SPECIAL EVENT
Breaking Barriers: Women in Politics - Film Screening & Panel Discussion
Aldeburgh Cinema is delighted to welcome the Churchill Archives Centre, University of Cambridge on Sunday November 1st at 2pm for a screening of Groundbreakers, a film about women in Parliament breaking barriers.
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Baroness Gillian Shephard (Cons), Anne Jenkin (Cons), Dame Vera Baird (Lab), Boni Sones OBE and introduced by Allen Packwood OBE of the Churchill Archives Centre.
Groundbreakers celebrates the early years of women's representation in Parliament when women made up just three per cent of all MPs. Featuring interviews conducted before the 2024 General Election but not shown publicly before, we hear first-hand testimonies from thirteen women MPs across the party divide who broke barriers to gain their seats and push for change at the highest level of British politics. Eleven are now Peers in the House of Lords and familiar names, some having begun their political journeys 50 years ago. They tell of their first years in Parliament when comments such as “What do you even think you are doing here?” were the norm. They speak of their eventual achievements and how social media today can be threatening. The House Magazine has called the film “An important social history of how they met – and mastered – the challenges they faced, including blatant sexism from their male colleagues”.
The film links their colourful often humorous testimonies to the “Votes for Women” campaigning voices of Aldeburgh's own pioneering sisters Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Millicent Fawcett who first forged the suffrage path that our Groundbreakers later came to tread.
Film running time: 68 minutes
Panel discussion: 40 minutes
All proceeds from this event goes to the Churchill Archives Centre.
https://archives.chu.cam.ac.uk/