By Lilian Schofield, UCL Bartlett Development Planning Unit 

Attendees of the Astrea conference 2014

UCL Astrea held its inaugural conference on Tuesday 2 December – a day of celebration and support for professional services women in the higher education sector and beyond.

‘Culture Shift 50:50’ was a lively and engaging day packed with talks, activities and networking hosted at the prestigious British Library Conference Centre with more than 200 women from UCL, and other institutions, in attendance.

The Astrea network was founded only a year or so ago by Alice Chilver and Emma Todd, two colleagues in The Bartlett, UCL’s faculty of the built environment. Noticing that there was a gap in the ready availability of support and networking for UCL professional services women, Astrea has been established to:

“…empower women.  And by doing so, to get women to realise their potential. We plan to do this by building a network where women can learn from each other; where our members can find mentors and role models; where they can talk about issues of common concern and where we can discuss what needs to change to reach 50/50 leadership.” (‘Our aims’, Astrea website).

The conference follows on from a year of successful events, many of which focused on key topics that Astrea has identified – career development, resilience, networking techniques – and for which there clearly is an appetite to explore further.

(more…)

Thursday 8 March saw worldwide celebrations for International Women’s Day, one of which was held at Stanmore College. The College linked into a live stream of the UCL lunch hour lecture titled ‘Having it all – dispelling the myths about work and motherhood’ which was delivered by Dr Anne McMunn (UCL Department of Epidemiology & Public Health).

Dr McMunn presented fascinating data which indicated that there are significant behavioral differences between daughters of mothers who work and those who stay at home; the behavior of those whose mothers go out to work being more positive. Interestingly, the significance was not as high with regard to sons. Data was also provided to show that the BMI (body mass index) for mothers who work tends to be healthier than for those who remain at home.

Watch the full lunch hour lecture below

(more…)