International Women's Day: Essex school boss says children need female role models
She told us they inspire children
On International Women's Day, the CEO of an education trust which manages three primary schools in Essex has highlighted the importance of school children having female role models and seeing women in positions of leadership.
Rebecca Leek is CEO of the South Essex Multi-Academy Trust (SEAMAT), which runs three schools: North Crescent Primary in Wickford, Rayleigh Primary and Wyburns Primary, also in Rayleigh.
She says young children need women to look up to to help with gender equality: "Some people think that International Women's Day is just for girls and women but it's for everyone...
"It's really important for all people to see women doing everything and it's really important for boys to have female role models to see the breadth and depth of what we can all do.
"It's not necessarily about status or having power or being in some kind of top dog position, it's about seeing people doing different things and trying to get through gendered roles that we have in society where all the women do this and all the men do that...
"Women can can be mechanics and doctors and head teachers and men can be nurses and primary school teachers, and all sorts of things!"
She says having women in leadership positions can help challenge stereotypes: "It's about being really attuned to subtle messages that we give very young children.
"One of the things I worry about is when there's only one male in the staff of a primary school and he's the head teacher. Children only really know home and school, and something in their head, will go: "oh, men are the bosses".
"Of course they can be and it's totally fine that they are, but it's just really noticing those messages that we give the youngest children and and challenging them, and trying to create better diversity in the roles around them."
One of the ways her schools are doing this is through use of language in their job adverts: "When we advertise for a lunchtime supervisor, we definitely do not call them dinner ladies, and when we're advertising for site staff, we think about what language and what pictures we put in those job adverts to try and create greater diversity amongst roles."
She also wants to make it clear how important International Women's Day is: "I saw a quite devastating tweet this week on Bristol Cathedral.
"There was a notice that said: we've taken a plaque down commemorating the first women that were ordained here because in the plaque we name all the men who ordained the women but fail to mention the names of the women.
"So for those people that don't think we need International Women's Day, we have been written out of history, and it's time that we were written back in."