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Kairos Women+ brings women and non-binary people together to collectively make change in Scotland. Kairos Museum is our women’s history group, who work to ensure women’s lives are represented in history and the Equalities Collective is our campaigning group raising awareness of issues affecting women+, most notably in their Women’s Invisible Work campaign. Find out more about both groups below, including how to join us!
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
Kairos Museum is a women’s history group seeking to make change in Scotland. We work together to raise awareness of women who have been excluded from recorded history through various projects and activities.
Kairos Women+ have worked closely with Paisley Museum Re-imagined since 2018. We have been co-producing a display for objects in their collection related to women’s history, in particular the story of the Paisley Cooperative Women’s Guild. We can’t wait to see the new re-imagined museum in 2023! We have also co-produced a comic book telling the story of Kelly, a Kairos woman+ who seeks to make our museums representative of people from diverse backgrounds, in particular working class, local women. You can download the comic and audiobook below. Thanks to Paisley Museum, we regularly host public events with guest speakers from heritage organisations across Scotland including the Burrell Collection, OurStory Scotland, National Libraries of Scotland and the Oral History Society.
Glasgow Women’s Library is the only Accredited Museum in the UK dedicated to women’s lives, histories and achievements, with a lending library, archive collections and innovative programmes of public events & learning opportunities. We collaborated with GWL for our Making Her Mark project, funded by the Culture, Heritage and Events Fund at Renfrewshire Council, which aims to recognise women in Renfrewshire who ‘Made Their Mark’. This project offered workshops to learn new creative skills: photography, embroidery, crafts and painting as well as visits to the local Heritage Centre to research women from the Paisley Poor House. In late 2021, this project culminates in an exhibition of the group’s work, showcasing the lives of women from Renfrewshire’s past and present.
Kairos Women+ are available to present at heritage conferences, universities and events throughout the year for a small fee. As a community group, we have expertise in audience participation, co-production and inclusive representation in the heritage sector, particularly focussed on women and non-binary people. To date we have presented at the Social History Curators Conference in Edinburgh, the British Museum Annual Conference and to Museum Studies students at the University of Glasgow. We have also been commissioned to create biographies of women from Renfrewshire’s past by the Great Place Scheme. If you’d like to book a session, please get in touch!
It’s been one of my highlights for this year in a year of lots of not so nice things happening to us all...! I love everything you and the group are doing especially forging a great community link with Paisley Museum and putting women's heritage on the map...! ... And it’s given me the opportunity to meet and work with Paisley Museum.
The Equalities Collective is our Kairos Women+ campaigning group. The collective is made up of women and non-binary people from all walks of life who come together to make change for women+ in Scotland.
In 2019, the Equalities Collective launched their first campaign exploring Women’s Invisible Work, the unpaid labour undertaken by women at a disproportionate rate such as housework, childcare and caring for older adults. They conducted a Scotland-wide survey with 147 responses and compiled their findings into a report.
The Collective marks various equalities events throughout the year to raise awareness of women’s lives and experiences through our social media channels.
The Equalities Collective plans and hosts annual events at Kairos Women+, including our International Women’s Day celebration. In 2019, they brought together 160+ people at their Invisible Women Event exploring Women’s Invisible Work following the launch of our report. The evening was a huge celebration of women’s contribution to society with awards for Mum of the Year, Gran of the Year and Carer of the Year as well as performances, talks and entertainment.
In 2021, the Equalities Collective hosted our International Women’s Day Festival exploring gender inequality. The 2-day festival included 8 individual events exploring topics such as care, work, art, history, addiction, Covid-19 and femininity.
The Equalities Collective are available for consultation and to join panel discussions for larger events. The membership is diverse with disabled women, queer women and non-binary people, older women, younger women and women of colour represented. If you would like to consult with our group for a small fee to support the development of your organisation or project, please get in touch.
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After forming, the Equalities Collective wanted to look at a list of issues which commonly affect women in the UK, and decided to spotlight Women’s Invisible Work. As you can imagine, that list was quite long! They wanted to gauge how much invisible work was carried out by women in the wider community, and how women and non-binary people felt about it. Invisible Work or Unpaid Work takes up lots of time and energy. Activities include cooking, cleaning, caring for other people (including children, other adults and the elderly), and voluntary community work.
For many people, taking on the responsibility of Invisible Work is not a matter of choice. The Collective created a survey and put it to the public. You can find some feedback from the survey, as well as some of the results below:
“I resent being left to do the majority of housework, financial management and shopping and the fact that I carry the mental load of it all is completely overlooked.”
“I feel guilty if I don’t achieve everything that needs done.”
“I’ve had previous partners claim they need me to write a list of things needing done before they can even begin to think about doing them”
“Until now I did not think of any of these tasks as unpaid work”
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Kairos Women+ is a community-led, women’s space based in Johnstone, Renfrewshire. A second home for women and non-binary people, we inspire transformational change in the lives of the women+ we work with by collaboratively creating opportunities through workshops, events, training and courses.
