Announcing Forging The Future

During the coming year we will be hosting a number of events where you will get to meet the women who are forging the future for the Women Who Mean Business in 2019. We will be celebrating those that went before us and paved the way for us to be who we are and what we want to be. 

Father Christmas was very generous this year and made sure we have plenty of reading material at Network She HQ to use to research the project and identify just some of the women in history whose impact on health, education, politics and society has given us as women in 2019 the right to an accessible health service, the right to free education, and hopefully an understanding of our responsibilities to ourselves and future generations

For some of us though it’s not the women we recognise from history or the current media that inspired us to be who we are, who gave us the confidence to challenge stereotypes, an unbending system or the confines and restraints of religion or tradition. For some of us that woman is literally a lot closer to home, she is stood at the front of the class or at the back of the line. Whoever she is or was, although the impact she had may not have changed the world, it definitely changed your world.

Forging the Future

The title of our 2019 theme, Forging the Future, was inspired by a Facebook post from Enrique Amaya about his Wife Nancy’s Mother Marianthi. It epitomises everything we at Network She stand for and everything we will celebrate in 2019 and beyond

“One must give recognition and admiration to those amongst us that open doors for those who come after. We came across this amazing photo from 1955. It is a photo of Nancy’s mom’s high school class. Notice anything special about it? 

The girls high school in her village of Karditsa only offered humanities centered classes. However, Nancy’s mom (Marianthi) was interested in the sciences, so she applied to be admitted to the boys’ high school, so that she could focus her education on the sciences. Because of this she became the first female to be accepted in her village’s boys’ high school. Marianthi, encouraged by her parents who greatly valued education, decided to allow her to follow her interests, and apply to the boys’ high school so she could partake in the science centered classes that only they offered. After graduation, Marianthi then went onto university in Athens and studied pharmacy (a field that requires deep understanding of both chemistry and medicine) and she owned a pharmacy in Thessaloniki until her retirement a few years back. You have to love and respect those who are the pioneers amongst us, as it is they who forge the future for the rest of us”

Get Involved

You can get involved as we countdown the days to International Women’s day and Women Mean Business Week on 4th – 8th March by sharing with us who you think is the woman who is forging the future or the woman who has played a vital role in forging your future. We will share a post a day to celebrate the women who forged our future. Please send your story and an photo of the woman you would like to recognize and celebrate to ruth@networkshe.co.uk