Latest TV on the New Book – 100 Lewes Women: Women’s lives in Lewes Past & Present!

Latest TV News Editor, Mark Walker, speaks to Diana Wilkins about a new book ‘100 Lewes Women: Women’s lives in Lewes Past & Present’. This book shines a light on local women who have made a difference. The book tells a wealth of women’s stories over the last 900 years, starting with the co-founder of Lewes Priory, Gundrada de Warenne. We hear about suffragette Greta Allen who campaigned for the vote. We come right up-to-date with the young women of Lewes Football Club – the first team in the world to pay its female players the same as their male counterparts. And we include interviews with women in leadership roles today. A hundred years after women got the vote, Lewes has its first ever woman MP and women occupy the roles of Chief Fire Officer and Chief Constable in Sussex. Despite these achievements, there is much further to go. Only around a third of the UK’s MPs and councillors are women. Given the past rate of progress, equal representation could take another half century. Equal pay and adequate access to child care are still some way off.

Now is a great time to celebrate the women who have contributed to life in Lewes, whose achievements can inspire our future. Last year, the then mayor Janet Baah invited a hundred girls from local schools to talk directly to those in power – from the police, politics, academia and beyond – about their hopes for the future. The book captures the girls’ voices and looks forward to what the next generation can achieve.