The newly formed Women’s Partnership of Milton Keynes* is inviting you to join us on Sunday 7 March for a lively mini-festival. We are putting on a stimulating and entertaining afternoon where the entire focus will be on championing women’s voices. Our patchwork of FREE online events is a perfect introduction to the globally celebrated International Women's Day on March 8th. So let us get things started on Sunday 7th March with an array of panel discussions with local artists and activists, films focused on women, topical talks from NHS workers and other professionals, activities from crafts to yoga, podcasts to accompany you on an energising walk, and spaces to simply relax and enjoy yourself. We even have a special story for children being read by a local author, perfect for a Sunday afternoon. Please click on the link for more information about the programme and how to register. We will be recording the afternoon sessions and you will be able to watch the sessions on  You...

Towards International Women’s Day. ‘Marching openly, with smiles …….’ Russia. The end of January 2021. On the news we see Anastasia Vasilyeva defiantly playing Beethoven on her piano as the police come to arrest her for supporting the opposition. Later, on a video post she says, ‘We are marching openly, with smiles. We will not be intimidated.’ Ten days earlier, in Washington at the presidential inauguration, the world watches as Amanda Gorman, 22 years old, raises her arms, smiles, and reads her inauguration poem.  ‘We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation’ says the ‘skinny Black girl……who can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.’ Calm, resolute, brave young women standing up at the beginning of another uncertain year can surely give us cause for hope and optimism. And when we look back at 2020, we see wave upon wave of other resilient women, hundreds and thousands of them, public and private individuals, finding solutions, n...

After a year’s hard work, we were proud to announce the release last month of our second MK Fawcett Discussion Paper of 2020 entitled ‘Women’s participation in local politics’. The project began over a year ago with the observation of three meetings in the MK Council chamber - the last being in January 2020, just before the lockdown saw all Council meetings transferred online. We wanted to see whether women had an equal opportunity to participate in Council discussion and, if not, why not. This in turn prompted us to seek out all the information we could find on how women came to get elected as councillors in the first place, as well as the roles they were appointed to on Council committees. We quickly realised that we couldn’t get a full picture of the decision-making processes that underly all these outcomes without consulting all the different kinds of people involved at different stages, whether Council officers, councillors or local party members. We made sure that all the key p...

Gender equality in Milton Keynes? We think it’s time to turn up the volume on the conversation, promote the issues and work for system change. We thought you might like to hear about a new partnership approach. Women’s groups in Milton Keynes have been increasingly concerned about the fragile and fragmented nature of available support for specialist services.  The pandemic has now impacted heavily on all women, highlighting disadvantage and exclusion and putting those at risk of violence in even greater danger. A strong infrastructure is needed to provide a safety net where no one is lost. Back in January 2020, several women’s groups worked in partnership at a conference which included survivors of assault and abuse. We heard accounts of women being passed across different services and of being immersed in a male dominated justice system. The need for an infrastructure was clear, and following on from the conference a working group, facilitated by Community Action:MK, has beg...