Ref. 29380-10Despite falling membership, women's organisations such as the Women's Institute insist they still have a place in a busy modern society. SHIRLEY MATHIAS looks at the work these clubs are involved in, and their hopes for the future.

FOR 68 years they have sung Jerusalem, made prize-winning cakes, held rummage sales, staged music and drama shows, listened to challenging speakers and debated burning social issues at their hall in Dores Road.

But now the ladies of Upper Stratton Women's Institute have called it a day. They are selling their meeting place because with only 11 members they can no longer afford to put right the damage done to it by vandals.

In its heyday, when it had nearly 60 vigorous members, the yobs might have thought twice about tormenting the WI. But Upper Stratton WI's membership has aged. And it is not the only Wiltshire women's organisation that has suffered a sad decline.

The Business and Professional Women's Clubs, which once had two branches in Swindon, have disappeared. The number of Townswomen's Guilds is, according to the organisation's Wiltshire county secretary Yvonne Burt, down from eight to three.

The Anglican Mothers' Unions, thriving in other countries, battle to stay afloat in Wiltshire, as they do in towns all over Britain. At one time nearly every parish church had one.

"There are now only eight in the Swindon Deanery," said 72-year-old Jean Wheeler of St Mark's MU. She and her daughter Carol Green both belong to the branch which, she admits, is hardly flourishing.

The town's 40-year-old Soroptimist Club, the female equivalent of the men's Rotary movement, has fewer than 30 members. Age Concern fund-raiser Jacquie Sheppard said it had around 40 when she joined it six years ago.

The club, which used to have an invitation-only rule for membership, is now urging women who might be interested in joining to go along for a taster.

Even many of the small non-affiliated neighbourhood groups, to which countless young working wives and mums once flocked because they are informal and undemanding, are now faltering.

"The traditional women's club pattern appears to be dying out," said Jacquie, who admits that when she was first invited to join the Soroptimists she was not the "clubby" type.

British career women, she said, no longer feel they need to join an organisation to fight for equality with men.

"Those who have young children and are juggling the demands of work and running a home feel they don't have time to sit through a club meeting a couple of times a month."

There are also other and more active things for women, particularly younger women, to do. Gym and leisure club membership, for instance, is booming.

Vanda Tanner of Swindon women's ice hockey club the Top Cats, and Tracey Watt of Pinehurst Netball Club both report that membership is flourishing.

For some career girls the word club now means a night at a disco once a week with colleagues from work. They like men's company and feel no need to socialise in a women-only environment.

Don't forget the Calendar Girls

NATIONALLY the WIs have lost more than 58,000 members in 10 years.

But with a total of 220,000 including 4,300 in Wiltshire they are still Britain's largest and most vocal women's organisation.

Government departments have been known to quiver when the WI ladies complain on such sensitive subjects as public transport, libraries, schools, public services, litter, graffiti . . .

Trish Cole of Highworth WI, the county federation's vice-chairman, said: "We used to be looked on as a middle class middle-aged organisation. But I joined at 27 and some WIs are almost exclusively made up of younger women."

The old jam and Jerusalem image, she added, is long dead. The WIs now offer everything from crafts to debating, from art to astronomy.

And anyone who thinks they are a bunch of straitlaced tabbies should think of the Calendar Girls.

Shirley Mathias