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We were joined today by Hannah Wilson who is co-founder
of the #WomenEd movement. She is also a CPD Consultant, an
SLE, a facilitator, a coach and an events organiser!
Over the years, Hannah has picked up curriculum, pastoral,
whole-school and cross-schools responsibilities. She became
assistant principal and has led on cross-curricular strands in a
variety of settings including across her Multi-Academy Trust. She
started an NPQH last term.
Hannah feels it's a very exciting time to be in educational
leadership because the range of opportunities is much greater than
in the past.
Do we need #WomenEd because the men have messed it all
up?
Hannah believes the problem is the system - and the system is
all of us in society. There are still many institutionalised
practices, even though it's the 21st Century.

We are in a time of equality, flexible working and innovative
technology but some schools are still run like they are back
in the Dark Ages.

#WomenEd came about because suddenly last Easter a lot of
Twitter activity, blog posts and people aligning themselves around
a common vision happened.

In a profession where we have a female-heavy workforce, why,
when we look up, do we see white men?

White men do not represent the workforce, they don't represent
the community the school serves. The movement is not anti-white men
- they are asking why it is that a certain type of leader keeps
getting promoted and others don't have quite as easy a ride into
those senior roles. #WomenEd is about empowering and connecting
people - to help them grow in confidence and make contacts.
Hopefully this will lead to more women seeing those leadership
roles as a viable option for them.
A lot of people want the movement to have a quantitative measure
but Hannah is clear that they are not, for example, trying to get
more women into headship.  They are a set of people who all
want to see a change and together they can articulate what that
change should be.
There has already been a lot of success. #WomenEd are in the
Education White Paper, they are have a weekly column in the TES and
they have CEOs of big organisations and companies approaching them
to work with them to create events.
They are just trying to create a connecting web where they pull
together all the collaborative networks that already exist for the
better of everyone.
Read more on the Pivotal Education
website