FiLiA Young Women attend Sussex Freshers' Fair

By Lily and Amy

In late September, two members of our Young Women’s Volunteer Group, Amy and Lily, went to the Sussex University Freshers’ Fair on behalf of FiLiA. Here, they share what the experience was like, and what they learned from it.

We felt very welcomed by Sussex University and (the Student Union organisers), thank you for having us!

If you haven’t been to a Freshers’ Fair before, they are events held by universities for their new students to gain awareness of university societies, local organisations and opportunities ‒ as well as to collect merchandise and free food, of course. In this case, we were invited to an event with other external organisations and businesses. We arrived early to set up our stall, with lots of leaflets, postcards, sweets and a prompt for the students to respond to: ‘What are the biggest problems young women face in 2025?’ We invited young women ‒ and a few keen men ‒ to respond on post-it notes, and following the event we went through their answers to share with you all and to inform our future work with young women.

By the end of the day, we’d collected over 170 post-its. We were struck by the reactions we saw among the young women we asked to contribute. Some initially appeared taken aback to be asked, others immediately declared they knew what they wanted to say, or that they were worried their answer had already been contributed by another woman. We encouraged them to share their views regardless, or to add a ‘+1’ to an existing post-it note that they agreed with. When Lily looked through the post-its afterwards, she sorted them into themes to help our analysis.

The most common answers, with over 50 responses, related to safety concerns. A particular concern for many young women was spiking, where drugs or alcohol are put into a person’s drink to render them unconscious or vulnerable. Drink spiking statistics are under-reported, but figures increase slightly during freshers’ week, which may suggest why this was so pressing for them (Crimestoppers Warning for Students September 2024). Several women shared their own or friends’ personal experiences of this with us. This category also included safety in public at night, street harassment and intimate partner violence. Women also mentioned feeling guilty over their fear or pressure to accept unwanted touching or other acts of violence. Many identified that these acts of violence are generally perpetrated by men, or they identified ‘male violence’ as a problem.

The second most common answer, with over 30 responses, was ‘men’, or variations on this theme. This was also an answer that many women responded to on seeing it from other women, often adding a ‘+1’ to an existing post-it note as well as adding their own answer. We thought this reflected a recognition of patterns of behaviour and inequality and were proud that the young women had given themselves permission to recognise these patterns.

The third category was a broad one, which Lily grouped under the heading ‘societal expectations’. Many women just wrote this phrase as their contribution. Others described pressure, such as the pressure to do things they didn’t want to do or to be a certain way. Specific references included social media pressure and beauty standards, as well as stereotypes. Women also spoke to us directly about being underestimated, including in university settings such as during lectures or seminars. Those in female-dominated courses topics spoke about feeling like they’d done what was expected of them, whereas those in more male dominated topics shared they felt expected to perform worse than their male peers.

More than 20 responses related to financial concerns, including the pay gap, period product costs and references to capitalism and classism. Women feared not being taken seriously in the workplace following their experiences of university. One young woman shared her concerns over ‘sex work’ and OnlyFans, the illusion of choice in this context, and how young women are targeted by the sex industry.

Some women used language which showed their awareness of structural inequality, with post-its reading ‘patriarchy’, ‘sexism’, ‘misogyny’, ‘equal rights’ and ‘misogynoir’. The woman who contributed this last answer correctly guessed she would be the only woman to reference this issue, though racism was brought up by others along with other forms of oppression.

Other topics, over more than 40 answers, included online safety including social media, pornography, deepfakes and influencers such as Andrew Tate; women’s health, particularly abortion rights, stigma and disinformation around menstruation and inequality in health research; beauty standards and objectification; and the increasing influence of the far right and fascism.

We were saddened that these issues are still affecting young women in 2025, but we were impressed by their awareness of the problems and their root causes. Some women said they would raise the discussion we had started in their Gender and Development course classes, which was lovely to hear. We hope the conversations we had with women inspired them as much as us, and that they continue to talk about their concerns with other young women in their lives, in order to raise consciousness and become part of the movement to address them. Even though we both came home with ‘freshers’ flu’, we look forward to holding a stall at a fair next year!