Inspiration from Old Girls on International Women’s Day

A group of 20 Old Girls returned to Bolton School to help current Girls’ Division pupils celebrate International Women’s Day. Girls in Years 8 and 9 benefitted from talks and round table discussions with former pupils, while Year 12 went ‘careers speed dating’ with the alumni group. The whole school heard from keynote speaker Charlotte Morley (née Maddrell, Class of 1999) in morning assembly.

Mrs Kyle opened the day by speaking about International Women’s Day: an occasion to celebrate women’s achievements and opportunity to learn about inspiring women who have made significant contributions to history. She reminded everyone that it is a day to reflect on the progress already made towards gender equality, and a call to action to advance gender equality in every dimension of human life. She explained that the 2023 theme is ‘Embracing Equity’: equal opportunities are not enough by themselves, as people start from different places, and so true inclusion requires equitable action.

She then introduced Charlotte: after completing a geography degree at Cambridge, she spent 10 years working in Intelligence, but then followed her true passion, sustainability, and moved into technology, building consumer products that might help to change how people live. She founded her own company, thelittleloop, a company that provides families with sustainable clothing options for their children, and in January 2022 made Dragon’s Den history when she doubled the amount of investment that she originally asked for.

Taking to the podium, Charlotte said that there are two things she would like the girls to leave the Great Hall with following her speech: firstly, the importance of a story well-lived and how the choices you make in your life can be so important in changing the world, and second, the role you can play in helping others, particularly other women or those who face inequity in society, to live better lives too.

She began by explaining the difference between equity and equality: equality is giving everyone the same resources or opportunities, while equity is doing that whilst also recognising that each person has different circumstances and so actually needs different resources and opportunities to reach the same outcome. She used the example of two hungry children, where equality would be giving them both a banana, but equity would recognise that one child has an allergy and so gives that child an apple. Under equality, one child would remain hungry, because they couldn’t use the resources they were given.

Charlotte spoke about how this resonates with the Bolton School saying, ‘Much will be expected of those to whom much is given’. She said that Bolton School girls have an incredible start in life, and may not need as much support as other women. Even just among the group in the Hall, each person might require different levels of support. Though everyone tends to treat friends and colleagues the same, and expect them to respond the same, but Charlotte said that one of the most important lessons in her life was that people’s experiences shape their perceptions, reactions and how well they do.

Moving on to talk about her work in Intelligence, she explained that she had no idea gender inequality still existed when she left school. She described how she prided herself on being ‘tough’ and ‘as good as the boys’, but then said: ‘What I didn’t realise through all of this was: I was succeeding in spite of, not because of, my gender, and I was letting women down. … I never stopped to think that it should and could be different.’

As she reached 30 and started thinking about having children, she ‘woke up’ and realised that the system she had always accepted was broken. Though she had been able to climb over the unnecessary barriers she had faced, but not everyone is able to, and instead of being grateful for her own success, she should have been fighting for the system to be improved so that all women could have the opportunities she had had. She also spoke movingly about her first-hand experiences of the difficulties of keeping women with children in the workplace!

Reassuring the audience that there is still hope: ‘We are the hope. Me, you, all the women who have opportunity enough in our lives to pull up others behind us and make the world a better place. You have a chance to help those less advantaged than yourselves to achieve equity, by supporting them to achieve what you have been supported to achieve.’

Since leaving the job she spoke about earlier, Charlotte’s career has completely changed, but she is still driven to ‘change the world’ and no longer takes for granted the advantages that enabled her to thrive in a broken system. Her clothing service thelittleloop gives her the opportunity to challenge the status quo and to redesign things so that they work better for the planet and its people. She explained how thelittleloop allows families to affordably borrow ethically-made clothing for their children, reducing carbon emissions and landfill.

In closing, Charlotte said that society will lead us to accept things as they are. However, she challenged this notion and returned to the first of her takeaways: the idea of a story well-lived. She asked the girls to ‘be brave enough to find the things that you’re passionate about, the values that make you tick’, and said, ‘Make sure you use your brilliance the best way you know how.’

Later in the morning, Year 8 girls enjoyed careers presentations from Rashmi Chattopadhyay (dentist, practice owner and facial aesthetics) and Kat Harrison-Dibbits (chartered PR professional and Head of Communications at Teenage Cancer Trust), and Year 9 from Cherie Hall (Channel Director at UK TV – Dave) and Saima Hanif (King’s Counsel). These year groups also benefitted from round table discussions with the other visiting alumni.

Before lunch, students in Year 12 had the opportunity to speak with alumni in detail about their work in a ‘speed dating’ style event in the Great Hall.

The day was a wonderful opportunity for all girls to think more about gender equality, what it means to embrace equity, and to discover more about a wide range of career paths that they might take in the future.

The International Women’s Day Assembly can be watched on YouTube or via the play button below:

Flickr album: International Women's Day 2023 | Height: auto | Theme: Default | Skin: Default Skin

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