#WomenEd Blogs

By Keziah Featherstone   @keziah70     When I was younger and at the start of my career, I fought for myself and I fought for the kids. Having spent the vast majority of my career serving communities experiencing substantial and layered disadvantage, there was much to fight for. With regards to myself, I was a gobby working clas...

By Sue Prickett    @ruralSBM     The role of School Business Leader (SBL) in schools is often overlooked when describing the make-up of Senior Leadership Teams. Since the growth of the SBL sector joining social media channels, at last colleagues are finding strength and confidence in numbers, but are they finding the right suppo...

by Vivienne Porritt @ViviennePorritt

We started WomenEd because women's voices on twitter were often silenced, harrassed or our views were not valued. It's one of the reasons we included a mic in our logo. So we encouraged women to tweet and to write blogs to tell our stories and share our lived experience. 

One of the reasons we wrote 10%braver: Inspiring Women to Lead Education was to ensure the voices of our community reached women who are not on twitter. And over 30 voices are included in Being 10% Braver which, joyously, is published this December - you can pre-order and it's a great Christmas present! And we are delighted to share more opportunities for our community to write and to be heard.

By Kirsty P.  @TeacherBusy I've been teaching for 12 years; I've worked in two schools but visited many. I've been a teacher, a Head of Year and now a Lead Practitioner. Here's some things that have happened to me during the last 12 years in my career at various points:I've asked groups of students to put rubbish in the bin and been ignored/la...

by Emma Sheppard @maternityCPD Trigger warning: this blog focuses entirely on pregnancy and motherhood, which some readers may wish to avoid. It was a day of vindication for The MTPT Project when, in November 2021, WomenEd, with ASCL, NAHT and the NGA, published their gender pay gap report. The report provided clear evidence that at all levels, the...

by Tara Harding

The menopause can trigger both anxiety and panic attacks, followed by fatigue. However, there is no need for women to feel helpless as there are some remedies available. This article will shed some light on what to expect when these symptoms occur and how they can be kept at bay.

by Julia Skinner and Lizana Oberholzer @TheHeadsOffice @LO_EduforAll

During a recent presentation for WomenEd’s Global Unconference, we discussed the challenges and key considerations that governing bodies and trustee boards need to make when they consider new members. Diverse Governance, and the importance of diversity of teams, skills, backgrounds, ethnicity, race, religion and gender is highlighted in Section 4 of the latest Governance Handbook (DfE, 2020).

by Lynn How @Positive_Y_Mind    www.positiveyoungmind.com

Could you be a great educational leader if you had more flexibility? I see leadership potential in women everywhere I turn in education. Unfortunately, many of these are woman who have motherhood and childcare to balance alongside their careers, many choose parenting over their career. If I needed to make that binary choice, I would choose the same but what if you could have both?

by Vivienne Porritt @ViviennePorritt

Two of WomenEd’s campaigns are about the representation of women in leadership roles in education, with a particular focus on women with an ethnic heritage. We know the stats show men are disproportionately represented and the pace of change in altering what leaders look like is glacial.This is a key reason for our partnership with The National College of Education in England.

By Sam Fuller, Director & Founder of The Wraw Index

Navigating the Covid-19 pandemic has dialled up the pressure on employees in all sectors, but for those working in education the challenge has been unprecedented. Now, as schools break for the summer, the invitation is to take stock. How has the pandemic impacted staff wellbeing, and what can we learn from this to continue to support those in education to perform at their best? We recently conducted a study of employee resilience and wellbeing across the UK, analysing data from almost 9,500 working people. The findings, laid out in the Wraw Resilience Report 2021, give a detailed breakdown of resilience in the workplace today, and provide important insight for leaders in education.

by Rachel Fenn @NoSchoolSexism

End Sexism in Schools is a grassroots organization founded in 2020. We are united in our mission to see schools become places where all children can achieve their potential, without being limited by gender stereotypes. Our first campaign, to research the gender bias in the texts taught in English lessons at KS3, was born out of our frustration that none of us, nor our children, had been taught any novels or plays by female authors at school. We wanted to know if this gender bias against women’s writing was merely anecdotal, or a widespread phenomenon.