The murmur of voices. The chink of glasses. The warmth of a friendly welcome after a walk in the cold of a Thursday evening in November.
“Hello, I’m Jenny! So nice to meet you – do come in, create yourself a name label and grab a drink.”
When the opportunity arose to go to the launch of Women in Sustainability (WINS) Newcastle, I jumped. Here was a networking event where I would not be in the minority as a woman; where hopefully the average height would be (a bit!) closer to my own diminutive stature; where I would be taken seriously as an early-career twenty-something; and where people were just as excited about driving change as I was.
I was not disappointed.
The evening, aimed at exploring the appetite for a Newcastle branch of WINS, struck a finely crafted balance between relaxed and structured. Relaxed enough that people felt open to share; structured enough that no one was bored or left in the canape corner wondering exactly what they were doing there.
The biggest joy, perhaps, was the great diversity in the room. Age, experience, professional background, interests were wide-ranging; from planners, architects and environmental managers to lawyers, HR managers and social science academics. This created a real appreciation for the holistic nature of ‘sustainability’; environmental, social, personal…
Whilst my inner feminist could be forgiven for asking why we need an event for women – why, in fact, can’t we just have a People in Sustainability group – the reality is that there are still so many barriers women seem to face in their professional (and personal!) lives. None of us are strangers to this; ask any working woman and she will have armfuls of tales to tell about feeling like a professional misfit – not because of her skills, competencies, passions, interests or drive, but simply because she has felt that she is trying to inhabit a space for which she is the “wrong” gender.
“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language chiefly made by men to express theirs”
(Bathsheba Everdene in Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd)
Well, what if we were to change the conversation? What if, rather than focusing on the “can’t” of being a woman in a man’s world, we were to get excited about the “can” of bringing our own perspectives, experiences and ideas as women, students, professionals, friends, partners, wives, mothers, daughters and lovers of positive change into the sustainability vocabulary? And what if we were able to have space to explore, practise and master this new language?
In this blogpost title, I asked “Who wins when she wins?”. Well, quite frankly, we all do. There is much scholarly research on the positive influences women can have in bringing about changes for the good of communities through using the natural gifts, skills and caring nature that they exemplify. This exciting new network, I hope, will be a catalyst towards that.
Jenny (mentioned above) had clearly worked hard alongside WINS founder Rhian to organise and host the event, with a genuine warmth to support those who turned up. She claimed that she had instigated the network event out of a selfish desire to meet others who were interested in issues of sustainability – but I for one am very thankful to have benefited from her so-called selfishness. The evening was clearly a big hit for all who attended. I am so excited about future events – and about bringing friends to them.
So, I feel it is best to finish by returning one again to Bathsheba, who rather than embrace the ideals of what she should have been in a man’s world, decided to otherwise employ her energies and talents in running the family farm, declaring:
“In short, I shall astonish you all”.