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In Greater Manchester, womanhood is no longer a single story. It is a sports bar in Stockport where women’s games take priority. It is a queer venue built to fill a gap in representation. It is a group of women purposefully and sometimes defiantly, choosing not to become mothers in a culture that still expects it.
Across interviews with the owner behind the North's first female-focused sports bar, RitaRays, the founders of a new queer community space VadaVada, and women who are childfree by choice, a shared thread emerges, identity in the North is becoming something women actively build, not something they inherit; and increasingly, that building is happening in Greater Manchester.
For Becky Brown, who is opening RitaRays, a women-focussed sports bar in Stockport, the idea is simple but long overdue, women’s sport deserves a permanent, visible home. “It doesn’t always feel like a safe and welcome space… you kind of have to sit quietly in the corner.” says Becky about the need for a venue different from other sports bars.
Her frustration isn’t with individual pubs, but with a broader culture that still treats women’s sport as secondary, something to be accommodated rather than centred. RitaRays is her answer to that gap. “If there is live women’s sport on, that will always be on the main screen.” But the venue is not just about sport. It is about atmosphere, and permission.
“It’s a bar…anyone can come for a coffee, a bottle of wine, or an event.” Becky is also clear that the space is not exclusive, but intentional. “We are not only showing women’s sports… we’re open to everyone” she comments as it is important to her that the space fosters the same competitiveness and loudness of any other sports viewing venue.
What she is trying to create is something she sees as missing from many public spaces in the North, consistency. A place where women know they will always be centred, not occasionally included. “There’s so much talent on our doorstep…we’re just hoping to fill that gap in the market.”
For Kate Meyher and Leigh Palmer (bar ‘VadaVada’ founders), the motivation comes from a different kind of absence, not visibility, but belonging within visibility. Kate moved to Manchester after living in a more conservative town and says “Manchester really appealed to me because of the queer community…but I realised there was a gap for a venue that serves queer and trans people.”
Leigh describes a similar shift after working in hospitality and experimenting with queer events in a previous venue, “It became quite a safe space…it showed how even in a more unconventional place people will still come if they know their community is there.”
Their vision for VadaVada is deliberately community-first, not nightlife-first. “We want it to belong to the community…people can come and display art, poetry readings, all of these sorts of things.” But what stands out most is how explicitly they talk about protection, not just celebration. “We are a community that’s fighting for our rights at the moment…increasing hate crime, persecution.”
For them, the space is both cultural and practical, somewhere to exist without having to constantly explain or defend that existence. “Some people aren’t ready to come out straight away…they can come along, be part of the community without necessarily having to be loud and proud yet.” Leigh adds that Manchester itself makes this possible, but not complete.
“There’s a huge trans community in Manchester, but there isn’t really a space that trans people can call their own.” Here again, a community that exists scattered across Greater Manchester will have a unique home to foster it and a sense of place.
While RitaRays and VadaVada focus on fixed spaces, the childfree women interviewed for this article describe an online community that created flexible opportunities to gather in-person or virtually, to share their decision to reject motherhood as an assumed narrative.
For Antonia Duffinn, that expectation begins early. “We grew up with the belief that ‘that’s what you did’…especially as you play with dolls and prams.” But over time, the assumption shifts from playful to persistent. “It’s only when you’re getting further into your 30s that people stop saying ‘you’ll change your mind’.”
Megan Leigh says she rarely felt pressure from family, but more from society at large, “Strangers just assume you will be having kids.” and she describes the concept of the ‘biological clock’ as something that actively shapes decisions. “I can see how it makes some women rush into situations that aren’t necessarily right for them.”
Katie Barta, describes how expectations appear at life milestones. “Buying our home was a big one…people would automatically say ‘be little feet running around that house soon’, but only directed at me.”
Vanessa Ramirez’s experience adds another layer, cultural expectation and healthcare resistance. “‘You'll change your mind’ was a constant sentence I heard.” And when Vanessa sought permanent reproductive options, she says she was dismissed. “They don’t even register it in the system.” the expectation again being that women shouldn’t make a permanent decision not to conceive, while others are free to make the more impactful decision to be a mother freely.
Despite different backgrounds, all four women describe the same core idea, not wanting children does not require justification, but is often treated as something that does.
Across all interviews, the reasons for choosing not to have children are different, but the underlying theme is control over one’s life. For Antonia, it is partly health, “I’ve got long term low iron and ferritin issues and adenomyosis…I’m already running on empty most of the time.”
For Megan, it is freedom, “I need the freedom to live life the way I want to…I have one life and happiness is paramount.” And she is clear about what motherhood represents to her, “Motherhood is the hardest job in the world and it’s not a job I want.”
Vanessa frames it as identity, "I'm not giving up my life, which is mine only, to raise someone else.”, while Katie describes it as emotional realism, “I also feel like a grief of the life I know… verything would change for me.”
Across all of them, there is a consistent challenge to a myth Megan puts plainly, “The biggest myth I want to deconstruct is that childfree people are lonely.”
This sentiment couldn’t be further from the truth as the women interviewed started an online and in-person group, host regular meetups with something happening every week, and have never known the loneliness and isolation of being stuck with the emotional and physical labour of a role they were pressured into.
All three strands, RitaRays, VadaVada, and childfree communities return to the same idea, that Manchester offers possibility, but not automatic belonging.
Megan describes moving from a rural village and feeling out of place before arriving in the city. “I finally felt like I was able to be myself and meet people I am more aligned to.” And Kate and Leigh describe something similar through queer community-building. Manchester is fertile ground, but gaps still exist in representation and safety.
Becky echoes this from a different angle in sport and leisure, “People are crying out for a space like this.” Across all three projects, the solution is not abstract, it is physical. A bar. A venue. A group chat that becomes a community. A screen that finally shows the game you care about.
What connects a women’s sports bar in Stockport, a queer/trans community venue, and women choosing not to become mothers is not ideology, it is infrastructure. Who gets space. Who gets centred. Who gets assumed.
These women are not asking for permission to exist within existing structures. They are building new ones. Or as Becky puts it: “It’s a safe, welcoming space…anyone can come.” And as Kate adds: “A space where people can come together and forget about everything going on outside.”
And as Antonia says, more quietly but just as firmly, “Not everyone wants children and that’s ok.”
In Greater Manchester, that sentence is no longer a conclusion. It is the beginning of a new chapter.
VadaVada opens on 30 May and RitaRays is due to open in the summer. If you are struggling with others expectations of you, and your place as a woman, I’d advise you seek out people who are in the same boat and want the same things as you; not the comment section of social media posts.
Header image: Manchester's RitaRays and VadaVada bars take shape (Images: Leigh - VadaVada and Becky - RitaRays)
