Megan Armstrong is Women’s Officer for the Student Union this year, studying Philosophy in her final year. Megan and I are actually Camp America alumni. I first knew her as my Co-Counsellor as we attempted to maintain control of seven hyperactive 8 year olds in the sweltering heat of Maryland. We were true British ladies teaching them the proper use of a knife and fork, demonstrating our dependency upon tea and claiming direct lineage to the throne. A break following the end of her first year at uni, the overenthusiasm of camp life clearly had its effect – Megan became an active member of FemSoc throughout her second year, quickly developing a strong interest in feminism. Being keen to actively pursue her beliefs and desire to make changes for women at the university she consequently ran a successful campaign for the part-time position in the union. I caught up with her to find out more about the role, and her plans for the year:
What does the role of Women’s Officer involve?
Women’s Officer is a Liberation role. It sits alongside three other Liberation groups – Disabled, LGBT+ and BME. My job is to represent all women students, and ensure that the university never marginalises them.
Day to day I run campaigns related to women’s issues, and I hold the women’s forum for all self-defining women to come along and talk about issues relating to them.
What inspired you to run for the role of Women’s Officer?
I realised that I cared a lot about being feminist, and wanted to do something about that. I had spent a lot of time ranting to friends about various things and was beginning to notice people getting annoyed at me. I felt that I should probably take action rather than simply expressing my anger on Twitter!
I was inspired to help women at university, and make the university a better place to live and study. I think everyone experiences sexism and harassment at some point in their time here – I wanted to work on this.
Do you think female students are well represented at Bristol?
4 out of the 6 full-time officers, and 6 of the 8 part-time, are women (woo!). In my role I am supported by the Equality, Liberation and Access Officer Alice Phillips. She was Women’s Officer last year and is now doing a lot of work for Liberation this year. The fact that Alice is on hand means that women students have certainly got it quite good in terms of making sure that university and union policy is never marginalising us.
Of course, because my role is at the union, women are well represented, and campaigned for, at the union. In terms of the university though there are not enough female academics in many subjects. I believe fewer than 20% of professional academics are women – in Philosophy I’ve only been taught by three women. I’m going to be working on this issue next term by running events focused on women in academia. As of now I don’t know what form they will take but I’m interested in networking events within specific departments or something in a similar vein to the Best of Bristol lecture series – a female academic from the department would give a lecture to showcase their work. I’m really seeking to inspire women to take academia further.
Tell us about your other on-going projects.
My wider initiative is to end rape culture at the University of Bristol. As part of this I have been promoting the scheme Good Night Out run by the charity Hollaback (http://www.goodnightoutcampaign.org). Hollaback is a movement to end street harassment. Their national campaign Good Night Out seeks to end harassment on nights out across the UK and London. There is a small Hollaback group in Bristol and I’ve been helping them to establish the campaign. This is basically asking clubs and venues to sign up to a pledge that says they will take sexual harassment seriously in their spaces. Staff are trained to deal with harassment in the venues, and posters are put up to say that if you experience something that makes you uncomfortable you can go a speak to a member of staff and they have to take you seriously and take your issue further. We so far have the union signed up but it has been challenging to get other venues involved. We do have plans however to get a more watertight plan together to get other venues on board, so you should see Good Night Out throughout Bristol pretty soon.
Elsewhere I will be focusing on educating students about sexual consent, going back to basics and thinking about what sexual consent means, why it is important and what it looks like in practice. Our ultimate goal for the year, and something which we are working hard at, is to secure timetabled consent workshops for all incoming students next year. Last year the union got wardens to agree to talk about consent in their welcome presentations to new students. However the wardens committee decided that it would not be compulsory to put in the slide that Alice Phillips wrote for them explaining sexual consent. We were both disappointed but are aiming to improve upon this for next year.
How would you describe a Bristol woman?
I wouldn’t say that there is a typical Bristol woman. However, in general I see Bristol students as quite headstrong and independently minded. I think everyone at the university is open to debate and thinking very hard about things. The thing that makes Bristol so awesome is that there are so many different types of women. In my role I have to recognise the diversity in people’s lifestyles, experiences and opinions so I can’t put women under one umbrella.
And do you have any female role models?
I would have to say my Mum, is that really sad? She’s just always seemed to know what to do! To be honest I don’t think too much about role models, I just kind of do my own thing.
Update – I later received this rather excitable message from Megan: Omg omg how could I forget Beyonce is a massive role model for me in terms of her being hugely successful. I have a bit of a mantra ‘what would Beyonce do’!
To finish, what do you see yourself doing after you’ve graduated?
I am considering trying to stay on at the union, as I am interested in working more with the university. I would love to continue my current work on equality and liberation. In the same vein, I am also interested in working with a local women’s charity or initiative.
Photo credit: Will Walton-Freeman