Twenty women have embarked on the six-month intensive programme run by the Muslim Council of Britain, (MCB) aimed at equipping them for leadership positions. Apart from one-to-one mentoring, the women will visit “best-practice mosques” and be given media and public speaking training. A national conference in Manchester on the future of mosques, organised by the MCB, will include a session on the participation of women on boards of trustees and other bodies running places of worship and community programmes. Few mosques in the UK have women on their trustee or management boards, and men outnumber women on all charity trustee boards by two to one, according to the Charity Commission. The MCB said: “This lack of diversity is unacceptable and it is essential for the management boards of mosques and third sector organisations to reflect the communities that they serve, in order to function effectively.”
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