WLD at Conference 2009

11.52.31am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 5th Oct 2009

Once again WLD had a very busy time at the Autumn Conference this year at Bournemouth. Along with our obligatory stand we were running two Fringe events, a training session and of course the AGM.

Our joint Fringe with Campaign for Gender Balance and the Federal Policy Unit tackled the controversial policy paper 'Real Women.' With four speakers (Dinti Batstone, Helga Dittmar, Sharon Smee from, The Fawcett Society and Deborah McIlveen from Women's Aid) it made for a lively and informative session with many questions being raised at the end. Straight after the Fringe, the paper was debated in the main hall with the policy being passed with a huge majority and a huge amount of speakers speaking out against amendment two, which tried to remove the entire section of the paper on airbrushing. (Full report on the debate coming soon)

Our second Fringe was on the subject of Restorative Justice. We had an excellent speaker in Nick McGeorge, chaired by Lynne Feather Stone, and the audience was awed by the fascinating accounts and information he passed on.

Finally WLD held it Annual General Meeting. It was business as usual, but the ideas to improve on WLD have been put forward. A popular idea has been to create more of a women's network so that members can easily interact with each other. This is something that we intend to work on to be achieved.