International Women’s Day celebrates the achievements of women and happens on 8 March every year. This year’s theme is #BreaktheBias which looks forward to “a world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination.” It’s interesting to look back at the past and see how far we’ve come, and the following article from a 2017 Felix article by Fred Fyles describes the struggle for women to enter the Union bar:
“Until at least 1974, women were not allowed in the Union Bar – or rather, there were never any rules against it, but men would stop them entering. A Felix article of that year talks about Kay Nickelson, the first female captain of an ACC club (fencing, in case you were interested), but who was unable to use her tankard, since she was “not allowed in the Union Bar”. In the same issue, a letter from a male student says that while he can’t see any reason for women to be banned, he also can’t see what right “a few women in IC [have to] demand that the average IC student stop enjoying himself”.
Five years before this, a paper was presented to Union Council to allow women into the Bar, but it was defeated – the proposer was met with “pandemonium, paper darts, and cries of ‘off’”, while one opposition member said that “the activities in the Union Bar were not for women to see or hear”. Another motion was raised two years later, which would prevent any form of discrimination against those using the Union Bar, but it failed – Council had “overwhelmingly” voted to include an amendment that “all persons entering the Bar be naked from the waist up”.
When the usual procedures failed, a number of students turned to more radical means, ‘invading’ the Union Bar against the will of its male patrons: in 1969, Women’s Lib and Gay Lib attempted to enter the Bar, but were “kicked out”, and a couple of years later Women’s Lib attempted to gain entry to the Bar again. When they tried to enter the Bar the same night as the Chap’s Club Dinner – one of Imperial’s historical ‘tie clubs’, which at the time was affiliated with RSMU – one woman had two pints of beer poured over her. The men then tried to force her to down a yard of beer, at which point she poured it over the head of the RCSU President, and was forcibly removed.
While it would be easy to place the entirety of the blame on the men in the Union Bar, when you go through these articles you realise how sexist and discriminatory some of the language used by Felix writers was. Women’s underwear used to be hung over the bar, and any attempts to remove them stopped. The issue was described as “trivial”, while women trying to get into the Bar are characterised as “aggressive”.
In one article, one of the Women’s Lib members complains about the advances made by “horny old perverts present in the bar”, at which point the writer inserts their own opinion: “maybe this is why we keep women out of the Bar.”
This discrimination might seem extremely blatant and obvious to current readers, and it may be easy to assume that this type of behaviour is firmly in the past. Nonetheless, it is interesting to scrutinise how the Union is doing currently to show what pockets of bias and discrimination still needs to be eradicated. To date, only around 10 women have been President of the Union, which, compared to Students’ Unions nationally, is unusual. We are doing a little better with CSP’s however, with currently 42% of CSPs having a woman President, which is broadly demographically representative as women make up 41% percent of the student body.
However, our recent sexual misconduct report shows that women students are disproportionally affected by sexual violence at Imperial College, and that there is a long way to go to reform the reporting system and procedures, and the quality and awareness of support services.
In the videos we are posting on ICU’s Instagram for International Women’s Day, made by Malinda Davies, ICU’s Gender Equality officer, women students highlight that they would like to see more open discussion and workshops on working in a male-dominated environment, more female lecturers, higher level sports for women and consent training. If you want to get involved with the Gender Equality network to make this happen, you can email the current officer on icu-gender-equality@imperial.ac.uk.
The College is running an extensive programme of talks, events and workshops during this week to celebrate and advance women, and the full programme can be found here.