Women's voices fill New Hall

In her address, Vice-Chancellor Professor Alison Richard, spoke about the importance of supporting female staff in their career development.

Registrary Dr Jonathan Nicholls joined the forum and gave a talk focusing on leadership, stressing practical steps to develop leadership skills.

The Women's Forum is a biennial conference run by the Women's Forum Steering Group and organised by the Equality & Diversity section of Human Resources. It is a meeting for all academic, research, technical and administrative staff to be up-dated on issues rising from the Women's Forum consultations.

This year the conference focused on ‘Confidence & Voice…Tools for Change'. As a part of the conference programme, the audience had a choice of three informative workshops around the theme of personal growth and making change happen.

The keynote speakers included the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, Julie Spence and broadcaster Vivienne Parry.

"Although we have yet to analyse the feedback, anecdotally those present found the event to be both informative, thought provoking and enjoyable,” said Karen Martin, Interim Head of Equality and Diversity.

“Attendees particularly appreciated the opportunity to hear the Vice-Chancellor and Registrary share their thoughts and vision with regard to gender equality. News of the successful event in 2006 had obviously travelled and we were significantly over subscribed with 60 staff on the waiting list necessitating a rethink as to how we will accommodate demand in 2010.

“Talks by Julie Spence, the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire and Vivienne Parry, broadcaster and journalist, were both inspiring and amusing showing what could be achieved with determination, focus and passion; women who had been confident enough to use their voice and make a difference,” Ms Martin said.

The Women's Forum Steering Group held a series of consultation seminars between October 2003 and July 2004. The Group invited women in all staff categories to contribute their views on issues, experiences and solutions to problems.

The Women's Forum Steering Group has produced a Report which gives the background to the seminars. They also produced an Implementation Plan (IP) which gives a detailed list of recommendations and a breakdown of the objectives.

Women's Forum Steering Group is open to all university staff. For more information, please contact Sarah Adderley, Equality & Diversity, Human Resources on 01223 (3)32286 or sa496@admin.cam.ac.uk.