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  • Get ready to celebrate International Women's Day!

    Monday 7 March 2011

    Categories: Careers, Media Influence, Role Models

    Today, UK girls have the same educational rights as boys. But this hasn’t always been the case. While some schools were established as early as the 1700s, it wasn’t until the mid 1800s that girls’ education really began to change. The campaigning actions of women such as Frances Buss, Dorothea Beale, and Emily Davies – who founded Girton College in Cambridge – led to events which resulted in the establishment of a series of higher, or secondary, girls’ schools to equal the education boys received at that time. Many of today’s independent girls’ schools can trace their history back to this period in time, which opened the door to a professional future for young women.

    Women the world over instinctively know it’s right to support one another whenever possible. We may not yet have equal representation in the boardroom, but the lives of UK women have changed immeasurably in the last 200 years and it is as important for our girls’ schools to encourage their pupils to help fellow women and girls in less fortunate circumstances as it is to educate them and provide them with the tools and self confidence to aim high.

    Almost all GSA schools have formal educational and charitable links with schools, girls and young women in other countries and in fact it has become part of the girls’ school ethos to do so. Over a third of these projects provide mutual educational benefits to pupils here and abroad and almost 40 per cent involve mutual exchange visits. Many of these projects are with developing countries such as Ghana, Kenya, India, Lagos, Afghanistan, Nairobi, Santiago and Tanzania as well as countries such as the USA, Australia, Germany and China.

    Girls’ schools across the country are all set to celebrate International Women’s Day which falls, this year, on March 8. From voting for the most important woman in history, talks from visiting speakers (female Lord Mayors, engineers, women’s rights campaigners), special assemblies and posters drawing attention to influential women, to ‘mufti’ (ie casual clothes) days to raise money for Oxfam, almost 80% of GSA schools have something special planned.

    Find out more at www.internationalwomensday.com and enjoy the day!

    Posted by Dr Helen Wright

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