Week 31 - The Red Queen

Monday 

I launched the official promotion (not just a booking link) for the Student Women Elections Training at ULU.
Women make up the majority of the student population, but this is not reflected in the student movement. To tackle the issue of the lack of women running for student officer positions I'm arranging one-on-one election coaching sessions at ULU for self-defining women who are running or planning to run in student elections.
Thanks to London union sabbatical officers for helping me put the word out throughout the day.




Tuesday

I met up with a total of 4 women students who were running for positions at their union and one of the women candidates got me a present! I'm hopeful that the representation of women in London Student Unions will be amazing in the next year :) I'm only sad that it could happen at least year earlier because it would be great to not always be one of the 3 or 4 women that turn up to ULU Senate which is a meeting always dominated by men.

Wednesday

I met up with a further two more women who wanted to run for elections. Congratulations to SOAS as most of the women who have signed up have been from SOAS and over 50% of candidates at SOAS are women this year. Also, it was a lovely surprise to see Hollaback1 ULU and Hollaback! London in the latest ASOS zine. Especially because I thought we were going to be in the later issue. I also attended an NUS London meeting and the "I'm a feminist because..." photo exhibition UCL.



Thursday 

On this day I was preoccupied with last minutes up for the StudentFems Conference and meeting more women candidates. I spray painted t-shirts for the StudentFems Conference in the office. Probably wasn't the best idea to do it in the office be hey they looked great in the end and I hardly made a mess. I also printed out all the the programmes and signs for the weekend. Also Senate House got occupied again for a little while, as I was busy contaminating the office and poisoning myself in to office with paint fumes, I believe I have a legit alibi for this one. You can read more about that here - Students occupy UoL vice-chancellor’s office in call for his resignation Also that evening I went to Royal Holloway Feminism Society to talk about Sex and Consent.

Satuday 

The first day of Women's History Month WHOOP! This was probably one of the most planned for days of my life as an officer so far! We kicked off at 10am with the first day of the  StudentFems London Conference 2014 which was amazing! Highlights being the Islamophobia and Feminism panel and the Cultural Appropriation 101. At 530pm, the launch night of A Voice of One's Own began and student feminist work from across London were exhibited downstairs in the ULU Gallery. Then to end the night with a bang we had the  HOLLABACK RIOT NIGHT RELOADED gig which was just as amazing as last time. Thanks for all the amazing women who had a hand in making this day awesome!



Sunday
This was the second and last of the conference and after the blast we had last night I pretty glad people came back lol. We had amazing discussions and workshops on things like Feminist Academia, Sex work and Feminism, Transphobia in feminism and self care in feminist activism. Thanks again to the many many people who helped out over the weekend. I finally signed up to storify so I could make this cool online story about the conference which you can find here http://storify.com/SusuanaULU/studentfems-london-conference-2014