Congratulations to Rosie and Sophie in Year 9, who represented The Mount in the annual York Civic Trust public speaking competition and placed a respectable third.
The girls spoke on the topic, “Women make up half of York’s population, but are they suitably well-represented in positions of influence in the city?”
The public speaking competition was held in the Huntingdon Room in King’s Manor by the Museum Gardens. All secondary schools in the city were invited to enter a team of two pupils, speaking for a maximum of eight minutes.
In their presentation, Rosie and Sophie noted that between the 13th and 20th centuries, only five of York’s Mayors had been women, whereas since 2001 there have been nine.
They noted that the majority of York’s secondary schools had male heads, the main exception being The Mount, which has always had a female head since its inception in 1785. They spoke about Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell (a Mountie) who is the current President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (and the first-ever female to be so), the current Dean of York, and also looked at prominent women of industry.
