IT'S a perfect, late summer evening. The sun, low in the sky, glints through the trees, and the stone houses that border the green glow in the soft, golden light. The door of the village hall is ajar and the sound of female voices drifts out into the street.

Inside, the ladies of the WI are preparing for their monthly meeting. The chairs are set out in neat rows, the flowered tea cups are on the table and everyone is catching up on the latest gossip. It's a timeless scene of village life.

The WI has always embodied the spirit of Middle England: conservative, homely, reliable and distinctly unfashionable. Or at least it was.

When members of Rylstone and District WI shed their clothes for a charity calendar in 1999, people sat up and began to take notice. And when Tony Blair was booed and slow handclapped at the WI's annual meeting the following year, they began to wonder whether perhaps there was more to this venerable institution than making jam and singing Jerusalem.

The WI was established in Wales in 1915, aimed at encouraging women in rural areas to make jam and preserve fruit - essential for replenishing the nation's impoverished wartime larder. As the organisation grew, it began to expand its activities, offering educational opportunities and campaigning on issues as diverse as the greater availability of cervical smear tests and the introduction of GM foods.

But as women began to break free from their traditional roles as wives and mothers, the WI began to lose members. Women have greater access to education, they have their own careers, therefore they have less need and less time for the WI.

Membership has fallen by 50,000 in the last ten years to the current total of 230,000 and the organisation has struggled to recruit younger members.

With 26 members, most of them over 50, the ladies of Middleton Tyas are a fairly traditional bunch - they have the words to Jerusalem printed on the back of their programme of events - but that certainly doesn't make them obsolete. They are an integral part of village life, whether campaigning on issues such as the closure of the post office, visiting the local school to pass on their skills to the younger generation or making 1,500 metres of bunting for the Golden Jubilee.

President Daphne Carter has been a WI member for 24 years. She says: "We may be mainly older but that doesn't mean we're out of touch. We know a lot of the younger women don't have time to come along regularly

but we do get a lot of visitors and we are very involved in the community. We had a charity quiz night in the pub recently and we had 100 people there, aged from 14 to 80. Everyone knows who we are."

The village's institute is thriving - it attracted six new members in the last year alone - but all of them are "of a certain age".

"Obviously, we would like to have a few more younger members but these things go in peaks and troughs. Two years ago we had an 11-year-old and her mother. These are the kind of people we need to attract but the WI does have a certain image and it won't happen overnight," says Daphne.

But there are signs of change. Calendar Girls has certainly raised the WI's profile and in Fulham, in London, a group of 20-something women has started meeting at the White Horse, also known as the Sloaney Pony. These glamorous, young career women are a far cry from the matrons of Middle England traditionally associated with the WI but they share the same outlook. They see the organisation as an opportunity for friendship and learning new skills and as a means of being more involved in their local community.

Judi Pennington is a member of the North Yorkshire Federation of WIs executive committee, editor of the federation newsletter and president of her local WI at Farnley Estate, near Otley. She joined the WI six years ago after moving into the area. She didn't know anyone and worked away from home, and settled on the WI as a way of meeting local people.

"I was 40 and I didn't think I was old enough for the WI. I had real preconceptions but they were completely blown away as soon as I walked through the door. I had no idea that it was such a broad church. It really has got something for every woman and I certainly wasn't too young," she says.

"I've always been a man's woman, going potholing and climbing, and I didn't have a lot of close women friends. I worked in international politics which is mostly dominated by men. My area was very male and I have been staggered by the friendship and support system that there is in the WI. It's amazing."

In North Yorkshire, the age group ranges from 15 to 90 and membership is slowly increasing, attracting women from all walks of life. Its basis has always been in rural communities but Judi expects to see it moving into more urban areas and housing estates.

"The WI is changing all the time. It isn't just about little old ladies making jam and baking cakes. Of course we have little old ladies but they're usually people who joined when they were in their 20s or 30s and have remained members ever since," she says.

"We are starting to attract younger women now and we hope that in 30 or 40 years time, they will still be members and the WI will continue to develop and grow."

* For more information, visit the website at www.womens-institute.co.uk