On November 26th we are holding a meeting in the House of Commons on the "The Changing Role of Women In the 21st Century."

This will be hosted by Theresa Villiers MP. In December 2005, after she had served just 7 months in parliament, David Cameron appointed Theresa to his Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. As well as working alongside George Osborne on developing Conservative economic policy, Theresa led the Opposition scrutiny of the Finance Bills in 2006 and 2007. She is now the Shadow minister For Transport. Before being elected as an MP in the last general Election Theresa was a member of The European Parliament. She is one of the leading front bench team on the Opposition and is champion of women in the House of Commons.

Also speaking will be

Janette Faherty Chief Executive of Avanta.
Janette is the CEO of Avanta, and one of the UK's leading private sector employment-focused training and enterprise companies. Janette started doing voluntary work among women?s groups in Haringey, North London. She became a Training manager and then Agency Manager of a public not for profit company and is now a businesswoman running a growing enterprise that employs 650 people and has a turnover of £45 million a year. There are, at the last count, 2.6 million people on incapacity benefit. No one believes that all of these are genuinely incapable of entering the work-place. Janette believes that a million of them genuinely want to go back to work but are held back by lack of skills, by real but surmountable disabilities or by psychological factors such as depression. She is convinced that they can. ?It?s going to happen. It?s definitely going to happen.?

Celia Hodson, Deputy Chief Executive Social Enterprise Coalition
As the Deputy Chief Executive and part of the Management Team at the Social Enterprise Coalition, Celia is responsible for the operations, sustainability and diversity of SEC, instigating an annual events programme and a range of member benefits. Celia brings a wealth of experience from the business community and high end retailing sector, providing a turning point of organisational change. Previous to that Celia was the Chief Executive Officer for a Co-operative Development Agency. She had responsibility for providing leadership, direction, business planning and policy development.

This meeting is kindly being sponsored by Avanta