This page lists the speakers and workshop facilitators at Feminism in London 2009.
Beatrix Campbell
Beatrix Campbell is an award winning author, journalist, broadcaster and playwright who focuses on politics, class and gender. In September 2008 she was appointed as a commissioner to the Board of the Women’s National Commission (WNC).
Beatrix was a keynote speaker in the opening session.
Susie Orbach
Susie Orbach is a psychoanalyst, writer and activist. Her interests centre on gender, the body, psychoanalysis and the public sphere.
In 1976 she co-founded The Women’s Therapy Centre and in 1981 The Women’s Therapy Centre Institute, a training institute in New York. She’s written extensively including Fat is a Feminist Issue, Hunger Strike, The Impossibility of Sex and Bodies which was published in January this year. There are as well two collections of Guardian columns called What’s Really Going on Here and Towards Emotional Literacy.
Susie is a co-founder of Antidote (working for emotional literacy) and Psychotherapists for Social Responsibility. She is convenor of www.any-body.org (campaigning for body diversity) and is chair of The Relational School. She has been a consultant to the World Bank, Unilever and the NHS.
She is a Visiting Scholar at The New School, New York, and was Visiting Professor at the LSE from 1998 – 2008.
Susie was a keynote speaker in the opening session.
Hannana Siddiqui
Hannana Siddiqui is a Joint Co-ordinator for Southall Black Sisters. Prior to this, she has worked in other voluntary and statutory agencies, as well as campaigned, on issues concerning race, gender and human rights. She has been working in this field for 25 years. In July 2008, she attended the CEDAW hearings as an NGO representative on the behalf of Southall Black Sisters.
Southall Black Sisters (SBS) is a leading and pioneering multi-award winning black women’s organisation founded in 1979. It runs a resource centre providing information, advice, advocacy, counselling and support to women and children experiencing domestic violence. It specialises in the need of South Asian women, but also helps women from many other minority communities, including African-Caribbean women. We deal with over 2500 cases and enquiries per year from all over the country. We also undertake educational, development, research, policy and campaigning work on violence against black women. In 1992, SBS successfully campaigned to free Kiranjit Ahluwalia, who killed her husband after 10 years of domestic violence. She was released from life imprisonment when the conviction for murder was overturned, reforming the law on provocation. In 1999, SBS also successfully helped to introduce reform on domestic violence and immigration law. SBS is now leading a campaign and policy work to reform the law on domestic violence and no recourse to public funds. In 2007, SBS helped Lord Lester introduce the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act, and in 2008, SBS won a landmark victory against Ealing Council clarifying the law and policies on race equality and social cohesion in favour of funding specialist services for black and minority women experiencing domestic violence.
Hannana was a keynote speaker in the closing session.
Mawete vo Teka Sala
Mawete Vo Teka Sala has over 30 years experience as a political activist, organizer and human and gender rights campaigner. A student activist in the Angolan pro independence nationalist movement in the early seventies, she went on to the national executive committee of the first union of secondary school students PRO-AESL.
She was a cadre in the Angolan pro-independence movement and was active in the revolutionary armed resistance which defeated the Portuguese colonialists in the national liberation war.
She lived in Portugal for 4 years where she worked as a community activist and journalist.
Mawete has been involved in the Angolan peace movement, bringing attention to grassroots voices. Campaigning for the inclusion of civil society voices in conflict resolution, she played a prominent role in the global effort to advocate for a settlement to end the civil war. In 1990, she was appointed UK representative of the Angolan Civic Association (ACA), the first independent civil society association to emerge in Angola since 1976.
She was the chairperson of the Afrikan Liberation Support Campaign (ALISC), a board member of the Jubilee 2000 Africa Campaign against developing countries external debt, and she is the chairperson and co-founder of Moyo wa Taifa (Pan Afrikan Women’s Solidarity Network).
Mawete was a keynote speaker in the closing session.
Finn Mackay
Finn Mackay is a Radical Lesbian Feminist and has been active in the women’s liberation movement for over 15 years. Inspired by Greenham Common she spent nearly two years in her teens living at a Women’s Peace Camp outside an American military spy base in Yorkshire. Leaving to return to education and a degree in Women’s Studies. Finn then became more involved in activism tackling violence against women.
Her professional background is in youth work and education, most recently she spent five years in a London Borough education authority setting up and managing anti-bullying work and domestic abuse prevention education in schools.
Finn founded the London Feminist Network in 2004, which revived the Reclaim the Night march in London. She is also Co-Founder of the Feminist Coalition Against Prostitution (FCAP) and regularly writes and speaks on this issue. Finn has recently given up her day job to pursue a PhD, researching Reclaim The Night! She hopes to have even more time for activism and to get out of London more often.
Finn chaired the “What’s wrong with prostitution?” panel and was a keynote speaker in the closing session.
Kate Smurthwaite
Kate Smurthwaite has been performing comedy and arguing about politics since 2004 and has been featured on BBC One TV, BBC Radio Four, BBC Radio Five, Sky TV and many other stations. She has taken three solo shows to the Edinburgh Fringe and performed at the Glasgow, Brighton, Newbury and Bury St Edmunds Comedy Festivals as well as in France, Italy, Switzerland and across the US. She features in a forthcoming pilot for Channel Four and Comedy Central US. She is the resident compere at Soho Comedy Club in central London and the host of The Comedy Manifesto, Britain’s most popular live topical panel show.
“A powerhouse of observational wit” The Spectator
“Comedy that cuts through the crap” **** ThreeWeeks
“Reminiscent of an excitable, slightly irresponsible head girl luring impressionable fourth formers into some illicit fun. You’d have to be made of granite not to warm to her” **** National Student
“Spectacular … brilliant humour” **** Edinburgh Guide
Read her blog at: http://cruellablog.blogspot.com/
Kate was the compere for the day and the cabaret evening.
Shahida Choudhry
Shahida Choudhry is from the Women’s Networking Hub in Birmingham and is part of Million Women Rise.
Shahida was on the Racism and Sexism panel.
Akima Thomas
Akima is a psychotherapist with a background in nursing and social work. Akima is the Clinical Director of Women and Girls Network (WGN), which is a holistic therapeutic service for women and girls who have experienced any form of gendered violence, providing an integrated approach and offering healing for mind, body and spirit.
“Fundamental to my professional life is the commitment to fight violence against women. My professional intention and purpose is to offer women support and a means of re-empowerment to restore control and balance in their lives. I work therapeutically from a gynocentric perspective working holistically with women on their journey from survivor to thriver.”
Akima was on the Racism and Sexism panel.
Femi Otitoju
Femi Otitoju, is the founder and Training Director of Challenge Consultancy. She also defines herself as a feminist, activist and long term campaigner on women’s rights. One of the founder members of the first UK Black Lesbian groups, Femi works to bring a black perspective to wider campaigns in areas such as mental health, reproductive rights and public service provision in general.
Over the past twenty six years Femi has assisted a great many organisations implement their equality and diversity strategies through the design and delivery of bespoke training programmes, policy and strategy development. She also writes and produces training videos for general distribution and is the writer and presenter of the widely used Video Arts titles Fair’s Fair, and Talk to Me.
Femi is also the author of Same Difference, an e-learning Diversity Solution currently utilised by a diverse range of organisations such as The Department For International Development and the UK Identity and Passport Service.
Her unique style is enhanced by two years as stand up comedian on the London comedy circuit.
Femi chaired the Racism and Sexism panel.
Yasmin Rehman
Yasmin is a working mother of two. She has worked on violence against women issues for more than twenty years. Yasmin’s passion to make a difference and fight for what she believes in was ignited by her politically active father and feminist, Muslim mother.
Yasmin was born in the south-east of England and raised in the north-east of England. The eldest of five girls and one son as well as growing up as part of only of two Black families in a mining village in the north-east during the turbulent 70’s and 80s has helped shape the woman she is today.
Add to this the cultural dimensions of her origins, an arranged marriage, years of domestic violence, escape, single parenthood, and building a future for herself and her children. Challenging male domination within family and beyond, forging her own path despite the ostracism and isolation that would be serve as her reward from the ‘community’. And then the terror of the post 9/11 world that has delivered a more up to date, sophisticated set of challenges and a whole new set of questions about identity and belonging.
Yasmin as a Black woman, and like all women, has her story to share. She wonders “who speaks for me? Who am I? Where do I belong? Will I ever belong?”
In her role as Director of Partnerships and Diversity with the Metropolitan Police Service, Yasmin had strategic lead for Domestic Violence (DV), Violence against Women (VAW), Hate Crime and Honour based Violence (HBV). She was the Deputy Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) lead for Honour based Violence. She has also worked on a number of international projects with agencies in Sweden, USA, Canada, South Africa, India, Pakistan and most recently the United Arab Emirates.
Yasmin is currently Chair of the Board of Trustees of Domestic Violence Intervention Project (DVIP), a member of Women Against Fundamentalisms (WAF) and a trustee of Searchlight Educational Trust (SET).
Yasmin was on the Racism and Sexism panel.
Ego Ahaiwe
Ego Ahaiwe is the Young Women’s Development Worker for the Lambeth Women’s Project, (Stockwell), which has been a life line for women since 1979. She has also worked on a voluntary basis there for the past 10 years and continues to campaign on behalf of the organization for a lease for the building and for adequate funding. She also campaigns for the maintenance and development of services and local policies that promote equality and the social advancement of women and above all for recognition of the need for women-only services.
She is a Trustee for the Clapham Film Unit (Brink of Change). She has over the past 10 years helped to develop community arts, focusing on music e.g. Girls Rock! UK, craft, film (Journey of a Bronze Woman, short film) and photography and archiving, for women and young people in the Lambeth area. Current projects includes, Remembering Olive Collective (Founder Member) and The Black Women’s Movement (The Black Cultural Archives) an Oral history project.
Ego is of Nigerian heritage, was born in 1974 in London, and currently lives in Camberwell. Ego was on the Racism and Sexism panel.
Denise Marshall
Denise Marshall OBE is the Chief Exectutive of Eaves Housing for Women and runs the POPPY Project, The Lilith Project, Eaves Women’s Aid, The Amina Scheme. Denise has twenty years experience of working in the voluntary sector, including positions as Director of Hackney Women’s Aid and locum manager at Camden Women’s Aid. She was a founder worker of Stonewall Housing Association, a project for young lesbians and gay men. Denise has worked extensively with single homeless women and ex-offenders.
Eaves is a feminist charity working with women who have experienced violence. Since joining the organisation as Chief Executive in January 2000, Denise has doubled its size and extended the remit of its work considerably with the introduction of multiple new projects. Denise holds a range of advisory posts in the field of violence against women prevention. Eaves Housing provides Domestic Violence refuge provision. The Lilith Project is a second tier organisation focusing upon prevention of violence against women. The Amina Scheme provides peer-to-peer support for women who have experienced sexual violence. The pioneering POPPY Project works on issues around prostitution and trafficking, and houses the UK’s first, largest and only statutorily-funded service for women trafficked into prostitution.
Denise was on the What’s wrong with prostition panel.
Rebecca Mott
Rebecca Mott is a writer, and also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, rape and prostitution. She uses her writing, both poetry and prose, to show the reality of living inside male sexual violence and the after-effects of trauma.
She began a blog in January 2008 as a response to the terrible murders of prostituted women in Ipswich, which stirred up her memories of the violence that is commonplace in the sex trade. It was sparked by her knowledge that many prostituted women and girls live in extreme violence and are often murdered, and it goes unnoticed.
She writes to be a voice of an exited prostituted woman who is able to remember and know that the sex trade is an abuse of the human rights of prostituted women and girls.
Read her blog: http://rmott62.wordpress.com/
Rebecca was on the What’s wrong with prostition panel.
Anna Travers
Anna Travers was born in Cyprus into a military family – her father was an RAF policeman. He retired from the armed services when Anna was 16 and she found it hard fitting into life in civvy street, after only having known life on a forces base where everyone knew each other and had status and a sense of belonging.
When she was 17, she was housed in a young women’s hostel in a “red light area”. While living there she met a man who groomed her into prostitution. She remained in that way of life for 13 years, during which time she was left for dead a couple of times and was beaten regularly. She was always verbally abused but found a way to blank it all out. The lifestyle came to seem normal to her and she lived it very much in denial.
She retired ten years ago and since then she has campaigned and spoken openly about the effects of a life of prostitution on a person and on the comminity. This work led on to her taking over the running of Mothers Against Violence after the murder of Pat Regan. She is involved in this work because her own children are suffering as a result of her past and her son is caught up in a vicious circle of gang culture. She feels that her past and the life she has led have resulted in his choices and his low sense of self esteem, which keep him where he is.
“These are things that as a young woman I never saw coming when I was living that life. Because of my past, I am suffering now from ill health and low self esteem and low self worth and I don’t honestly know what it will take to change it.”
http://www.geocities.com/anna_maria12970/payingforitindex.html
Anna was on the What’s wrong with prostition panel.
Lisa-Marie Taylor
Lisa-Marie Taylor was a single mum to her son Sammy for his first 8 years. She had only 10 weeks off after Sammy was born before returning to full-time work, popping home between meetings to breastfeed her new baby. She has a degree in human behavioural genetics and has a great interest in many feminist issues. She now lives with her partner in a polyamorous relationship in the countryside and is enjoying home-educating her son, while still working full-time. Lisa-Marie is an enthusiastic member of the London Feminist Network’s book group.
Lisa-Marie chaired the Poverty and motherhood: How society undervalues women’s work panel.
Abi Moore
Abi Moore is a freelance TV Producer / Editor, who was filming for CNN two years ago, making a film about a nobel prize winning chemist, Naomi Halas. As Abi on her return to London, was bombarded with blanket news coverage of Paris Hilton being released from prison, her campaign PinkStinks – the campaign for real role models was born.
Abi and her twin sister Emma set out to highlight and challenge the insidious ‘culture of pink’, which is surrounding our girls. Abi has two sons in contrast to her sister’s two daughters.
Abi and Emma were the winners of the Women Creating Change category of the Sheila McKechnie Foundation Campaigner Awards 2009.
Abi spoke on the Poverty and motherhood: How society undervalues women’s work panel.
Sue Cohen
Sue Cohen is a director of the Single Parent’s Action Network and as such she has long-term experience of working with women living in poverty and disadvantaged situations, supporting their participatory involvement in decision-making, policy development and research, rooted in the reality of women’s lives at a grassroots level. She has particular experience of working with smaller disadvantaged groups in many different parts of the UK and from many different backgrounds and cultures, including single parents, women with experience of domestic abuse, young mothers, and refugees and asylum seekers, facing both specific and common circumstances.
She has coordinated a range of European projects including the European Network of One Parent Families. For many years she has worked to address the high numbers of female-led families in deeply embedded poverty and to link child poverty with women’s poverty. She brings experience of working with groups of women facing multiple barriers to socio-economic inclusion, reflecting the intersection of gender, ethnicity and class in the inequality and discrimination that they face.
Sue was on the Poverty and motherhood: How society undervalues women’s work panel and spoke on a theme of Single Parent Motherhood: Survival, Resistance and Emancipation.
Ali Edney
Ali Edney catches up with her emails early in the morning when her youngest son is still asleep next to her. She was born in Camberwell and attended an all girls school followed by an all boys school. Her mother paid for her first membership of the Fawcett Society when she was 18. She studied art at Chelsea and then Harrow colleges and later worked long hours as a PR, a Deputy Editor and then as a freelance stylist. She was also a volunteer PR and co-ordinator for the South London Fawcett Group and never had time or money to consider motherhood…
Her first son was born in her late thirties and she went back to work after 11 weeks and has continued to juggle freelance work alongside taking care of her children. Matilda, her five year old (with Ali in the photo), asked Ali the other day what she would do if she was not a mummy…
Ali was on the Poverty and motherhood: How society undervalues women’s work panel.
Marai Larasi
Marai Larasi is the new director of Imkaan, a National second tier organisation that supports and advocates for Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and Refugee (BAMER) services for BAMER women and children experiencing violence and abuse. She has worked in the violence against women field for over 12 years. She has delivered frontline refuge services, facilitated support groups, delivered training and managed direct services.
For the past 7 years Marai has been responsible for the strategic development of the nia project as Chief Executive. She has worked on ensuring that the project remains a strong, committed feminist organisation, while rising to meet (and predicting) emerging expectations around everything from service delivery and quality to management systems and new technologies.
Marai is involved in a range of partnerships, boards and committees that enable her to contribute to policy and best practice on a wider basis. Current positions include: Chair of the LB Hackney Multi-Agency Domestic Violence Forum and Vice-Chair of Women’s Aid Federation, England.
Marai is a committed feminist who believes in creating change through education, awareness-raising and continued and consistent challenging of oppression and inequality.
Marai led the No recourse to public funds workshop.
Claudia da Silva
Claudia da Silva of The London Centre for Personal Safety (LCPS) is a feminist self-defence trainer with many years experience.
LCPS provide gender-aware and holistic training to a wide range of individuals and groups, including women and girls, school children, frontline staff, community groups, organisations for the elderly and people with physical and learning disabilities. They run personal safety and self defence classes, provide consultancy services to organisations around issues of personal and community safety, provide advice, information and support, and initiate campaigns that work to end violence against women.
Claudia led the Feminist self defence workshop.
Rebecca Mordan
Rebecca Mordan, artistic director at Scary Little Girls, is an actor, compere and presenter who has conducted media and public speaking for corporations internationally as well as campaigning groups with challenging but vital issues to communicate such as CND, Abortion Rights and leading british feminist groups.
Rebecca led the Media training with camera workshop.
Laura Colclough
Laura Colclough has worked as a Youth Outreach Worker for Rape Crisis (Wycombe, Chiltern and South Bucks) for three years. She facilitates discussions in schools on sexual violence, gender, sexualisation of culture and pornography. Laura is also a counsellor and has interests in power and the person centred approach. She takes a critical stance on mental health and psychiatry and believes emotional distress should not be medicalised.
Laura facilitated the Raising children in the age of porn workshop.
Hilary McCollum
Hilary McCollum is a sexual abuse survivor and feminist activist who has worked for twenty years to improve responses to violence against women and children, within both the statutory and voluntary sectors.
Hilary led the Rape and sexual violence workshop.
Anna van Heeswijk
Anna van Heeswijk has been working for OBJECT for over a year and a half as their Grassroots Coordinator. She started up monthly activist meetings in London in December 2008 and has encouraged and supported the development of feminist activism across the country. This has included helping to set up a regional branch in Leeds, organising National Days of Action for activists around the country who oppose the licensing of lap dancing clubs like cafes, working with student unions to oppose beauty pageants in universities, speaking at trade union and student union events and conferences about the links between objectification, the mainstreaming of the sex and porn industries and sex discrimination and violence against women, and instigating monthly national Feminist Fridays to develop grassroots activism around the issue of lads’ mags. She has organised and run protests outside the Houses of Parliament, City Hall, the Lap Dancing Association Awards Ceremony and the Spearmint Rhino Christmas Party and has spoken at political rallies and marches to object to the sexual objectification of women’s bodies and to call for an end to sexism.
Anna led the Activism Training workshop.
Alice Kentridge
Alice Kentridge is an activist and writer who is interested in powerful conversations and challenging one’s own privilege. Growing up in South Africa and then living in New York she has worked with high school and university students on projects addressing body image, homophobia and white privilege.
Alice Kentridge led the Power in bed workshop.
Anna Fisher
Anna Fisher sustained herself through the tough years of single motherhood by working her way through the shelf of feminist books in Tooting Public Library. Now that her daughter has grown up, she is enjoying her new freedom and the perspective of those years of struggle and helps to bring feminism to other women by running the London Feminist Network book group and helping to organise Feminism in London. She is a survivor of male sexual violence and has also survived a day job in a male-dominated high tech industry for nearly two decades.
She believes that feminist analysis is crucial for understanding the world today and sees the rampant destructive “success” of the aggressive capitalist and militarist system to be based on its foundation in patriarchy and that it is time for women to unite and to resist the unrestrained masculinity that threatens our own personal wellbeing and our grandchildren’s future.
Anna presented the “It’s easy out here for a pimp” anti-porn slide show.