CWU Northwest Regional Women’s Committee (NWRWC)

Women’s Forum 2008
1st November – Mechanics Centre, Manchester

Karen Bosson North West Regional Women's Committee Secretary reports on last month's Women's Forum:

This year’s Forum was another great success & feedback from those attending was extremely positive.

The event started at 1pm with a buffet lunch giving time for everyone to chat to each other & look at the stalls, which, this year, covered Education, Equality & Legal along with the Birmingham Hospital Saturday Fund (BHSF), MPH solicitors & the CWU Humanitarian Aid (CWUHA).

Jane Loftus (CWU Vice President) chaired the event & opened the proceedings by giving some personal history of her involvement within the CWU over the years.

Sarah Clements of the UK Resource Centre (UKRC) for Women in Science, Engineering & Technology (SET) explained that their organisation had been set up in 2004 & is government funded.
   
The UKRC mission “….is to improve significantly the participation & position of women in SET occupations in industry, research, academia & the public service, to benefit the future productivity of the UK & the lifetime earnings and career aspirations of women.”
  
The UKRC work with over 700 companies across the UK & provide information, support & advice to employers who seek to improve the recruitment, retention & promotion of women in SET as well as working with individual SET women. Since 2004, they have supported over 1700 women to return or progress in their SET careers. The type of things they help individuals with are mentoring, media training, GetSET database, blogs & case studies, conferences & events. For businesses & organisations they offer advice & support, Culture Analysis Tool (CAT), Focus Groups, Gender Equality Training, CEO Charter, Quality Mark & a SWAN Charter for Universities.

Sarah’s talk centred around one aspect of this, the CAT. Organisational culture has been identified as a key factor in why women do not participate & progress in SET. The CAT is a survey questionnaire designed to assist an organisation in understanding the culture of its workplace with respect to gender equality & acts as a catalyst to get people talking & start the change process. Various things are assessed such as strategy & policy, recruitment & promotion, the environment, management commitment, staff relationships & working styles.

This was a very interesting presentation & as part of it, Sarah asked everyone to have a quick chat with the person sat next to them about the sort of issues faced in their own workplaces. This led to a good group discussion & questions & it was felt that there was scope for the CWU to work further with the UKRC in the future.

Grace Mitchell was next & gave a very interesting insight into the sort of work she does & has done within the CWU & how & why she initially got involved. Grace felt that she was drifting & wanted to change things so she got involved with the Trade Union. She found she was good at it & even though there were & are times that are extremely frustrating, there are also many times that are rewarding. Grace explained how the Scottish & Welsh parliaments work normal hours, unlike the English Parliament where many debates take place during unsociable hours. The difference in the Scottish & Welsh is primarily due to women making their views known in the Labour Party & Trade Unions & therefore making a difference. Grace explained the breakdown of women in senior roles within the CWU & acknowledged that even though there were around 20% in most areas, we could still be doing better. Grace recounted a few anecdotes about experiences she’d had over the years, some of which were quite amusing.
  
Questions led to discussions about how women who have families can find this a barrier to taking senior positions as working at Head Office in London involves a lot of travel & being away from home, how we organise branches & how much effort is put in by branches to support women & about more men taking on childcare responsibilities.

After a short break for tea & coffee, Joan Humble, MP for Blackpool  North & Fleetwood spoke about Women & Pensions with a focus on what the Government has done so far to address problems surrounding pensions. Joan is a member of the Work & Pensions Select Committee at Westminster. Joan explained how many people put the issue to one side thinking that it’s not important. This is especially prevalent with younger women. The poorest people in Britain tend to be the oldest & the oldest people tend to be women, many of whom do not receive a full state pension due to advice given & decisions made in their past. The Pensions Act 2007 reduced the number of years people need to work to qualify for their state pension to 30 years so that now, 75% of women, reaching state pension age, in 2010, will be entitled to a full, basic state pension. Credits have also been given for when women took time off to have children.
  
Joan explained what was being debated currently around the 2008 Pension Bill especially regarding the new Personal Account, a simple, low cost pension saving scheme that every individual earning more the £5000 will automatically be part of if the company or organisation they work for does not have an occupational pension. Both employer & employee will contribute & it is estimated that 3.5-4 million women will be enrolled into a workplace pension, many of them for the first time. The Work & Pensions Committee that Joan is a member of has made various recommendations to improve the Personal Account in areas such as flexibility for those who are carers, consolidation of small pension ‘pots’ that people may have & those people who have multiple jobs.

The pensions issue is a very complicated one & as such, the NWRWC feel that this is a subject that should remain on the Agenda for future Forum’s too.

The afternoon finished with everyone laughing along with the stand up routine given by Sarah Morgan of the Funnywomen organisation. Sarah was ably assisted by Ray Atkinson on the tambourine & Alan Hague on the maracas during a comedy song on her accordion about reading the eye chart! Sarah used her experiences as an Optometrist to deliver a view of her world that was extremely amusing to us all & put a smile on all our faces.

Jane Loftus reviewed & closed the Forum thanking everyone for attending.

Thanks go to all the guest speakers for giving up part of their weekend & helping to make the Forum the success it was.
  
Sincere thanks go to Carl Webb (CWU Regional Secretary) for all his help & support leading up to the event & on the day with a special mention to Madison Webb, Carl’s daughter, for putting all the ‘Goodie Bags’ together.

Thanks also to Alex Pearson (retired member) for helping transport the bulky items to the venue.

Thanks to the NWRWC working party, Alison Williams, Jacqui Stewart, Kath Worthington & Sam Peters, who did all the planning & organising leading up to the day & to all the other committee members who publicised the event & helped get people there on the day.
 
Many thanks to Alan Hague (BHSF), Ray Atkinson (Education), Angela Green (Equality), Heather Park (CWUHA), Joanna Foster & Sian Clegg (MPH) for giving up their time to man the stalls.

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