WomenEd Blogs

By Sarah Moya  @SarahMoya After nearly twenty years of working in education, I find it is difficult to pinpoint where and how my experiences as a female professional differ from my male counterparts when it comes to career progression. Indeed, the subjective nature of my experiences, coupled with the suspicion that to raise them in the workpla...

By Lindsay Patience     @mumsyme Flexible Teacher Talent recently asked in a Twitter poll how part-time TLRs (Teaching and Learning Responsibility) worked. I was shocked to find again that a large proportion of teachers are not being paid properly for their management responsibilities. 54% said they were responsible for the whole rol...

By Salina Ventress     @salinaventress This week my youngest turns three, and it feels monumental. If, like me, you're a school leader or teacher and celebrate a 3 year old's birthday this March, congratulations; we made it. We've all been part of a club we never asked to join, where 'lockdown baby' became everyday vocabulary, and th...

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 Frances Akinde @frankietweetart I have become fascinated with the increasing use of AI platforms and how this can be applied to Education. Jasper AI is an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that allows users to create virtual assistants and automate processes. It can be used to create an AI-powered assistant to help with tasks, such as schedu...

By Bukky Yusuf @rondelle10_b    LinkedIn When it comes to certain aspects of #EdTech (learning platform upgrades, immersive learning tools, AI and machine based learning), changes can happen so rapidly. Yet, consistent 'thorny issues' remain relatively unchanged. 'The Missing Voices in EdTech: Bringing Diversity Into EdTech' by Rafra...

By Lindsay Patience @Mumsyme As I approach the birth of my third child, it seems a good time to reflect on how things have changed with regard to flexible working in the education sector since I was expecting my first child in 2016. Before I was pregnant for the first time, I was working full time on the SLT in a large comprehensive school in ...

by Tracey O'Brien  @tob22 In an attempt to fill in less paperwork and do something with much more purpose, more interesting, and more insightful instead, I've thought about all the monitoring and review activities that we carry out in schools.  It's all too much. Too much top-down accountability, monitoring instead of trust, review for th...

by Dr Kate Bridge     @KateBridge19 As a female Head of Physics, I am often on my own at the table when mixing with other Physics departments in education.  Society would draw Dr Bridge as a white-haired male in the latter stages of life who is crazy for mathematical differentials. That is definitely not the box I fit in. I am a chal...

by Caitlin Bracken  @CaitTeachesKind  I'll be honest, I did question why I'd sacrificed my Saturday lie-in, as I got on a train at 8.11am on March 12th.  For those thinking 'Surely you'll just have Sunday though?' you'd be wrong, I was up early again for figure skating that morning!  I'm not very good at new things, or rather, I...

by Christalla Jamil @ChristallaJ

This year’s International Women's Day 2021 was marked by a campaign focused on 'challenge'. When we support each other, women accomplish amazing things. For me, once again, this was illustrated on Saturday 6th March when the three regional networks that I am honoured to work with, gave a platform to a community of new voices to share how they #ChoosetoChallenge. I would like to extend my thanks to all three #WomenEd regions: @WomenEdSE, @WomenEdEastern and @WomenEdLondon.

by Lizana Oberholzer  @LO_EduforAll

Women play a pivotal role as role models to inspire the future generation of female leaders in education, whether it is in schools or in Higher Education. According to Hewitt (2020) and Osho (2018), 56.6% of the university student body is comprised of women. The Higher Education workforce, however, reflects a different picture where 45.3% of the workforce are women, as outlined by the Higher Education Statistics Agency’s (HESA) data. What is interesting to note is that the representation of women in the leadership and management workforce is even lower at 27.5%.

Osho (2018) highlights that apart from the challenges of low female representation in leadership in higher education, there are also concerns regarding BAME female representation, and that 0.5% of UK female professors are Black.  It’s clear that these issues need urgent attention.

Women in HE often face similar challenges to their counterparts in schools. Hughes, as cited in Findings (2013), outlines that HE contexts and working conditions in HE contexts don’t often accommodate the needs of their female workforce, and they often suit men better. Women with young families often struggle to balance their commitments with family life. In addition, it is often perceived that when women go on maternity leave their academic career comes to an end or is on an indefinite pause. In some cases, some university departments, when faced with maternity leave, had to think how to support or accommodate the needs of young female academics for the first time, as they have never had a female colleague to support until very recently. Findings (2013) and Osho (2018) outline how initiatives such as Glass Ceiling and Athena Swan were introduced to shatter the glass ceiling, in the hope that when women are supported and championed they will also provide strong role models for others to follow, and future generations will be able to progress with ease onto the leadership ladder.

Although the data reflects that the workforce in Higher Education represents a larger percentage of female staff vs male staff in some HE contexts, as cited by Hewitt (2020) it cannot be ignored that at times, more needs to be done to support women in order for them to succeed as academics and in leadership positions in HE. Flexible working opportunities, not only to fulfil academic teaching roles, but research and leadership roles, need to be considered to enable women to lead and contribute in a sustainable way to meet the needs of the communities they serve.