International Women’s Day 2024

This year for International Women’s Day we hosted an event and had some great discussions about the theme for this year which was Inspire Inclusion. Additionally, we were joined by Baroness Glenys Thornton who gave a great talk about not only her experiences being in the House of Lords for over 20 years, but also gave us some insight into accessibility within the House of Lords.

What is International Women’s Day?

International Women’s Day (IWD) is an annual holiday to celebrate Women and to discuss key debates and issues that are still present in society. IWD originated from the labour movements within North America and Europe during the 19^th century and was originally proposed in 1910 by German delegates to the International Socialist Women’s Conference. It wasn’t until after the Russian Revolution in 1917 that it was made a national, and subsequently in the late 60s an international holiday to be celebrated on the 8^th of March.

Each year IWD has a different theme each prompting debates and discussion worldwide. This year the theme was Inspire Inclusion.

Chelmsford CLP and IWD

Our event began by us being joined by Baroness Glenys Thornton who spoke with us regarding not only what they had been discussing in the House that day, but also by highlighting how the House of Lords attempts to be as accessible as possible to members, including allowing members to vote virtually and keeping many of the COVID-19 measures in place.

The House discussed a report titled ‘Sexism in the City’ which you can find here if you would like to read it yourself. This report highlighted that many workplaces are still shirking their diversity requirements and doing them only as a ‘tick box’ exercise rather than doing it because they value diverse teams and the different perspectives each person can bring.

After a Q&A session, we had a short break before continuing with a presentation held by Nic the Membership Secretary. Amongst the presentation was some diversity statistics about Chelmsford sourced from the most recent census information

How diverse is Chelmsford?

5% of residents report coming from a ‘non-uk background’
3% of residents identify as Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh
6% of residents identify as Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African
Less than 5% of residents identify as Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Jewish or other non Christian religions
Around 15% of residents identify as disabled, with their activity levels being partially or seriously limited
2.6% of residents identify as LGBT+ this works out to 3384 residents
Just over 8% of residents have caring duties

Whilst it’s not a surprise to anyone that Chelmsford is largely homogenous, the discussion focused on how we can ensure that the minority voices are still heard in debates. Within Chelmsford CLP just under 30% of our membership is female, and most active members of the CLP are male.

Amongst the research that Nic did for our event, she came across an Ipsos survey which claimed that 47% of Britons believed that equality in the UK had gone far enough. Of the 47% who believed this, 56% identify as male. This shocking number is increased from the 2019 percent of 29%. The reason for this change is not always clear, but we discussed that this could be due to the rising popularity of misogyny on social media which is supported by the findings that Gen Z (Those born between 1997 and 2012) are more likely to say that equality has gone far enough.

The Ipsos report for this can be found here.

We finished up our event by having further discussion about why inclusion and diversity is important in all places, and how we are all responsible for ensuring that a space is created for diverse voices, and to strive to support diverse members of our community rather than talking over them or ignoring them.