consultation, campaigning and working together;
  • encourage women to join the Party and to help all women feel at home in it
  • ensure that women’s voices are heard in the Party, and represent women’s interests and concerns on the Executive Committee.

How we do it:

  • meeting informally in small groups to discuss issues important to us
  • organise events to raise the profile of concerns such as sexism and misogyny, and how policies affect women so we can address any problems
  • run workshops to enable women to participate in the local party with confidence
  • support women candidates running for office.

We believe that political activities like these can be mutually supportive and enjoyable, and we also hold events where we can share our skills and enthusiasm.

Why women, why now?

As Everyday Sexism, #MeToo, and The Gender Pay Gap all remind us, there is a long way to go before we achieve equality between men and women, especially Black and Asian women, and women with disabilities. Women remain a minority in representative government, although, the Labour Party outperforms Tories and LibDems with 45% of its MPs, and 42% of councillors in England as women. However, only 17% of council leaders are women and in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough combined authority there are no female board members at all.

News and activities

Delegates

The Women’s Forum sends two delegates to the Cambridge Labour Party (CLP) General Committee, which meets once a month to receive reports from the MP and Labour group council leads, to raise and debate motions and to elect local officers (such as the Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, and Women’s Officer).

Delegates are elected annually at the time of the CLP AGM (currently July), and the WF is entitled to two delegates. This means that the WF can propose motions and raise issues at GC on matters which we think are important. The WF delegates each have a vote on GC appointments and motions (along with ward delegates).

Current delegates to the general committee are:

Claire Richards

Sophie Barnett

If you would be interested in becoming a delegate in the future, or to be active in the Women’s Forum, it would be great to hear from you.

 

Contact

The Women’s Officer: Susan Buckingham susanbuckingham07@gmail.com

For further information on the Cambridge Labour Party Women’s Forum, please check out our twitter and Facebook sites.

@CamsWomensForum

#Cambridgelabourwomensforum

Social and Networking Events

Keep an eye on our social media sites for details of events such as social and networking events, training and fundraisers.

Socialist Feminist Study Group

A group of women meet monthly to discuss ideas from books, films and videos. The books/films that have inspired us so far are:

Mary Beard – Women and Power https://profilebooks.com/women-and-power.html

Caroline Lucas – Honorable Friends. Parliament and the Fight for Change http://portobellobooks.com/honourable-friends-2

Jacqueline Walker – Pilgrim State https://www.hodder.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9781444731811

Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS2nkr9q0VU

Gail Dines: Growing up in a pornified culture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YpHNImNsx8

Jackson Katz Violence against women—it’s a men’s issue: Jackson Katz at TEDxFiDiWomen https://youtu.be/KTvSfeCRxe8

If you would like to join the group (which is currently based in Trumpington/Romsey/Chesterton), or would like to set up a group in your local area, get in touch.

Some examples of our activities

The Women’s Forum held its inaugural meeting in January 2018, in which fifty women members of the Labour Party participated, with a further forty indicating interest in future meetings. The next Forum meeting is on Wednesday 31st October, 7-9pm and will focus on future events and campaigns. Discussions have been organised by the Women’s Forum this year on Inequality and Climate Change (in May with the Ethnic Minority Forum) and on Women and Homelessness (in July).

Events organised prior to the setting up of the Women’s Forum included a Winter Fundraiser in Ross Street Community Centre with music, a one-woman play ‘Pac-a-Mac Woman’, stalls selling clothes, books, and household goods, a feminist quiz and taster workshops on ‘finding your voice’ and on ‘being assertive’.

A workshop on ‘Challenging porn culture and its normalisation of violence against women’ was held in October 2017, and some of the participants are taking issues the discussion raised (such has how violence against women needs to be taken up by men, and how pornography is damaging to young men) to their local branches.

The Women’s Forum and Ethnic Minority Forum were awarded £1,000 by the Labour Party’s Diversity and Democracy Programme to stimulate participation in Labour’s local political activity, including as as officers and councillors, among disadvantaged and ethnic minority women. Workshops will run in late autumn

 ‘Cambridge Women Rising’ in October 2018 was an event to empower women with speakers, stalls, workshops, art, comedy, food and drink.

Rebecca Long Bailey MP and Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy came to talk to us about her experience of being a woman in Parliament, and the importance of her brief for women.

Fundraising dinner with Baroness Shami Chakrabarti at Murray Edwards College

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