During my time at Elgar, I have wanted to do something really substantial for International Women’s Day, from both a personal and professional perspective. Last year, we managed to commission blog posts from Elgar’s female authors. It felt great to have a few pieces lined up for the day, however, I knew there was probably something more we could do. It was a question of “what?”
I happened to come across Dana Denis-Smith’s ‘First 100 Years’ project back in 2018. Reading about the project was incredibly inspiring to me and really struck a chord with what we could do here at Edward Elgar. The First 100 Years project is in essence celebrating the centenary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919. I absolutely love this project and feel strongly about pioneers in professions sharing their stories, words of wisdom and showing others what can be achieved. This project relates most explicitly within a UK context, but will have impact far and beyond the UK. I wanted to ‘join forces’ to some degree with Dana in celebrating ‘Elgar’s Women in Law’. The women that we work with come from all over the world, both practice and teach law and have impact beyond their home jurisdiction whether they know it or not, purely by engaging and changing the way they work with the law.
Within my role as commissioning editor I am incredibly lucky to be able to talk to academics from all around the world about their ideas, research and what kind of impact they want to make with their work. This is especially true of all law authors, female and male, academics and practitioners alike.
For International Women’s Day 2019, we decided to use the theme of ‘Women in Law/Trusted Voices’ as a way of celebrating both the centenary of the 1919 Act and celebrating the women that we work with. The ‘Trusted Voices’ element plays homage to the First 100 Years project and that our women in law have both important and trusted voices that they may not have been able to express if it hadn’t been for the pioneers before them.
During the course of this (International Women’s Day) week we will have the honour of reading and hearing some incredible stories, anecdotes, words of wisdom and advice from our female authors and colleagues in academic law and professional law. A number of our contributors have been courageous in sharing their incredibly personal stories to make this project all the more richer and poignant.
Please join us in celebrating and championing our fantastic women in law throughout this week. Please re-blog, retweet and spread the word about these stories – you may pass a link onto someone who is truly inspired and motivated by what they read. What a gift to share!
I want to thank everyone who got involved with this initiative, and everyone who shared their story and offered advice to other women and anyone teaching, learning and practicing law.
Happy International Women’s day 2019!!
Iram Satti,
Commissioning Editor (Academic Law)
March 4, 2019
academic law