What better time for Devonshires’ Women in Housing (DWIH) to reflect on how we do business and engage with others than in the week of International Women’s Day.
As Head of DWIH, I have put this together to share some of our thoughts following on from the past 48 hours. For those of you who do not know, DWIH had marketed an event “Beauty, Bubbles and Business” which was intended to give networking opportunities to senior women in the social housing sector. Even as I type this I can see now where we got it wrong – hindsight is a wonderful thing.
This event was put together as part of a package of events organised by the female partners of Devonshires who run DWIH, and in response to client feedback. We have run the event on several previous occasions and it has always been warmly received and well attended.
This week things changed. We received for the first time negative feedback to which we have listened and as a result we cancelled the event.
Over the past two days I have heard from a number of people who have taken the time to share their views with me and I thank you all. The last thing we intended was to promote negative stereotypes. This was an event for women led by women and hands up – we got it wrong.
Going forward I would welcome the opportunity to speak to anyone that would like to share their views or help shape our future events to promote equality, diversity and social housing – all things that Devonshires are passionate about.
Donna McCarthy, Partner
Head of DWIH
