Girls’ schools often pride themselves on being a progressive, innovative hub for the empowerment and education of girls across the UK. You need not look further than our very own GDST. Founded in 1872 by four pioneering women, it has stood the test of time and continues to expand and change lives. The GDST also prides itself on being ‘Girls First’, aiming to uplift girls and young women academically, emotionally, and socially. This role is more essential than ever in creating a society of young women who are instilled with the idea that they can succeed because of their gender, not in spite of it.

In the modern day and age, we are bombarded by advertising and influenced by marketing in everything we do. From watching a YouTube video, to visiting your local corner store, brands are constantly trying to sell you their products, and outcompete other potential businesses for your attention, through the positioning of items, their packaging, and the ways those are promoted in the media. Overwhelming, right?

Driving up Highway 40 in Alberta, Canada, a couple summers ago, my eyes were glued to the expanse of harsh, red dead-standing forest climbing the mountains. This would turn out to be one of the most significant forest disturbance episodes recorded in North America. hese dying red pine trees were due to the ongoing outbreak of the Mountain Pine Beetle (dendroctonus ponderosae, or MPB).

In the 1930s, many key things were happening; women had just won the right to vote, and the Great Depression had just hit, for example. Despite the achievements of women and the opportunities they had created, it didn’t largely change the way they were viewed. In Of Mice and Men, the language the characters use to describe women is very oppressive. Women are only seen as possessions, seductresses, or caretakers of men. They often talk about how they go to the whorehouse for pleasure and a break from reality.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a border as “the line separating two countries, administrative divisions or areas”. However, borders have come to mean different things to different people; for some, they offer protection; to others, they separate. For a border to be relevant, it needs to be viewed as legitimate by all parties involved – some borders are agreed and negotiated, others are imposed.