March 8th is the worldwide date for International Women’s Day so here at The CRO we are running our own International Women’s Day special.

Women in Croydon play a great part in the various sectors of the local community in business, the voluntary sector, education, local politics and in the home. Things have come along a great deal for women, but there is still a long way to go with women facing discrimination in many areas of life. International Women’s Day this year has has the theme of #break the bias. Today is a day where we can all reflect on how to ensure equality of opportunity for all women.

There is one particularly prominent woman in Croydon at the time of writing – Val Shawcross who (so far) is the only woman running for election as the executive mayor of Croydon.

Val Shawcross has had a long career in public service and has put a particular emphasis on the interests of women in her work. Her first career move was working with the Commonwealth Institute where she was a project manager dealing with women and development, providing training and education programmes for Commonwealth government aimed at encouraging women in fields like agriculture and business.

Val’s record as a member of the London Assembly and as Deputy Mayor for transport is well known and while Deputy Mayor Val had a particular interest in the needs of women using public transport, stressing the accessibility and safety of public transport for women travelling alone. Since leaving her post as Deputy Mayor of London she has continued to pursue her interest in promoting active transport such as walking and cycling.

Val had recently retired from front line public life but having worked in a mayoral system at the London Assembly and as Deputy Mayor, she felt that she had a solid set of skills to offer Croydon as its first directly elected mayor. She told The CRO ‘I have worked inside the Mayoral system since 2000, both as a scrutiniser of the Mayor of London’s work and as a Deputy Mayor myself. I have seen how effective the mayoral system can be and am looking forward to helping Croydon make the most of the opportunities that can come from having a directly elected mayor’.

Val concluded ‘as a woman I feel that we need to stand up for the interests of women in Croydon. I know personally some of the challenges we women face in day to day life so I will be doing everything I can to make sure that women get better access to all the things that men can take for granted. There is still a bias against women and I will be doing all I can to break it’.

Bring Your Own Bar Poetry South are hosting an International Women’s Day celebration at Boxpark this evening.

This special one-off FREE event at Boxpark Croydon celebrating International Women’s Day with an all-female lineup featuring British Egyptian poetess of the moment, Fatima El Eify!

Looks like a brilliant night, click on the picture to go to BYOB’s Eventbrite page for tickets.