8 May 2018
Following on from a hugely successful celebration of International Women’s Day, we held a Powerful Women’s Day, focusing on supporting our young women to be successful in today’s social media driven society.
To begin the day, we invited Megan, from Girl Gang Manchester, to talk to some of our Year 9 girls. Her workshop focused on how young women speak to each other and, more importantly, how they speak to themselves.
The aim of this workshop was to build confidence and a positive sense of self, concluding with an affirmation for the students to take away with them.
One student commented, ““It reminded me that it’s important to care for others and be me.”
In the afternoon, Aliyah of Women in Media (WIM18) gave a presentation to a group of Year 8s about their recent and successful WIM18 conference.
From their website: “In 2016 a small group of student journalists from the University of Manchester's student media collective Manchester Media Group organised the first-ever Women in Media Conference. Women in Media gives delegates the opportunity to celebrate and learn from successful women in journalism, radio, TV, blogging, PR and much more, through keynote speeches, panel sessions and workshops.”
Following the presentation, Ms Slinger, Teacher of Geography and Ms Torpey, Teacher of English, delivered an Oracy workshop, where students crafted their own presentations, focusing on the way gender roles are presented and why job roles should be more equally distributed between the genders in media and other employments. Each speech proved to be incredibly powerful, providing emotive and thought-provoking points of discussion.
Following this session, one student said, ““Feminism isn’t something to be ashamed about, it’s not hating on men, it is empowering women.”
