Heidi Atkins

Images from the SU Archives “Did you know there used to be a Women’s Handbook?” I’ve been asking all of my friends this for the last few months, and everyone has said no. I’d heard about it during an interview, and been told it was a book the SU published to help women when they came to Cambridge, that they would stick it in your pidge on your first day here. But online, there is no record. I expected a few funny cartoons and some writing on supervisors that perhaps ran for half a decade at most.

Heidi Atkins speaks to Gender Agenda zine officers Madeleine Baber and Elise Batchelor to discuss their revival of the zine and the difficulty of building a feminist space in Cambridge Stuck to the back of a door the women’s toilet of a Cambridge pub was a small sticker advertising ‘Cambridge’s feminist publication’, Gender Agenda.

Varsity is the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge, established in its current form in 1947. In order to maintain our editorial independence, our print newspaper and news website receives no funding from the University of Cambridge or its constituent Colleges. We are therefore almost entirely reliant on advertising for funding and we expect to have a tough few months and years ahead.