Gentlewomen’s Club: a judgement free zone where women support one another
How the Gentlewomen’s Club empowers its members to understand what prevents women from being more supportive and encourages them to overcome their judgements.
Sabina Maria Ciofu, one of the five co-founders of the Brussels-based Gentlewomen’s Club, visualises a physical space in an old building where women can meet over coffee or for meals, work, or use the gym, as the club’s dream milestone. “I would love to see a space where women meet and go to without knowing anyone but still know that they are welcome and end up feeling at home.”
The Gentlewomen’s Club, in Sabina’s own words, is a “personal journey” that the co-founders embarked upon in “trying to be less judgemental”. Over three years ago, they came together for gatherings they labelled “The Girls Night Out” which continuously grew as friends brought others along. “We had this idea to not just do another night out, but that women could enjoy themselves in a judgement-free zone”, Sabina explains.
Over the success of the Girls’ Night Out, a year ago in 2017, the Gentlewomen’s Club was formally launched. It is the idea of the club to provide tools for meaningful relationships. The club’s website summarises the mission as “[W]e all know that women often fail to give credit to one another. We want to understand what prevents us from being more supportive and we want to learn to overcome it. The Club is looking to make women acknowledge their personal biases and to encourage non-judgmental personal and career support.” Sabina says: “Our members come together from all backgrounds: all fields and ages and quickly open up and start talking about their lives and not only work. We alternate putting together monthly gatherings between social events and more serious workshops with coaches, trainers and psychologists, for example.”
“The Club is looking to make women acknowledge their personal biases and to encourage non-judgmental personal and career support.”
At first, she expands, many women tended to work in the “EU bubble” as the founders Kayla D’Angelo, a young professional in the NGO world and a part-time photographer, Ania Helseth, a government affairs professional, Ozlem Fidanboylu, a lawyer, and Stephanie Schretlen, a business development professional, but “we were able to go beyond that through engaging with women on social media. Today, our membership is very varied and we have Europeans and international women, Belgians, musicians, engineers and lots of other professions in our midst.”
When talking about the why behind the club, Sabina slows her usually very fast talking speed down a little as if reflecting and reminiscing about how far she herself has come on the personal journey she outlined in the beginning of our conversation. She tells me that “not judging others comes from being well with who you yourself are” and that this is at the core of the club’s work and vision. In an exercise that the members once did, not one women wrote down “myself” to the answer who or what they love in life, and Sabina sees that as very telling. “Recently, someone dear shared a quote with me that said ‘Work hard and be nice to people’, which I think sums up well what we are doing here — we try to do all the good we can within and outside the Club.”
“Not judging others comes from being well with who you yourself are”
Turning envy into admiration
The club is fostering the values of being non-judgemental, non-competitive but instead fostering teamwork, learning to turn envy into admiration and being open. It wants to host events for women to become kinder to each other, both within the club and in their own personal and professional circles. “Our members share a lot more about themselves because they know that they can open up in our club. By judging less, you are also less afraid of judgement.” Members learn techniques, for example, that help them to be less judgemental in their everyday life and to uplift other women. Sabina explains how she now checks in with herself regularly building on something she learnt in a brunch workshop: “I pause 5 to 7 seconds before I might interrupt a conversation or address an issue. I ask myself: ‘Do I need to listen rather than speak?’ and build on that reflection.” Members also have little tasks to do as homework like complimenting five (women) strangers and sharing back with the club about how they feel. “They tell us how this colleague smiled at them for the first time in years, how this lady in the gym was so flattered and blushed, how an old lady in the supermarket replied: young women nowadays are much wiser than we were.”
Hubs in Brussels, Bucharest and London
The Gentlewomen’s Club was founded in Brussels and holds one event per month, but since January 2018 also has a hub in Bucharest and recently expanded to London. “In Brussels we have over 170 members and in Bucharest we have a great team who put on nearly one event every week — which is a lot given that we all volunteer!” The London hub launched on 8 March, International Women’s Day. Building on this growth, the club’s co-founders have been working on putting together a structure to help women who are interested to build a hub in their own city to get started.
“We are increasingly trying to empower our members to come up with their own ideas for events or programmes that address their needs. Recently, for example, at the initiative of one of our Brussels members, Vanessa, we had an event with horses on ‘Equine-assisted personal growth’ which was amazing. We did exercises with animals to learn about ourselves — our energy, about being mindful and focussing — in order to transmit the right messages that the horses were able to pick up on. It was very powerful.” Reading Sabina’s account on the Gentlewomen’s Club blog is fascinating: “Our different personalities came out immediately. The tough ones in the group, the warm ones, the daring, the shy. It was fascinating. Pretty much like the horses knew us better than we knew ourselves.”
Other activities that the club organises include various charity events like the Relay for Life on 2 June to fundraise for the fight against cancer, movie nights, and “Girls Night In” with different speakers on topics such as “influencing who you were raised and told to be” to understand one’s self-motivation.
Wanting to work on your personal growth is all the motivation to join
“If you are motivated and recognise that you are part of the problem in judging others, that is all that you need to join”
Everyone can become a member. “If you are motivated and recognise that you are part of the problem in judging others, that is all that you need to join”, Sabina explains. Members need to want to work on themselves, their personal growth and want to change something about how they build their relationships. In the future, the co-founders are looking to extend this invitation to men too.
In addition, Sabina hopes for the club to continue to grow both in Brussels and through hubs in other cities. “I want the club to be a success story and for our members to achieve their goals of living a fulfilled, non-judgemental life. If that means taking one step at a time, that’s what will happen. But we have such good feedback and so many interested women that we have been approached to build hubs in Dublin and Barcelona and will do so this year.” For Brussels, she imagines a physical space to bring women together, allow them to feel like home and know that they are welcome — and not judged.
Learn more about the Gentlewomen’s Club here
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