Is the women’s institute becoming less and less democratic ?

[Marmaladelover]

So Women’s Institute is changing and not in a good way . It’s becoming more dictatorial, with decision making, more and more being centralised at National Headquarters . Major policy changes, making it nothing like the great institution, it used to be , only a few years ago .

We have already had their well publicised version of what a woman is in an updated policy ( wear a skirt for the day and you’ll past muster whatever sex you might be ) but I did think ( in my naivety ) that some aspects of core WI traditions were still sacrosanct .

The WI isn’t just known for their community involvement , they are also known for their campaigns for social justice and over the years have been at the forefront of difficult issues often changing women’s lives for good .

Were you aware that Keep Britain Tidy was a campaign in the early 50s and the WI were the ones who campaigned for universal contraceptives being available to all many moons ago ?

And the resolutions have all traditionally come from a democratic process . Any member could propose a resolution, which were whittled down to a smaller number by volunteer members to be voted on in a democratic manner by the whole of the WI (several hundred thousand members ) before being officially adopted . And with such a large membership you could expect a certain number of specialists in their own fields to be well equipped and knowledgable in their field to produce pretty good comprehensive proposals.

NOT ANY MORE !

The resolution process has already kicked off this year but it has since come to light that this isn’t now the democratic process it professes to be .

Instead a small few, employed people in the National HQ ( no more than 3?) who have no particular qualification to do so , rewrite submissions to the point of GERRYMANDERING and being completely unrecognisable; the hard work and research by the members is jettisoned turning them into new , bland resolutions, littered with errors and out of date information . And this is done without referring back to the authors ( who may well be experts ) And it is these resolutions, that are offered to the members to vote on .

And it would seem that National HQ hoped nobody would notice, hiding behind NDA for comfort .

So many WI members have complained in recent years about the blandness in what has been produced - now we know why !!!

That’s the same for me, I belong to two WIs, both large groups with a mixed age range and from different backgrounds. I enjoy the variety of interesting speakers and all the sub groups on offer which form a large part of my social life. Just this week I’ve had a group of ladies playing board games at my house, been to a cooking group where we all made dishes to share containing ingredients beginning with the letter P ( we are going through the alphabet!), tasted different flavour gins at my Gin club and I’m also busy reading the book group choice.

Although both my groups follow WI guidelines and rules, we are not very active with National resolutions or political campaigns, preferring to support our local communities and have fun.

The WI is so popular where I live ( Greater Manchester/East Cheshire borders) that two new groups have started this year in my local town.

Many of the issues that I struggled with when President for 6 years were Charity Commission rules rather than WI ones about what we were allowed to spend our funds on and the rather antiquated paper based forms we had to complete.

Resolutions do not play a big part in the agenda of either of my WIs other than the annual debate and vote. I do have WI friends who are trustees of our County Federation and have been involved in the shortlisting of resolutions, they have never mentioned changes to the writing and selection of the resolutions so it certainly seems this change has been slipped in under the radar.