With OpenUK for International Women’s Day
The day before International Women’s Day this month I attended a lunch at the House of Lords, courtesy of OpenUK, the organisation that promotes UK leadership and global collaboration in open technology. I was there to hear Baroness Helena Kennedy of the Shaws, QC, talk about her social justice work and specifically about how she brought female Afghan judges out of the country as the Taliban moved back in.
It’s been a long time since I was in London. It’s a lot quieter than I remember (no doubt everyone’s still working from home) and I had time to walk across the City from St Pancras to College Green. I wanted to make a contribution to our #IWD videos and I had it in mind to do so in front of the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in Victoria Tower Gardens, but alas there was far too much noise. Instead, I queued to go through security along with around 40 other guests, mostly female, from many different sectors including law, engineering and government.
Networking has been a big part of my working life and I find rooms full of people so interesting. I’ve missed it very much, so having the chance to chat and listen with a glass of bubbly in hand was a real joy. In an interesting development in the use of technology, gone are the days of handing out business cards – QR codes on your smartphone are all you need now!
The thing that struck me most as I moved around was how many of us (and I include myself) qualified the merits of our invitations. “I think I’m a bit of an outlier”, “I’m not sure why I made the list” were but two of the imposter syndrome statements in that room being repeated in most clusters. Why do we do that to ourselves? Each and every one of us was invited for good reason. We were supposed to be there!
Baroness Kennedy spoke with real emotion and eloquence about her fight to bring the Afghan judges to safety. She recounted how invoked her title wherever she thought it would get her what was needed, raising money for mercy flights, pleading with governments of various countries to give safe refuge to these women and their families. She is still fundraising, hoping to bring one more cohort out soon. Women aren’t allowed to be judges in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan – not only that, but they’re not allowed to have been judges either, so the Taliban go door to door to hunt them down. It's 2022 for goodness’ sake. Two of those remarkable women spoke of what they’d had to leave behind, knowing they probably won’t be able to return home and concerned for loved ones who are still there. They were so gentle, emotional and brave. The room was sombre and quiet.
In my lifetime the world has never seemed scarier than it does today and I commented on social media how privileged I realised I was, not only to receive invitations to lunches in fancy places with strong and intelligent women, but also that I am free to accept them, travel to them and write about them. We shouldn’t take it for granted and it was good to be reminded that we must fight to ensure everyone has the same equality of opportunity to live their lives the way they choose.
Open technology is the epitome of working in collaboration, be that with open data, software or hardware and OpenUK is at the forefront of developing the UK’s leadership in this area. I am grateful to its CEO, Amanda Brock for the kind invitation and look forward to welcoming OpenUK to our Tech for Good Summit on 28th April to explore this further. More immediately, we have partnered with OpenUK to donate to the British Red Cross in support of the DEC response to the present crisis after an appeal by someone from the opensource development community in Ukraine. It is good to work with like-minded organisations, but in this instance, I wish we didn’t have to.