Hi there
Happy summer solstice – hope you have been enjoying the baking heat. ☀️ 😎 🥵
As you read this, I will be leading our Warwickshire Mini Retreat, where we’ll be enjoying the puppies, lunch, a walk through the woods and fields of fellow Queenager Rebecca’s beautiful farm and swimming in her lake (we’re going to need to cool off!). And we’ll have a NOON Circle of course….
We continually evolve our events to meet the needs of Queenagers – this one was tailored to not only be fun (of course), include some trademark NOON activities, with a “cost of living” price point. If you’ve got ideas or suggestions for activities or outings, please do drop me a line at eleanor@noon.org.uk. (We’ve already heard that some of you would love an outing with doggies so keep your eyes peeled for that.)
Our new campaign: What Women Want 2025
A big part of NOON is our campaigns – advocating for a change in attitudes, yes, but also a fresh approach to the needs of women in policy, law and society.
That’s why on a sultry day last week I headed down to the House of Commons to join a posse of amazing ladies to launch a new campaign called What Women Want 2025. If that rings a bell, it may be because back in 1995 Anita Roddick of The Body Shop was joined by Chrissie Hynde and Sinead O’Connor at a big South Bank concert with the same title. It was the year of the mighty UN Women’s Conference in Beijing, which for the first time ever globally asked women what they wanted.
In the UK a mega-survey of women was conducted (on postcards…this was pre-internet) The answers – now carefully kept in an archive of ribbon-bound boxes at the London School of Economics – found that UK women wanted everything from equal pay to better sex, from being relieved from the tyranny of worrying about beauty to seeing more rape convictions to having better access to the then-fledgling internet. What was groundbreaking (and mindboggling, when looking back now) is that this was the first time on a large scale women had ever been asked what they wanted!
The key organiser of the last campaign was Lynne Franks, a powerful Queenager and PR extraordinaire who is the real-life inspiration for Edina from Absolutely Fabulous. I would say the Edina comparison does Lynne a disservice. Franks, whom I have known for decades, is one of the warmest, smartest, kindest women I know.
When I was an editor, we had regular lunches because she always told me things I didn’t know, or pointed out new trends or emerging patterns.
There was a moment of high AbFab at the House of Commons last week – that’s my old journalistic cynicism kicking in – when the meeting began with a white-sari’d woman giving a blessing. But the meditation was actually very beautiful, and a sign of how much the world has changed. It seemed very normal, and the woman’s words moved me to tears. I had a strong sense of the magic that’s possible when women come together, support each other and fight for their rights.
It was also inspiring to be in a room full of so many change makers and campaigners – many of whom are elders (a special cheer for the grey-haired goddesses) and who have been fighting this good fight for decades. I feel so honoured to have been asked to be part of Lynne’s ongoing What Women Want Wisdom Council and to have been asked to speak at the gathering at the House of Commons about our work here at NOON.
Here’s what I said at the House of Commons
I spoke about combatting gendered ageism, changing the story in the culture about what women are FOR as we age – and how at NOON we are co-creating a new map of what female lives can look like after 50, finding inspiration and the path forward through the stories shared in the Circles, on retreats, in webinars and all the conversations we have in this network.
I also said we need a new narrative. For instance, if 30% of us Queenagers don’t have kids, we are never going to be grannies! We need new models of what we can be and do as we age in an era of longevity….
I also spoke about a recent Good Housekeeping magazine survey which found that the thing their readers most wanted – ahead of world peace or stopping violence against women or equal pay – was (….drum roll…) “to lose half a stone”. Hmm.
It’s difficult to shake off those expectations (internal and external) that have shaped us our entire lives. Yet we’re not going to get anywhere if we continue seeing ourselves through a lens that values us more for what we look like than what we ARE.
To move into our true power and take up an equal place in the world, we must stop being primarily valued (and valuing ourselves) for our beauty and fecundity – it’s too much like prize cows!
As I write in my book Much More to Come, we’ve got to stop internalising that misogyny. That got a cheer from the House of Commons crowd, crammed, aptly enough, into the Churchill Room and then gathered around the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square.
I was reminded of my stepmother
While listening to the other speeches, I had the weirdest sense of the presence of my late stepmother Dame Tessa Jowell, a politician who did so much to help women – launching Sure Start, campaigning for maternity leave and better provision on mental health even in her dying days with brain cancer.
I began my speech by saying I felt so moved by being in the presence of so many amazing female elders, that we women today stand on the shoulders of giants. I also said I had the strangest sense of Tessa being present. Then Sue Tibballs (one of the original founders, also in the room) said, “Tessa was a big part of the 1995 launch”. I had no idea. But I felt her there.
I feel a real obligation now to continue the work of all these amazing women. I don’t want my daughters to enter a work world that’s not designed for them or where they accept the kind of treatment that was meted out to us as young women. As a wise old feminist once said to me: If we’re not pushing forwards, we’re going backwards!
Dark times – but progress ahead
These can feel like dark times. Last year, a UK police chief said violence against women and girls was at “emergency levels”, with 3,000 crimes recorded every day. Of the 71,227 rapes recorded by police in 2024 in England and Wales, charges had been brought in just 2.7% of these cases by the end of that year.
And yet. There are reasons to be optimistic – and I felt a sense of progress last Wednesday. Sarah Dyke MP explained that she was the 566th woman ever to be elected to Parliament. (Only 694 women have EVER sat in the House of Commons.) How many men? I asked. The true answer is lost in the mists of time, but for comparison, there have been 8,000 men elected since 1837 alone!
There is still a way to go: Women make up 51% of the population but are still only 40% of MPs. “Next year’s What Women Want festival [kicking off in Bristol and moving around the country] will be a powerful way to move this forward,” Dyke said. We’ll update you about the festival so watch this space.
So what DO women want in 2025?
Lesley Abdullah (one of the 1995 Founders) wants action on 4 fronts.
1) Tackling misinformation and the threats to women in the digital world in the time of AI, “as real-world sexism is baked into the algorithms”
2) Tackling rape as a weapon of war “and stopping the victims of it feeling like they are the sinners. So many women are raped and then ostracised in their communities”
3) A Pushback against the Pushback. A quarter of governments in a UN report last year reported a backlash against women’s rights. And just look at what is going on in the US with the end of legal abortion and DEI banned
4) Insisting that ALL peace delegations are gender balanced. (They have a much better success track record but all too often women are banished from the peace-making table)
A big goal for NOON: Equalising the internet
I was particularly interested in the conversation around the online space, given that that is one of the key differences between 2025 and 1995.
The technology itself is neither good nor bad (something my wise friend Baroness Martha Lane Fox always says). It’s how we use the tech that matters.
While the internet fuels polarisation (as Catherine Mayer, founder of the Women’s Equality Party pointed out), it also allows women to communicate directly with our audiences without the distortion that can occur by going through the powerful, usually male, gatekeepers of mainstream media. This democratised approach has brought into existence campaigns such as #everydaysexism, #metoo, #pregnantthenscrewed or #everyonesinvited and allowed everyone to share their real-world experiences.
But it reinforces existing problems. A few years ago Sir Trevor Phillips wrote an article for me entitled My computer is racist and sexist, talking about how the algorithms took garbage in and spat garbage out, discriminating against him financially for instance because he was Black. Now, in an AI-fuelled world, all those in-built biases are only going to become more widespread and more problematic.
How to get involved with this campaign
My invitation to you today is to follow the link to whatwomenwantnow.co.uk and fill in their form. (You can also follow What Women Want 2025 on LinkedIn.)
And while you’re at it, we’d love it if you could answer a few questions for us here at NOON on this Google Form, so we get a sense of what is most pressing for you. It’s 3 short questions – just taking your temperature on what you do and don’t want. You can be totally frank – and we’ll report back soon, so you get a sense of what everyone is thinking and talking about.
Escape for a day at Wasing: Limited spots!
And in the meantime – we have some very cool opportunities:
- We’ve got a couple of spots left on our amazing Wasing Retreat on July 18th if you fancy giving yourself an enlivening treat. (It’s a holiday in a day, as you can see from the pictures above)
- I’ll be interviewing phenomenal Queenager and author of The Salt Path Raynor Winn in Oxford at 5pm on July 10th followed by a screening of the wonderful movie. The tickets include a donation to CRISIS. Raynor doesn’t make loads of in-person appearances so this really is one not to miss
- And don’t forget we’ve got a round of NOON Circles coming up in JULY. For our flagship London Circle that I run, we’ve got a brand new venue at the beautiful Old Sessions House on July 2nd – big thanks to AllBright who are allowing us access to their new home
Lots of love and see you soon I hope!
Eleanor
