Wareham Ladies Dining Club Visits Westminster

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 1st Dec 2003

On Monday over twenty women from Wareham travelled to London for a tour of the Palace of Westminster and to meet their Member of Parliament, Annette Brooke who arranged the visit.

The Wareham Ladies Dining Club was established over 30 years ago as a forum for local women to get together socially over dinner, to make friends and to enjoy the company of likeminded women from the town.

After their tour of both the House of Lords and the House of Commons, the women had a question and answer session, with their MP. Asking Annette about her work as a relatively new female MP in the Commons, the women heard how women unfriendly the House still was, in spite of the many more women MPs elected.

"The atmosphere in the Commons is still very male dominated", said Annette, "But it is so important that there is equal representation of all members of our society in our Parliament, why should women represent less than 20% of all MPs?"

"It is true that some of the behaviour of MPs in the Commons chamber, jeering and shouting, is enough to turn people off politics but, the more women there are here, the more we will have rational and calm debates."

When the Wareham Ladies Dining Club was set up, it was less common for women to go out without their husbands, and the group has long included single, divorced and widowed women who enjoy eating out with friends. They meet regularly and invite a local guest speaker to address their dinner evenings.

Earlier this year, Annette Brooke MP had to cancel a longstanding speaking engagement with the group due to an important debate and vote in the Commons. Instead, she invited the group to the Commons for a tour, which the women agreed was excellent compensation for missing the dinner.

Free to roam London and visit galleries and museums for the rest of the day, Wareham ladies, had a day to remember.