A ‘Women in Leadership’ event in the Old Bar last week encouraged female students to run in the upcoming DCU Student’s Union (SU) election.
The student level programme ‘Inform’, ran by Women For Election was developed to tackle the problem of lower participation by females in politics. They adapt their training to encourage females to run in SU elections and take on leadership roles.
About 30 students attended the two hour workshop ran by Una Power and Hannah Deasey from the organisation.
“Women for Elections’s “Inform” SU programme can really offer an awful lot to the colleges that get involved because it can increase the number of women that run for SU election and the more likely those women are to take leadership positions at university, the more likely they are to take leadership positions later on in life,” Deasey said.
“I think it’s a great contribution to student life. It’s unfortunately still a very male dominated environment and from that point of view, talking to young women and telling them leadership is something that is not hard to achieve and leadership is not male, or gendered male, I think can be really positive,” she continued.
Topics such as leadership, goal-setting and self management were discussed throughout the interactive session. The programme is designed to engage female students and develop their leadership skills while networking with other politically minded female leaders.
Women for Election is a non-profit organisation, founded in 2012 to train and mentor females in politics.
The ‘Inform’ programme has also been carried out in UCD, CIT and Queen’s University Belfast, while they also held a USI Women in Leadership weekend for students from all over the country.
The event was held last Tuesday and was hosted by the SU. A follow-up workshop takes place next week.
Emma Duffy
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