On Monday evening, 4th December 2017, Women in Planning celebrated its 5th anniversary with a Christmas drinks reception, kindly sponsored by GVA and Osborne Richardson.
In her speech, our co-founder, Charlotte Morphet, reflected on the success of our last 5 years and set out the future direction of our network and where we see the role of women in planning. Charlotte reflected on the reason for setting up the network which was to make women visible in the planning world, noting that;
“Alison Mackay and I were looking for a networking forum that would work for us. We noticed at so many events most of the speakers and attendees were male, which we thought was strange because we knew there were lots of women working in planning.”
Over the past 5 years, the network has achieved a great deal including an incredible ‘Proud of Women’ series of events which actively sought to make women working in planning at senior levels more visible and act as role models for women starting in the industry.
2017 has been an especially good year for us with the addition of two new Branches, one in South Wales, which launched in November 2017, and another launching in January 2018 in the North West of England.
Over the next 5 years, Women in Planning will be focusing on:
further growth across the UK with additional branches;
growing and diversify our membership base making sure it represents all women working in planning and development, at every level of their career;
creating a network which will empower and support our leading women so that the days of an all-male expert panel or leadership board are behind us;
creating a forum that provides for our members to make meaningful social and business connections and encourage them to share and support each other’s ambitions;
influence positive change in the workplace through targeted research, information sharing and membership surveys. We realise that greater efforts need to be made to strive for equality in the workplace, especially in terms of both pay and promotion. This starts with a better understanding of the industry baseline and what our members feel are the issues.
We thank you for being a part of our journey, whenever you may have joined and look forward to seeing you at our events in 2018. From all of us on the committee, thank you for your continued support. Seasons greetings.