Forget craft and cake: 7 things you probably didn't realise about the Women's Institute

Standing at the front of a trendy South London pub, style and confidence coach, Loulou Storey addresses a 40-strong audience made up mainly of 20 and 30something women. From the pops of bright red lipstick, to the of-the-moment blunt fringe bobs and the on-trend winter coats, if you accidentally stumbled into the room, you’d likely guess it was some kind of creative networking event or a cool type of TED talk, but you’d be wrong.

Because it was actually a meeting of the Peckham branch of the Women’s Institute.

For so long the preserve of flan-baking grannies and middle-aged England, the WI has had something of a reboot of late. An influx of younger women has completely switched up the demographic of the UK’s largest voluntary women’s organisation.

Now with over 212,526 members spread across more than six thousands groups, many of its new joiners would rather share a bottle of prosecco than a pot of tea.

Take Ruby Love, for example. At just 23, she is the president of the Peckham branch. Having made it her New Year’s Resolution to “do more stuff”, the college student set up the group partly to meet new friends and get more involved in things locally.

“It wasn’t something I ever set out to do,” she says. “But when a friend suggested setting a group up, I went along with it because I thought it might be interesting. Then when my friend moved to Dubai, I was left holding the reigns.”

Ruby went on to stand for president, and now leads a team of 10 committee members to organise the 11 mandatory group meetings a year, committee meetings plus fundraising and social events.

Forget jam making and jamborees, there’s a heck of a lot more to the WI than cake and craft. Because while those are still very much part of the fabric, now you’re just as likely to get a tutorial about an edgy new documentary as you are to learn how to whip up a Victoria Sponge. And that, says Ruby, is not the only thing you might be surprised about…

The WI today is not the WI of old. I grew up in the countryside where we had a WI group in the local village and it was all women my grandmother’s age and older. So I had the same stereotypical view of it that most people do that it was all old women, particularly rural women. There is a big move to modernise and attract younger members, so people should no longer be put off by ideas of cake and craft. Some women do join for that reason, but essentially it is what you want it to be.

It’s not all baking and bridge. Having the WI brand name gives you a foot in the door with businesses and social structures, so we’ve been able to organise some great workshops and speakers. Our sister branch recently had a talk about cycling in London and as well as getting in a local business to talk about cycle maintenance, they got local counsellors in to talk about road safety and cycle paths. We’ve also had self defence classes, fascinator making. It’s not something I would ever have done with my own time, but actually I really enjoyed it. We try and keep it varied. Last year we had a couple of speakers who were more on the serious side of things. We had a couple of women from Shelter who came to talk about the current housing crisis and that was very interesting.

The WI isn’t just for the fifty-plus. We have around 55 members currently. I’m the youngest and then we have a broad spectrum of ages. We tend to have a lot of younger women in their late 20s early 30s but then we do have a range of women older than that. The age range is pretty wide.

We can make quite a kick. I don’t think many people are aware of how many campaigns the WI has taken on. They did a lot with the Suffragettes for women’s rights and women’s rights to vote. But the most surprising ones for me were in the 80s and 90s where they did a lot for sex workers rights and also for AIDS awareness. Those two stood out for me because they go against everyone’s stereotypical view of who WI members might be.

It’s about standing together. When thousands of women from across the country all stand together on a cause they do have quite a lot of power. There’s been a real drive recently for women standing together and fighting for your rights, which fits in so well with what the WI tries to do. A lot of WI groups do go on mass to marches, like the Women’s March, with their banners and their posters representing their WI. We do have to be slightly careful as we’re an a-political group so we can’t tackle any party politics or any hugely contentious issues but we love to get involved in issues that affect women.

There’s no better way to meet other women. The WI is a really good opportunity for meeting women you wouldn’t normally meet and for therefore making friends. Women are so busy these days, they go to work, maybe they have children or they’re rushing around trying to get X, Y and Z done and trying to be Superwoman and I think the WI offers a place they can go and just relax and do something fun and make friends.

It’s what you make it. Which is actually a WI catchphrase. You can come in at any level, you can come in as just someone who wants to attend the meetings and not take it any further. Or get more involved. I think the WI continues to do what it was originally set up to do which is to educate women and provide a safe space. When it was set up women’s husbands were outraged that their wives were daring to leave the home for one night and go and do things with other women. And whilst I hope that generally that outrage doesn’t exist any more for some members it still is their one night off from work and family obligations to learn new things.

There’s still cake. When we were finding out about what WI meetings should involve, our WI representative told us they always consist of three parts. The business part, at the start, consists of me running through any issues, events coming up or news from the higher WI. Then we always have a speaker, event or workshop. Then the third part, which some people say is the most important, is the cake. That’s how it was explained to us ‘you must have cake!’ I’m glad that’s written into the meeting rules. So we either have a break half way through depending on the activity or we finish about twenty minutes early to chat and eat cake.

What are your views of the Women’s Institute? Let us know @YahooStyleUK.

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