Feminist Law Societies at University

If you are a university student and your university does not yet have a University Feminist Law Society and you and some of your fellow students are planning to start one, the first thing you would need to do is contact your Student Union who will give you all the information you need to submit an application to them to set up your University Feminist Law Society.

Your Society name would be the name of your university, followed by Feminist Law Society. For example, University of Westminster Feminist Law Society. 

Different university Student Unions very likely work in different ways, but here is a general guide to what you can possibly expect from the setting up process. 

The Student Union works with a hierarchical structure for a Key Committee: President, Vice-President, and Treasurer. You often need to have these positions agreed and assigned between you before making your Student Union application.  

You will need a certain number of confirmed and named individuals who want to sign up as paid members of your University Feminist Law Society. These names and details will be added to your university's Student Union application. 

As part of the application process, you would need to draft a constitution. As an affiliate of Feminist Law Society, you can adopt Feminist Law Society's constitutional aims: 

• To examine the law and legal profession through a feminist lens.
• To educate ourselves and others on how to incorporate equal practice into study, research, legal work, and everyday life.
• To provide others with the tools to recognise, address, and understand the realities of inequality.
• To create and use resources that are inclusive of diverse learning styles and needs.
• To promote and signpost to examples of good feminist legal practice.
• To work collaboratively with feminist law campaign groups and organisations to achieve shared aims in facilitating social, cultural, policy and legislative change.
• To highlight and tackle the sexist myths and stereotypes that permeate society and that, subsequently, influence outcomes within our legal systems.

Beyond the Key Committee structure, student Societies can build a committee with tailored roles that would help the running of the Society. How this is structured is left to the Society to decide which positions they need.