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Equality Diversity and Inclusion sub-committee
The Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) sub-committee celebrated International Women’s Day at the University Women’s Club in Mayfair. We welcomed meeting many new and long-standing members of WHLS and Andrea Accuosto Suárez.
Andrea is a lawyer visiting from Barcelona where she practises criminal and labour law. Andrea has met with many of us in the past, as she has been part of the exchanges between our two Bar Associations, which have developed our twinning with Barcelona, our longest-standing arrangement.
Charity Mafuba was amongst the guests and celebrating her SQE success. We all congratulate Charity on her hard work in qualifying as both a New York Attorney and a solicitor in England and Wales. We hope Charity will continue to be one of our active members.
We were served drinks and refreshments in the elegant drawing room. Nicola Ruppert welcomed everyone and Coral Hill, co-chair of the EDI committee talked about the luminary women who had been entertained in the drawing room a 100 years earlier. The house was owned originally by the Russell family, the liberal peer Lord Arthur Russell and his wife, the society hostess Lady Russell. Amongst her many guests were the explorer Gertrude Bell, Vera Brittain and Virginia Woolf.
Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) barely needs an introduction, the world-famous novelist and essayist who pioneered the stream of consciousness narrative and of course gave the lecture A Room of Your Own in 1928 to Cambridge University (which as a female, she had not been allowed to attend as a student, unlike her brothers).
Vera Mary Brittain (1893 –1970) was a writer, feminist, socialist and pacifist. Her studies at Oxford University were interrupted by WWI and she worked as a nurse with the Voluntary Aid Detachment. She was extremely well-known for her best-selling 1933 memoir Testament
of Youth which recounted her experiences during the WWI and her journey towards pacifism. Incidentally, her daughter was Dame Shirley Williams who became a former Labour cabinet minister, Liberal Democrat peer.
Gertrude Bell CBE (1868 – 1926) was an English writer, traveller, political officer and archaeologist. She extensively travelled and mapped the Middle East. Bell believed that the British government should ally with the nationalists and advocated for independent Arab states following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. T.E. Lawrence was seen by many as the successor to many of her ideas. She was the only woman to attend the 1921 Cairo conference which helped decide the territorial boundaries and governments of the post-War Middle.
The acquisition of the Mayfair house by the University Women’s Club after the First World War was a watershed moment in establishing the Club for the future and reflected the increased status of women brought about by the Great War. The devastation caused to a generation of young men who died or were incapable of work for physical or mental reasons mean that society was more dependent on the labour of women and it was one factor in the ushering in of a raft of changes, such as, women being able to qualify as lawyers.
If anyone has an interest in joining the EDI committee do please contact the committee secretary, Rebecca Taylor Rebecca.Taylor@ dawsoncornwell.com. You are welcome to come and meet us all without any commitment. Our aim is to cover as many characteristics as possible but to achieve that we need lots of members. Each of us can then contribute something each year and not get overloaded. So far, we’ve had articles and events on disability / ethnic differences / religion and gender parity. We would really like to expand our EDI impact on social media as well, so you are welcome to contact us with ideas.
