Women in Whitehall
After facing barriers to getting their own work published, Dalia and Daniella created Women in Whitehall - making more space for young women to be seen, heard and recognised in politics
Our names are Dalia and Daniella, we are both Politics students at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Exeter respectively.
We started Women in Whitehall after witnessing an evident gap in opportunities for young women to get their work published.
This began with our own disheartening experiences of the political and academic world. Having met during an internship programme at a Westminster based think-tank, we were tasked with conducting research on the number of death threats made towards MPs within the past 5 years. During this research we noticed a number of concerning death threats and severe abuse targeted towards MPs on the relatively new social media platform BlueSky. After spending weeks manually compiling data, we decided to co-author a formal report discussing the issue at hand, our findings and possible policy solutions. However, when we attempted to have this work published either within our own organisation or elsewhere we faced a number of barriers. We were told the topic was too niche, that the process to publish was too timely and expensive and that we were really too junior to be able to have our work published. Unsurprisingly, even if we were to have our work published, we were told that we would not receive appropriate individual recognition for it. This experience is unfortunately not an isolated one, rather it forms part of a wider pattern that we have both experienced within professional and academic environments.
This encouraged us to set up our own platform: Women in Whitehall, with the aim of breaking down barriers for young women like ourselves who want to get involved in politics or academic research. Crucially, the platform is for any and every young woman who would like to see their work published in a way that provides them with the individual recognition they deserve. The realm of academia and politics has long been a narrow collection of individuals talking in smoke filled rooms, and whilst female representation in these spaces may be increasing, studies demonstrate that women often receive a barrage of harassment far superior to that of their male colleagues [1] that often prevents them from wanting to stay involved.
Our mission is to encourage young women to get involved in politics initially and to ensure they want to stay in this arena by creating a welcoming and supportive community. Our aim for the future of Women in Whitehall is to provide a platform for young women to get their ideas published whether that be articles, op-eds or reports removing the traditional bureaucracy that prevents this from happening initially.
One way in which we intend to do this is through our team of regular contributors, whom we are currently recruiting. Regular contributors are those who are particularly politically engaged and would like to produce at least one article a month to get published on our site. We want to stress the importance of individual recognition for each of our contributors, to help them go forward in their own careers so we will be heavily publicising their contributions and individual profiles on social media as well as providing them with their own page on our website. Not only is the aim to give them individual recognition but to allow them a rich portfolio of work which can aid in attaining future employment or even successful applications to further study. If this seems like an opportunity you would be interested in do not hesitate to apply. The link to apply is on our website as well as on our linktree.
In order to maximise the accessibility of politics and academia we are also accepting submissions from those who are not regular contributors. We encourage our writers to submit a varied range of pieces, not limited to articles. We champion op-eds, policy analyses and policy reports, more information on the guidelines for submissions can be found on our website. Equally, we understand that many students will have written essays that they are proud of; as a result we encourage students to submit these essays with a brief plan of what they would like it to become. We will work together to make these works publishable, giving young women the learning experiences they are too often held back from.
Furthermore, we plan to host networking events and speaker panels to inspire and connect young women helping to elevate their pathways into politics and academia. You do not need to write for us in order to come to these events, so follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram to keep up to date.
Finally, alongside this, we hope to expand our reach into schools and universities launching a number of research and writing opportunities such as essay competitions and encouraging sixth form students and undergrads to get involved in politics beyond the traditional means.
Already, we have received an overwhelmingly positive response, our team has grown from just 2 to 11 within a number of days and a number of women have reached out who have shared similar experiences of struggling to get their work out there. No one should have to feel that they cannot be part of our political and academic world because they do not have the resources nor the support to do so. We hope that by offering this platform we can inspire the next generation of young women in politics.
[1]https://www.johnsmithcentre.com/news/research-1-in-every-9-tweets-that-women-mps-receive-is-abusive/
