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The Women's Institute is a global phenomenon which celebrates its centenary this year. Sarah Foster examines its remarkable growth OMEN worldwide are celebrating a remarkable anniversary this year -- the centenary of the first Women's Institute. The focus oftheir attention is a little place called Stoney Creek, at the Western point of Lake Ontario in Canada. At a time when industry and urbanisation were dominant forces, and the women's suffrage movement was growing in towns and cities, rural women faced bleak, narrow lives. Forty-year-old Adelaide Hunter Hoodless knew their problems. Having grown tip fatherlcss in a farming family and seen one ofher children die at 18 months v a casualty of ignorance of food hygiene -- she was determined to change things, and became one of the best-known educationalists in North America. "The education of ' ~;' mothers has been my life's work," she later said, when speaking about domestic science at a meeting in Guelph, Ontario. There a Mr Erland Lee heard her and, as a result, asked her to address his local Farmers' Institute in Stoney Creek. This gave her the idea to form an Institute for women, similar to the Farmers" Institute for men." On 19 February, I00 women and one man 7 the helpful Mr Lee, who chaired the meeting 7 gathered in Squire's Hall \ at Stoney Creek and the Women's Institute was born. The movement grew through Canada and into America, lts aims were to improve women's skills as mothers and home-makers but, by so doing, it offered them support. friendship and education in a way no other organisation did. The idea took longer rad-4' ~~ ear" (Is for women members. r's centenary : so far included to reach Britain. Although Adelaide Hoodless visited England in [899 as a delegate to the International Congress of the National Council of Women, interest in forming a British WI proved scanty. In 1913 Madge Watt, a founder member ofa Canadian wr, came to live in England with her two sons. She was convinced that the wt was needed here, but it took two years before she persuaded the Agricultural Organisation Society of its benefits. The first British W1 meeting was held on 11 September l9I5 in the remarkably named Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogery- chwyrndrobwllllantysiliogo- gogoch (Llanfair PG), Anglesey, in Wales. That first meeting was arranged by one Colonel Staplcton--Cotton and his wife, who became the first WI president. He later confessed: "I was one of many who doubted the capacity of women to conduct even their ordinary business with success. During the last 18 months I have learned more about women than I have learned in 40 years. I see and believe that women can and will bring all classes, all denominations. all interests, all schools ofthe best thought together... It will be a reality in the not distant future. and it will be brought about by these Institutes." It is startling to consider how radical the WI seemed at the time ofthe First World War. It was viewed by many as dangerously democratic. "Meetings such as you describe." said one well-to-do lady, "would, we feel, give the lower classes a false sense of their own Phyllis Warden Hilcot, Chalfont St. Peter Bucks Federation of Women's Institutes England wit _ cadaver/e an Ewe/f") SL'} 41 The Lady. 8 to 14 April 195 gof a rative medal by Mint, bell-ringing hurches and a :0 conference at in Romsey, ; in five countries. I herselfa WI it greetings '3 broadcast. . ien's Institute een undervalued. ' ominated ren's affairs are " Iy trivialised. In ' | a force to be my; the first ' contribution to members of the If wt in Britain at Llrinhiir PG in . Anglesey in I915 information. contact ABOVE: the WI emhlr'WUv '04 New King's tin: orienteering iihe mun" . . . . y this year the Nineties requrcmck your low] energy and ion. leumwmk the Nt-\Vl takes place Birmingham, with ' _ L An exhibition. importance, which would allaspocts ofthe Wi, most undesirable." At the end of April 01'de " day at the German blockade wasfiifl'ilsc" "$21.3" taking 11014; Britain had csc'nLtingaoniiiltliiit, food supplies forJust six at the centenary weeks. The proliferating dand- County Wls became central to the, , war effort _ and the ibitors at the Royal . , youth Glamorgan organisapo." as a Whme the centennial theme was administered by the Government's Board of "Royal National Agriculture. In 1919 the i" vommm' Mm)" ' achieved independence, ,5 is holding a partly through the work 2c of Haddenliam. its new chairman1 Lady 'aft demonstrations Denman. By then there adv'mcc'" 0" 'l'5 were more than 1,000 -713576 for details). Women's Institutes, linki