The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (later renamed the Society for Promoting the Training of Women) was founded in 1859 by Jessie Boucherett (1825-1905). The Society aimed to open up new areas of employment for women and to improve standards of education and training for women. In its early years the Society was affiliated with the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (NAPSS), but it was run and largely funded by... women. Connections with NAPSS were severed finally in 1889, although formal links between the two societies had virtually ceased by 1879. The English Woman's Journal, founded the year before the Society, became its official organ. The Society kept the first register of employment for women. It founded the first printing press to employ women exclusively, the first book-keeping class for women, classes for women in shorthand, law copying and photography, and a commercial school for women, these being only a few of the areas in which the Society pioneered improvements in women's employment and training. The Society became a limited liability company in 1879. By the early part of the twentieth century, the idea of training schools and courses was well established and it was considered that the Society's work in that direction had achieved its end. The Society began to phase out its vocational training programmes in favour of providing women with interest-free loans to enable them to undertake suitable training for employment and, in 1926, the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women became the Society for Promoting the Training of Women. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, there were many loan funds set up for similar purposes to those of the Society, some being set up in memory of women who had been strong supporters of the women’s movement in the latter half of the 19th century. Some of these, such as the Caroline Ashurst Biggs Memorial Loan Fund and the Mrs Haweis Memorial Loan Fund, were entrusted to the Society early in the 20th century when family and friends found it difficult to continue administering them. Later in the 20th century, a number of other, larger bodies amalgamated with or were taken over by the Society, including the Central Employment Bureau for Women (established in 1897), the Pioneer Loan Training Fund (established in 1901) and the National Advisory Centre on Careers for Women (founded as the Women’s Employment Federation in 1933). The Society changed its name again in 2014 to 'Futures for Women' and remains active to the present day.