The Union of Brunel Students is running a campaign to enable and encourage more women to run in the upcoming Spring.
Brunel has lots of fantastic women doing all kinds of roles, but we’ve not had as many women running in our elections and standing to be elected as we should. We know that more women get elected when more women run in elections. We also know that we make better decisions when there is a wider range of people involved.
This isn’t just a Brunel Issue, 2/3rd of the UK’s MP’s are men and men are better represented at almost every level of Business and government.
To change that at Brunel (and hopefully start changing it elsewhere) we are doing three things:
1st
Were offering anyone self-defining as a woman, who is considering running the opportunity to have a chat with us 1-2-1 about any concerns or questions they have about running. If we get enough responses, we’ll also organise a group event so people can share experiences of running in elections and we’ll provide some refreshments as well.
2nd
We’re asking people around campus to nominate women who they think would be great representatives and leaders. This can be done anonymously (if preferred) through a form on our website. We’ll then get in touch with them to tell them that someone on campus thinks it’d be great to get involved in the Union.
Nominate a women here.
3rd
The wider democratic review: This is part of our broader efforts to review our democracy We’re starting off small and will be scaling this project up for the spring elections and want your feedback on things we could do to make sure we get as many women as possible running in our elections. We want to hear from women about what more we could do to support women’s engagement with our democracy and what barriers currently exists. If you are interested in sharing your opinion on the matter and/or getting more involved, then you can get in contact by emailing ruth.sharma@brunel.ac.uk
further elections information
We understand the elections can be a stressful time for both candidates and voters, please read this message from our CEO.