CAMBRIDGE LETTER
For a violence-free world
BILL KIRKMAN
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The Women’s Institute in the U.K. is the largest voluntary organisation for women and a significant player in public life.
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At the beginning of this week I attended a meeting in the village where I live. There were two excellent speakers, a husband and wife, who performed a well-practised duet, speaking informatively, and amusingly, about their travels in many countries (
including India). They built their talk on a series of snap shots without actual pictures, using words, most effectively, to bring the scenes and situation that they were describing vividly to life.
I was at the meeting as the guest of my wife, and, apart from one of the speakers, a well-known local journalist whom I have known for many years, I was the only man present, invited precisely because I know Christopher.
If you have got this far, you will doubtless be asking: why is he telling us this?
The answer to that question is that the occasion was the regular monthly meeting of the local branch of the Women’s Institute, and having the opportunity to be at it reminded me what an extraordinary organisation the WI is. It is the largest voluntary organisation for women in the U.K. Its role is to “provide women with educational opportunities and the chance to build new skills, to take part in a wide variety of activities and to campaign on issues that matter to them and their communities”.
The local branch in our village is large and active. About 50 people were present at this week’s meeting.
The visiting speakers have set up a small charity to help people badly affected by the 2004 tsunami in a village in Sri Lanka, which they have got to know fairly well. Before the speakers left at the end of the meeting, the branch members had raised quite a large sum of money for their charity. That was a typical example of their active involvement in worthwhile activities to the benefit of the local community and the wider world.
In Britain the WI was established in 1915 (in Wales) but the movement had begun nearly 20 years earlier in Ontario, Canada. For many years there was a tendency almost to write the WI off as a lot of amiable jam makers, whose focus was purely on domestic matters. It was of course a fact that until well into the second half of the 20th century opportunities for women to follow careers were limited, and their lives were inevitably therefore grounded far more than now in domesticity.
Significant player
Nevertheless, I doubt if the jam-making stereotype was ever more than a caricature. It certainly bears little resemblance to the reality today.
The WI is a significant player in many aspects of public life. It is, for example, involved in the End Violence Against Women campaigning coalition which aims to create a world in which women and girls are afforded their basic human rights and can live free from violence and its threat. It is much concerned with the fight against global poverty — and the role of women in bringing communities out of poverty. Climate change, and its effects, is another of the WI’s causes, and yet another is a campaign against the inappropriate detention of people with mental health problems.
There are 6,500 Women’s Institutes, and a total of over 205,000 members and the WI is, therefore, very much a force to be reckoned with.
That was something which Tony Blair discovered, to his embarrassment, when in 2000, three years into his period as Prime Minister, he spoke to the annual WI conference, and badly misjudged his audience, using the occasion to make an overtly party political speech. The reception to it was hostile, and he was treated to heckling and slow hand-clapping.
True though it is that the WI is a serious organisation, dealing with serious and important issues, and true though it is that it is efficiently run, and clear in its purpose, it manages to combine these attributes with being friendly and relaxed. Branches make their own arrangements, to suit their members, and to reflect their communities.
This was certainly brought home to me at this week’s meeting. Having lived in the village for many years, I know many of the members. The meeting had the feeling of a family occasion, and the guests, and the speakers, were made to feel welcome as part of the family.
And oh yes, I must make one final point. The jam-making stereotype is exactly that, but the tradition at WI meetings is that they should include a buffet meal. In our village at least the standard of catering is high.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, U.K. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
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