Revealed: All YOUR nominations for the Made in Derby 'Walk of Fame'
Revealed: Why Our Campaign Is Necessary!
Happy that so many of the women on our submitted list made it among the 220 nominated names. Thank you so much to all those who nominated someone from the list, and, or signed our ongoing (...just in case) petition. BUT it is not enough, not nearly enough, that is, of the 220 names, only 52 were women - less than 25% of names on the list... (this does not include Maureen Alexander who appears as a co-listee, Dr Williams who founded Derby Royal School for The Deaf - and former director of Derby Playhouse Leslie Twelvetrees as it is not clear without further research if they were men or women....or indeed identifying as non-binary (but the latter could be equally true for many on the list!). We refuse to include Lara Croft in our count of women, afterall 'she' is not a woman, indeed 'she' is not real, she is a fiction....and although it galls us that she is even listed, we are somewhat appeased by the fact that she is listed as an 'invention'! (but shouldn't we be listing the creator).
We submitted a list names of 24 women, not all of whom were born in Derby, but women that we feel have had an impact nationally and internationally (It would be 25 but we made a statement that we were not listing Florence Nightingale because she was likely to be among the few usual suspects). Our list was by no means definitive nor did it fully reflect all the amazing women, but rather it reflected a cross-section of potential nominees and we directed people to the Deeds Not Words Towards Liberation web link for 100+ Derbyshire Women so that they could discover the other amazing potential nominees for themselves.
The aim of our list was to
a) provide alternatives to the usual suspects of men, and very few women
b) raise awareness of the contributions and achievements of some amazing women who were born, lived or worked in the City
c) Challenge the status quo and simply raise the issue so women no longer 'walk invisible' in our City.
Our Initial List of Potential Nominees for Derby Walk of Fame sent to Zena Hawley at Derby Telegraph and Derby City Council Project Lead Andy Smart on November 20th 2017
We imagined that Florence Nightingale would be a popular nominee so we have not included