Elsie Whittington and the Girls' Rights Conference

Girls' Rights Conference

What a great day of thinking about girls rights and girls work!  A collaborative endeavour by Hannah, Claire, Janet, Nichola, Elsie and Alia brought to life by the attendance and energy of over 45 women working across different sectors. The whole event captured the passion and commitment many people have to working with girls and young women in a way that champions and upholds their rights. Aged between 16 and 60+ this was a space of intergenerational conversation – and not only because Janet facilitated an intergenerational discussion activity. 

The day was kicked off by Pam Flynn recounting her experience of attending The World Conference on Women in Beijing 25 years ago. She gave us some of the back story on how women’s and girls' rights got onto the agenda. This was followed by a world café discussion about the status of girls' work with questions about what is happening now, what the challenges are, and what the future of girls' work might look like in Manchester and further afield. This raised questions such as 'How can we engage men in this conversation?',  'How can we ensure we are inclusive?', 'What does this work look like in culturally diverse settings?', 'How can we fund this work?' and more!    

After lunch, there was a series of short (but sweet!) workshops: bike maintenance, podcasting, digital youth work, sexual consent and awkward conversations. This was a chance to move around a bit more and think about and share our practices for holding spaces for the girls and young women we work with to explore through conversation, new activities and in association with others.  

A key theme in two workshops: 'Sex, relationships and consent' and 'Identifying and approaching difficult conversations' enabled conversation and reflection about if and how there are grey areas when it comes to consent and how we can support the young women and girls we work with to develop a vocabulary around sexuality, consent and pleasure. 

The day finished thinking about the key principles of youth work and the importance of making sure that girls don’t get lost within general youth provision. Janet Batsleer reminded us that being alongside, advocating for and with, building networks of solidarity, supporting adventure and risk taking and affirming anger, boredom and disengagement are essential for cultivating positive youth work relationships that can embolden girls and women to inhabit and make the most of the changing and challenging world they live in.

Throughout the day we captured key themes and closed the conference by thinking (briefly) towards the future of a girls work network across Greater Manchester. There is so much going on so now we want to think about what events, training and collaborations we might want to do next!

As someone who is researching at MCYS, the conversations that we had at this event have helped direct my thinking about how women can model different kinds of leadership – and counter some of the negative ideas that girls and young women hold about leadership. It has also pushed me to think more about how we can validate and support different girls' and young women’s experiences. In Manchester, like much of the UK, we have such diverse groups of young people attending youth and community groups. This means that in my work around sexual consent, I need to think more about the opportunities and challenges of teaching, talking about and negotiating consent in and between different cultural and racialized experiences and expectations of relationships and sexuality.