Int. Women’s Day ideas on campus?

[AlwaysColdHands]

Shamelessly trawling for ideas…..any plans for on campus events to mark International Womens Day on 8th March?
Am on the committee for this, and we’re struggling for ideas.
Any gems very welcome 🙏

Well I think were getting a “women’s” workshop with Julia. Serrano and Shon Faye.

But I wouldn’t recommend it.

lunch time talks? 5 min videos released on twitter / youtube introducing inspirational women at your university? free coffee for all women at the campus cafe?

How about getting a man in to tell you about how he’s a great ally to women? If you want to do something more woman focused then I’d avoid some cis Karen (unless it’s a sex worker, in which case that’s fine) and instead choose a stunning brave trans woman like Munro Bergdorf or maybe Eddie Izzard.
Maybe to make the day extra special, you could fire some TERFs.

Its only Department-level but each year we do a series of profiles of women. It's not very adventurous but it's something. We usually just put these out as text on social media but you could do short videos. In the past we've got them to talk about what IWD means to them, or their feminist-focused work. We make sure to be 'inclusive' so we profile undergraduates, postgraduates and PSS staff (not just academics). We try to get a good diversity in terms of age and ethnicity. The 'gender' question has never arisen so far but our new EDI lead will, I suspect, be keen to include men soon.

What about something like a photography competition for women students? You could do an exhibition of the photos around campus and offer a prize for the winner.

I like the idea of free coffee for women for a day

'Managing your Menopause'

I should imagine the younger female staff will be congratulating themselves on being the first women ever to invent engineering for women, as usual. And us oldies who are insufficiently woke will be ignored like the embarrassments we are.

Find some women leaders of big companies and invite them to come and tell you all about how they got where they are today.

Invite some school girls in to visit campus and talk to them about their aspirations and offer some advice and support in helping them achieve them - maybe make it a longer term thing by launching a mentoring partnership with local schools - female students mentoring female 6th form students.

Invite some older women in to talk about life in the old days, so we can all see how far we've come in terms of equality, and that we don't want to risk losing what we've achieved by allowing men to join our sports/take credit for being the first woman to..../share our changing rooms/lead our rape crisis centres

Could you invite alumna to come and speak about their careers and how their experience at your institution prepared them for that?

Free self-defence classes for women.

Alumnae.

@Justkeeppedaling

Find some women leaders of big companies and invite them to come and tell you all about how they got where they are today.

Invite some school girls in to visit campus and talk to them about their aspirations and offer some advice and support in helping them achieve them - maybe make it a longer term thing by launching a mentoring partnership with local schools - female students mentoring female 6th form students.

Invite some older women in to talk about life in the old days, so we can all see how far we've come in terms of equality, and that we don't want to risk losing what we've achieved by allowing men to join our sports/take credit for being the first woman to..../share our changing rooms/lead our rape crisis centres

Love these - bringing different generations of women together is powerful. I went to a non-work event many years ago with a panel of five women from different generations. When guests arrived we had to suggest two topics for discussion on pieces of paper which were dropped into a hat. The MC pulled them out in turn and all the women on the panel had 2-3 minutes to offer their reflections.

Topics ranged from 'favourite childhood game' to 'marriage'. It was a really good, heartwarming night.

If you could spend a fortune of time and effort, which isn't going to happen before March (!) you could try to make campus equal for a day. Only have books and other media that passes the Bechdel test available except in a 'men's' section. Man tax in the cafes and shops. Have women take up space with sports and activities. Use a timer to make sure female voices are heard more in lectures and tutorials. Base all of this on solid science so you can show it's real.

It's all a fantasy I know but I'm enjoying it.

@ghislaine

Alumnae.

Hi Ghislaine

Maybe you could go along and give a lecture on how to procure young girls to satisfy your boyfriends fetishes?

Sorry? Have I missed something? That was a genuine suggestion.

Ok, I see now. I'm not that Ghislaine!! I chose this name over a decade ago. I did think about changing it but decided not to.

To be honest, @ghislaine, there will be unis running IWD events on how empowering prostitution and porn are so the suggestion from the pp probably wasn’t such a bad one.

Get women to wolf whistle and harass men on campus all day and see how they like

How about somewhere everyone can submit a postcard or similar with a few details of a woman who has inspired them or done something for them thats enabled them to be where they are... everyone from mothets and teachers all the way to famous women.

@ghislaine

Sorry? Have I missed something? That was a genuine suggestion.

Sorry, that was a joke! obviously not a very funny one

What about all the women sit with their legs splayed all day so that there is no room for the men sitting next to them to be comfortable?

Or all the women put their hands down their trousers for a good scratch regularly throughout the day and then don't wash them

Or all the women stop taking contraception so that the men have to do something about it if they don't want to father a child

Or the women use the men's toilets all day, with or without wearing trousers

Or the women all turn up to join in what ever men's sport is happening that day

The possibilities are endless but the OP seems to have lost interest, which is a shame.

Thank you to all for lots of suggestions
It is short notice to this years IWD now but some of the others are really a great possibility for next year with a bit more planning