A mum from Irlam has launched a national gender equality campaign, advocating for the rights of women and non-binary people.
Stella Sutcliffe founded the GoTitleFree campaign five years ago to encourage and support businesses, foundations, charities, and institutions to stop asking for, using and storing marital titles.
With a budget of zero pounds, Stella built her campaign to what it is today and has successfully brought inclusivity by changing the need for the mandatory status of marriage titles.
Stella started the campaign as it was something she was passionate about after she received a letter that wrongly addressed her. She said: “I started researching how I could support and encourage organisations with getting rid of the red asterisk… or removing the miss, ms, and mr box altogether..
“I felt so strongly about how my identity was misrepresented by the letter back in 2018 that I changed career from working in advertising in commercial sales to working in diversity and inclusion. I’ve surveyed over 2,000 people on the subject of titles and have delivered training and strategy work for lots of organisations, including, the post office, network rail, and the Levelling Up department of the UK government.
“Employers who have now moved away from requesting, storing and using marital status titles include John Lewis, Cadbury World, Timpson, Hello Fresh, Viking, Rightmove and Denplan.”
She also spoke about how she realised that many women who are divorced, widowed or have stayed single must get frustrated when asked if they’re a Miss or Mrs and how men never suffer this. Stella continued: “Many people assume that I must have a long-suffering husband and/or be bitterly divorced.
“I am actually divorced; however, my ex-husband was my biggest supporter when we were still a couple, and I’m pleased to say he remains one of my closest friends and advocates.”
Alongside her campaign, Stella is also the EDI Lead for WiHTL and Diversity in Retail as well as a mother to her two daughters. She said her daughters are the ones she’s really running it for, as she wants to make the world more inclusive for them.
“It’s my legacy to them.”
The English language is unique in its use of Mr and Mrs as they are abbreviations of ‘mistress’ and ‘master’. Early uses of the term ‘mistress’ or ‘Mrs’ show that they had no marital connotation at all, other languages that use titles to represent age alone.
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