Sheffield has this week been filled with events to empower and embrace the women of the city for this year’s International Women’s Day.
One of these events, which took place on Wednesday, was hosted at The Mowbray in Kelham Island and attracted a variety of women speakers from social media influencers and neurodivergent educators to other inspiring Yorkshire women.
Hosts of the event, Nic Sowden and Rachel Hirst, are the founders of ‘In Good Company’, which runs feel-good events for Sheffield women to connect.
This was the first International Women’s Day ‘In Good Company’ hosted, after only starting their business just under a year ago, and both said they are excited to host more events to help women meet women in the future.
Ms Sowden said: “We’re still moving towards equality and the only way we’re going to do it is if we keep having these conversations.
“It’s about bringing women together to look at all our achievements, having the strength to move out our ‘lane’ and having the role models to do this.”
International Women’s day is a yearly celebration dedicated for special events like this, with the theme of this year’s day to ‘Embrace Equity’.
Women across the globe were encourage to celebrate the day, and to take images captioned #EmbraceEquity to amplify the cause.
Emily Bradley, a biomedical student at the University of Sheffield said: “I went to a predominately boys school in sixth form and I felt like there was a really big divide between girls and boys in our education.”
The 19-year-old said: “There wasn’t very many girls so we were really picked on. A lot of talking about our bodies and how we acted, always comments like we weren’t as smart as the boys.”
Miss Bradley attended an event in Sheffield for this international celebration as she felt it was “really important to celebrate the empowerment of women, especially when we aren’t always treated fairly”.
The ‘In Good Company’ event, which sold out of tickets, had a cocktail reception before a two part panel conversation with five ‘inspiring’ women, leaving attendees feeling ‘a sense of community’ among women.
Ms Hirst said: “The whole ambiance of the night is one of celebration and achievement and navigating life as a woman.
“We want people to be inspired by the stories from women you never knew existed about conversations you never knew you needed.”