THE leader of the Women's Equality Party will be coming to Kendal as part of a nationwide campaign to to establish the issues most important to women today.

Sophie Walker will be speaking at an event at Burgundys, organised by the Kendal branch of the party, on November 5.

The topic of the discussion will be 'What Do Women Want', which follows on from a campaign which saw women given postcards asking the same question 20 years ago.

Fiona Atkinson, founder of the Kendal branch of the party, said: "We are really excited for this event. Sophie is a great speaker.

"She stood in the London Mayoral election and has appeared on Radio 4's Question time as well as in articles in the national press. The local branch of the party are lively and committed and hoping to reach a wider audience in the coming months.

"This campaign aims to pick up on the post card campaign from 1996. We want to know how women's lives are different 20 years later.

"We are noticing that a lot of the issues are similar and just haven't gone away. People still need better child care options, for example. There have also been changes for the better though. Lots of young people are proud to call themselves feminists.

"The reason I got involved with the party is because I have a lot of younger friends and I have seen them trying to manage careers and have seen them facing the same problems that I had nearly 30 years ago.

"Events and campaigns like these are going on because we need to help people to know about these things."

The Women's Equality Party officially launched because after Sandi Toksvig appeared on Radio 4’s Women’s Hour in the Spring of 2015. The embryonic party she and journalist friend Catherine Meyer had planned was deluged with requests for information. By the summer of that year there were branches all over the country and more in the pipe-line.

The Kendal branch of the Women's Equality Party was founded by Fiona Atkinson and Jenny Pack, and has members from all over the Cumbria region.