Community Activism – Global Feminisms Project

Community Activism

Shahjehan Aapa : 1946-2013

Shahjehan Aapa

1946-2013

Shahjehan Aapa grew up near Delhi in extreme poverty. In the late 1970s, her young daughter was burned alive because of dowry harassment, a tragedy that moved her to social activism. She helped found Shakti Shalini in 1987, an NGO that addresses gender-based violence by working both with individuals and with the broader community. The GFP staff note with sadness Shahjehan's death in September of 2013 after an accident on her way to Mahela Panchayat.
Keywords: feminist conferences, gender-based violence, community activism
Media: Transcript (English), VideoBibliographyYouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Professor Binta Abdulkarim :

Professor Binta Abdulkarim

Professor Binta Abdulkarim was born on February 10, 1956, in Anchau, a town east of Zaria, in Kaduna State, northern Nigeria. She is the Coordinator of Gender Studies, at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and is also Director of Girl Child Education there. She received her degree in Geography from Ahmadu Bello University and along with her leadership role in Gender Studies at ABU which began in 2003, she teaches courses in the Department of Geography and in the Faculty of Science Education. Her special interest in the education and well-being of women at ABU has led to her participation in ASUU (the Academic Staff Union of Universities) as financial secretary, in the National Association of University Women (Nigeria), and in the federal Anti-Corruption Unit, as the university representative who oversees sexual harassment cases at Ahmadu Bello University. She is also an active participant in the World Association of Victimology and has attended association meetings in Nairobi, Amsterdam, and Nigeria, where she contributed to discussions of the victims of weather extremes and the after-effects of war.

Keywordsacademia and women's studies, community activism, environment

Media: Name Pronunciation Audio, Transcript, Video, YouTube Video

Teresa Akintonwa :

Teresa Akintonwa

Teresa Tindle Akintonwa, born in 1976, has been an Educator for over 25 years with extensive experience in Instruction and Corporate Training. Since becoming a Long Hauler after her initial covid infection in February 2020 she founded the Black Covid-19 Survivors Alliance  which was first an online Patient-support group. It has since evolved into  activism and advocacy aimed at helping African-Americans overcome the misinformation and social stigma of CoVid and Medical Research involvement. As President of Black CoVid Survivors Alliance she now collaborates with various organizations to increase Health Equity through Health Coaching, research participant recruitment, and DEI advisement to Research organizations.

Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, community activism, gender and health, racial identity

Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi :

Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi

Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi was born in 1971 in Ilorin, Kwara State Nigeria. Akiyode-Afolabi studied law at the Obafemi Awolowo University. She received her LLM from the Notre Dame School of Law in the US and a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the University of London where she specialized in women’s peace and security studies. In 2002, she established the Women Advocates Research and Documentation Center (WARDC), a not-for-profit focused on maternal and reproductive health advocacy, gender-based violence, and social justice. She also teaches International Humanitarian Law at the University of Lagos. Akiyoda-Afolabi organized grassroot networks connecting women in Nigeria. Such networks have been established in colleges across Nigeria. Read #Womanifesto: What Nigerian Women Want, an important document in Nigerian women’s movement efforts that Akiyode-Afolabi collaborated on, here.

Keywordsacademia and women's studies, community activism, environment

Media: Name Pronunciation Audio, Transcript, Video, YouTube Video

Grace Lee Boggs : 1915-2015

Grace Lee Boggs

1915-2015

Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015) was an activist and writer. A daughter of Chinese immigrants, she moved to Detroit and worked in grassroots projects together with her partner, James Boggs. They founded Detroit Summer, an intergenerational multicultural youth movement, and wrote in the Michigan Citizen newspaper. She published her autobiography, Living for Change, and among others, received the distinguished Alumna Award from Barnard College, the Chinese American Pioneers Award from the Organization of Chinese Americans, and a lifetime achievement award from the Anti-Defamation League. A plaque in her honor is at the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, NY. The GFP staff were saddened by Grace's death in 2015. Read the NYT obituary to learn more about her remarkable life, spanning a full century, as a human rights activist.
Keywords: gender and health, community activism, education, intersectionality, politics and the law
Media: Transcript (English), VideoBibliographyYouTube VideoName Pronunciation Audio

Susana Chavez Alvarado :

Susana Chavez Alvarado

Susana Chavez Alvarado, born in 1959, has a master’s in Public Health from Cayetano Heredia University. She is an obstetrician graduated from the National University of San Marcos and a specialist in sexual and reproductive health public policy. Susana is a founder, member, President, and Executive director of Promsex, a non-profit organization with a focus on sexual and reproductive rights that reflects a dignity, justice, and equity approach. She is also an executive secretary of the Latin American Consortium against Unsafe Abortion (Consorcio Latinoamericano contra el Aborto Inseguro, CLACAI). She has significant experience in the development of programming and scholarship around sexual and reproductive health and gendered violence. Along with her level of expertise in the field of sexual and reproductive health, Chavez has a particular interest in helping adolescent and child mothers navigate pregnancy. Her work with these adolescent and child mothers includes advocating for abortion rights. Susana is a widely published scholar in the field of Women and Politics Research, Human Rights, and Health Policymaking, collaborating with other researchers in various studies. She has authored, co-authored, and edited several books, including Life Histories of Women Who Experienced An Abortion Because Of Sexual Violence (2015), Stories To Avoid Forgetting: Violence In Relation To Adolescents’ Maternal Mortality, a qualitative study in Peru 2012-2014 (2015), Border spaces: Encounters between social services and health needs of women in La Pampa (2017), and Perceptions About Sexual And Reproductive Rights In Adolescents (2007), among others. Susana has published several studies in academic journals. She has also been an instructor of Health Public Policy with the Institute for Citizenship and Democracy (Instituto Ciudadanía y Democracia).

Keywords: community activism, reproductive rights

Media: Transcript (Spanish, English), Video, YouTube Video (Spanish, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio

JD Davids :

JD Davids

JD Davids, born in 1967, is a US-based health justice and communications strategist working with national networks of disabled and chronically ill people. He co-founded Strategies for High Impact and its Network for Long COVID Justice in 2021. Davids has been an external expert advisor to the NIH, CDC, and local health departments, and has served as a strategist and organizer with many pivotal groups, including ACT UP Philadelphia, AVAC, the Coalition for a National HIV/AIDS Strategy, Health GAP, the Health Not Prisons Collective, the HIV Prevention Justice Alliance, Positive Women’s Network – USA and the U.S. Caucus of People Living with HIV. As a queer and trans person living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS), Long COVID and other complex chronic conditions, he writes and hosts conversations for The Cranky Queer Guide to Chronic Illness (@TheCrankyQueer), sits on the board of #MEAction and is a contributing member of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, which released the first comprehensive study on Long COVID. 

Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, community activism, disability rights, gender and health, international rights

Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Duan Jiling :

Duan Jiling

Duan Jiling was born in 1984 in Hubei, China. She holds an MA in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from Xiamen University, and two BAs in Chinese and English Language and Literature from Huazhong University of Science & Technology. Duan is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Gender Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research interests include transnational feminisms, feminist politics, and gender and media. Before coming to study in the US, she worked for an NGO serving women migrant workers in the south of China, and a women's media in Beijing as a senior editor and journalist, and has been participating in both the feminist and labor activism communities in China.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, intersectionality, community activism, media
Media: Transcript (English, Mandarin), Video, YouTube Video (Mandarin, English Subtitles)

Josephine Effah-Chukwuma :

Josephine Effah-Chukwuma

Josephine Effah-Chukwuma, born in Lagos in 1966, is a specialist in gender and development and a human rights advocate. She received her B.A. in English, and her M.A. in development studies with a special focus on women’s issues, from the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, the Netherlands. She worked for a few years for the Constitutional Rights Project (CRP), and then in 1999 established Project Alert on Violence Against Women, a not-for-profit that addresses gender-informed abuses The Project provides counseling, advocacy, and temporary shelter for abused persons. The organization opened the first shelter for abused/assaulted women and girls in Nigeria in 2001.

Keywords: community activism, gender-based violence, reform of domestic/family roles, environment, feminist conferences

Media: Name Pronunciation Audio, Transcript, Video, YouTube Video

Jarjum Ete :

Jarjum Ete

Jarjum Ete, born in 1963, belongs to the Galo tribe and is the Chairperson of the Arunachal Pradesh State Commission on Women which discusses women's participation in panchayats, customary laws, need for a state women's commission and anti-liquor laws. She has very strong views on legalisation of prostitution.
Keywords: gender and health, community activism, gender-based violence, sex work, intersectionality, politics and the law
Media: Transcript (English), VideoBibliographyYouTube VideoName Pronunciation Audio

Barbara Hoyer :

Barbara Hoyer

Barbara Hoyer, born 1955, MA in German Studies and Geography (Magistra thesis on lesbian literature in the 1970s). After her studies, she worked in the women's bookstore Labrys in Berlin (1982-1989). From 1990-1998 was she part of the organisational team of BEGiNE -Treffpunkt und Kultur für Frauen e.V., responsible for event organisation, fundraising, and accounting. Since 1975 she has been active in the women's and lesbian movement, first in various women's groups (including LAZ -Lesbian Action Centre Berlin -around 1980), then in the above-mentioned women's projects). Since 2004 she has been project manager of the BEGiNE.

Keywords: media, academia and women's studies, community activism, art/writing as activism, LGBTQ rights

Media: Transcript (English, German), Video, YouTube Video (German, English), Name Pronunciation Audio

Lourdes Huanca Atencio :

Lourdes Huanca Atencio

Lourdes Huanca Atencio, born in 1951, is founder and president of the National Federation of Female Peasants, Artisans, Indigenous, Native and Salaried Workers of Peru (FENMUCARINAP). The organization was founded in 2006 with the purpose of defending and fighting for the rights of women in Perú. Rooted in an ancestral cosmovisión (or worldview) of their indigenous communities, a central struggle has been the fight for their subsistence, in maintaining land, water and seed sovereignty. The main goals include: (1) control and defense of the territory of the female body, which is often violated; (2) the political, economic, social and cultural empowerment of women who sustain society, yet whose work and contributions are not recognized; (3) defending the sovereignty of indigenous women’s subsistence, which is land, water and seeds, because a campesina (or rural woman) without those things has no choice but to move to city where she then becomes extremely impoverished.  Lourdes is one of five women promoters of human rights who were recognized by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights in Perú during a ceremony held in the framework of the commemoration of International Women's Day in March 2020. She has also participated in numerous UN initiatives (e.g., as a regular participant in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and is also a member of the Fund for the Development of Indigenous People of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC).

Keywords: community activism, rural women and land reform

Media: Transcript (Spanish, English), Video, YouTube Video (Spanish, English Subtitles) Name Pronunciation Audio

Interviewee Photo Credit

By theverb.org. https://www.flickr.com/photos/71015487@N03/7382740578/in/photolist-cfotyE. Creative Commons. Accessed 2 February, 2021.

 

Huang Xueqin :

Huang Xueqin

Huang Xueqin was born in 1988 in Shaoguang, Gangdong province. She graduated from Jinan University. She used to work as a journalist for a national news agency and progressive newspaper. She is freelancing now, writing for Southern Metropolis Weekly, The Livings, The Initium Media and NGOCN. Her reporting focuses on democracy development, civil society and the rights of disadvantaged groups in China. She published a report on workplace sexual harassment of Chinese female journalists in 2017, which ignited and promoted #Metoo movement in China. She is dedicated to women's rights and advocacy for anti-sexual harassment law. In 2019 she was jailed for several months for her reporting on Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.
Keywords: gender-based violence, media, politics and the law, community activism
Media: Transcript (English, Mandarin) 

Ngozi Iwere :

Ngozi Iwere

Ngozi Iwere, born in 1956, has pursued work in language teaching, journalism and communications, but describes herself as primarily an activist. Through her contributions to the United Nations Expert Strategy Meeting on HIV/AIDS and Gender preparatory to the UN General Assembly on HIV/AIDS, the Expert Strategy Meeting on HIV/AIDS as a security issue, and UNAIDS Consultative Meeting on Communication for Social Change, she played key roles at the national and global levels in shaping policies on HIV/AIDS. She developed a model program for HIV/AIDS Prevention that targets and involves the entire community, which earned her an Ashoka Fellowship.

Keywordscommunity activism, gender and health, reform of domestic/family roles, feminist conferences

Media: Name Pronunciation Audio, Transcript, Video, YouTube Video

Ke Qianting :

Ke Qianting

Ke Qianting was born in Guangdong Province of China in 1972. She graduated from SunYat-sen University, receiving her Ph.D. on Comparative Literature and World Literature in 2005. She is currently associate professor at Sun Yat-sen University and an MA student adviser. Research interests focus on feminist theory and its applications to literature, film, media and cultural studies. She is director of the Sex/Gender Education Forum of SYSU that advocated sex and gender equality on campus from 2007 to 2014. She also ran the Spring Feminist Society, an NGO promoting sex and gender equality in applied theater and other arts, from 2014 to 2017.
A chapter in Gender Dynamics, Feminist Activism and Social Transformation in China published by Ke Qianting in 2019 discussing the Vagina Monologues in China can be found here.
Yelena Viktorovna Kochkina :

Yelena Viktorovna Kochkina

Yelena Viktorovna Kochkina, born in 1956, began working in gender research in 1990. Her work focuses on a gender analysis of legal reform in Russia, structural adjustment programs and the implementation of equal opportunity policies in Russia, as well as gender in the Russian education system. She is a research fellow and professor at the Institute of Social and Economic Studies of the Population at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, politics and the law, intersectionality, community activism, reform of domestic/family roles, feminist conferences
Media:
Transcript (English, Russian), YouTube Video (English, Russian), Name Pronunciation Audio

Marian Kramer :

Marian Kramer

Marian Kramer (interviewed with Maureen Taylor) at last contact was the co-chair of the National Welfare Rights Union. She has fought government programs, such as Workfare, defended poor women against unjust persecution for welfare fraud and led campaigns to elect the victims of poverty to political office. She has organized poor people's movements, housing takeovers by people without homes, and led efforts to unionize in the South. She has received many community service awards and mentors college students fighting poverty.  Taylor and Kramer spoke at a rally in Detroit, Michigan in June 2020, and a video of their speech recorded by the group Detroit Will Breathe can be found here.
Keywords: gender and health, media, community activism, politics and the law
Media: Transcript (English), VideoBibliographyYouTube VideoName Pronunciation Audio

Sanshan (Joy) Lin :

Sanshan (Joy) Lin

In April 1987, Sanshan Lin (Joy Lin) was born in a small village in Yongji County Jilin Province. After graduating with a bachelor degree in sociology in Northeast Normal University, she went to Shanghai and started her career in executive search industry. In November 2016, she founded 我们与平权 Wequality, a feminist organization dedicated to raising public awareness of gender inequality in China, building community, and empowering members to unite to make gender equality a reality. Through regular WeChat articles and online/offline activities, Wequality continues its advocacy. In 2018, Wequality initiated “Our Stories” project to release interview reports annually with people’s experiences and opinions on different gender issues in China. The one on sexual harassment was released in 2019 while another on gender discrimination in 2020.
Keywords: community activism, education, gender-based violence
Media: Transcript (English, Mandarin)

Fiona Lowenstein :

Fiona Lowenstein

Fiona Lowenstein, born in 1993, is an award-winning independent journalist, producer, and speaker, covering health justice, wellness culture, LGBTQ+ issues and more. Their work has appeared in The New York Times, Teen Vogue, Vox, The Guardian, and Business Insider, among other publications. Fiona is the founder of Body Politic – home of the original Long COVID support group. They are also the editor of the recently published anthology, THE LONG COVID SURVIVAL GUIDE, out November 2022 from The Experiment. Photo credit: JJ Geiger

Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, community activism, disability rights, gender and health, intersectionality, media

Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Yamileth Mejía :

Yamileth Mejía

Yamileth Mejía was born in 1967, joining the national Literacy Campaign as a girl and receiving her teacher training in Cuba in 1984. She is one of the nine feminists formally accused by the Government of Nicaragua for supporting the rights of an eleven year-old girl who had been raped to obtain an abortion. At last contact, she was working for the Project for Comprehensive Services to Victims of Gender-based Violence funded by the Spanish Cooperation Agency.
Keywords: community activism, education, gender-based violence, reproductive rights, reform of domestic/family roles
Media: Transcript (EnglishSpanish), Video (EnglishSpanish), Bibliography, YouTube Video (English, Spanish), Name Pronunciation Audio

Diana Miloslavich Túpac :

Diana Miloslavich Túpac

Diana Miloslavich Túpac was born in Huancayo, likely in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Diana is the Director of one of the most important women’s organizations in Perú, an expert on advancing women’s policy, and an accomplished author with more than 40 years of experience working to advance women’s political participation and human rights in Perú. She obtained a Masters in Literature at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and was a Ph.D. Candidate in Social Sciences, specializing in History with the thesis "History of the Political Participation of Women in Perú."  Diana has participated in the execution of numerous projects in the promotion of legal and political initiatives related to women’s rights. For example, as part of the Women's Forum in Perú, she presented the first proposals for gender quotas and domestic violence in 1991. She was an advisor to the Women's Commission of the Municipality of Lima and of the creation of the Pro Equity Office from 1999 to 2002. In 2003, she was part of the team with the Ministry of Women and Social Development. In 2011, she was part of the Transfer Commission of the new government, and later Head of the Cabinet of Advisers to the Minister for Women. Diana has also participated in various projects with organizations such as: Equality Now, DAWN, RENAMA, Social Watch, UN Women, UNIFEM, UNFPA, UNICEF, DIAKONIA, CUSO, NOVIB, Oxfam, UE, and USAID, among others. Most recently, she was a major player in the campaign to promote and pass the newly established Gender Parity Law (Law No. 31030, 2020. Diana is currently the Director of the Political Participation and Decentralization Program of the Peruvian Women's Center, Flora Tristán, a key feminist institution created in 1979 with a focus on women’s rights. She is also an accomplished author (select titles): The Autobiography of Maria Elena Moyano: The Life And Death Of A Peruvian (1992), with editions in Spain and translated in Italy, USA and Japan); Women's Literature, A look from feminism (2012); Flora Tristan: Peregrinations of an Outcast at the Fair (2019); Feminism and Suffrage 1933-1956 (2015); Political Harassment in Peru: A look at Electoral Processes (2016), Gender, Parity and Disaster Risk Management (2019), publishing both through Flora Tristán and an academic press in the U.S.

Keywords: community activism, politics and the law

Media: Transcript (Spanish, English), Video, YouTube Video (Spanish, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio

Giordana Moreira :

Giordana Moreira

Giordana Moreira, born in 1980, is a human rights activist and has been working in the arts as a cultural producer since the-mid 2000s. In 2011 she created Roque Pense!, a network of women cultural producers that promotes projects and festivals through music and graffiti arts to raise awareness about women’s rights and to celebrate women’s artistic work.
Keywords: gender-based violence, art/writing as activism, community activism
Media: Transcript (English, Portuguese), Video, YouTube Video (Portuguese, English) Name Pronunciation Audio

Dona Murphey :

Dona Murphey

Dona Murphey, born in 1979, is a neurologist, neuroscientist, historian of science, and community organizer. She has navigated local, state, federal, and international partnerships across academia, government, and health tech sectors in rapid response and strategic mobilizations at the intersections of race, poverty, and immigration. Her belief in the foundational democratic rights to health, migration, public education, and voting have informed her extensive grassroots activism and nonprofit advocacy and a run for her local school board in Texas. Her current project is a public benefit start-up that marries her scientific and clinical expertise with a community organizing ethos to develop a digital diagnostic tied to culturally and language specific content and community health worker access to help eliminate racialized health disparities in dementia.

Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, community activism, disability rights, intersectionality

Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Olanike Olugboji :

Olanike Olugboji

Olanike Olugboji, born in 1974, is the founder/director of Women’s Initiative for Sustainable Environment (WISE). While attending elementary and high schools at Command Children’s School and Federal Government College Kaduna, respectively, she developed the habit of picking up litter. Following her education in technology and urban and regional planning, she began pursuing her dream of working towards a sustainable, clean and safe environment while supporting women’s health and empowerment, through the clean cookstoves initiative. Ms. Olugbogi hopes to contribute to producing a younger generation of Nigerians that is more committed to nurturing their environment through the Women’s Initiative for Sustainable Environment (WISE).

Keywordsenvironment, community activism, education

Media: Name Pronunciation Audio, Transcript, Video, YouTube Video

Tania Pariona Tarqui :

Tania Pariona Tarqui

Tania Pariona Tarqui, born in 1984, is an indigenous activist, Quechua leader, feminist, politician, human rights activist and former Congressperson. As an activist, she works to establish social equality for indigenous youth and women. She began her community work with National Movement of Organized Working Children and Adolescents of Peru (MNNATSOP), an overarching umbrella for many children’s working groups. She was chosen as a Latin American delegate and had her first experience of international representation at age 15 at the “World Summit for Children” at the United Nations in New York. She studied Social Work at the San Cristóbal of Huamanga University, graduating in 2009, and then Human Development at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima. She went on to work with the Centre for Indigenous Cultures of Peru (CHRIAPAQ), collaborating on several projects aimed at indigenous youth and women nationally and internationally. In 2010, with Andean and Amazonian sisters, she helped form the Organización Nacional de Mujeres Andinas y Amazónicas de Perú, (ONAMIAP) that promotes the participation of indigenous women and fulfillment of their individual and collective rights. She was the first youth secretary for ONAMIAP. She was elected to the Peruvian Congress in 2016 by the Broad Front for Justice, Life and Freedom, coalition of political parties. In September 2017, she joined the New Peru movement. From 2018-2019, she was the president of the Commission on Women and Family, which promoted the first thematic plenary session focused on a women’s agenda and equality between men and women. Her parliamentary work was dedicated to the defense of the rights of indigenous and native peoples against mining companies, the human right to water and reparations for the victims of the armed conflict, and working against impunity of the perpetrators of crimes, including compulsory sterilization under Alberto Fujimori's government. She is currently assuming responsibility for the Indigenous Women’s Program in CHIRAPAQ and has concerns for the indigenous populations of the Sierra and jungle coast, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: community activism, gender-based violence, indigenous issues, reproductive rights, rural women and land reform

Media: Transcript (Spanish, English), Video, YouTube Video (Spanish, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio

Interviewee Photo Credit

By psperu. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tania_Pariona_Tarqui.png. Creative Commons. Accessed 2 February, 2021.

 

Olutola Oluyemisi Ransome-Kuti :

Olutola Oluyemisi Ransome-Kuti

Olutola Oluyemisi Ransome-Kuti was born in 1947 in a family deeply engaged in the political life of Nigeria. Ransome-Kuti was educated in both the United Kingdom and Nigeria, where she earned degrees in business management, aesthetics, counseling, and human resources management. She was involved in the struggle for democracy in Nigeria and was arrested and sent to prison on her way to attend the Beijing Women’s Conference (1995). Ransome Kuti founded the Nigeria Network of NGOs, an umbrella organization that coordinates and regulates the activities of NGOs in Nigeria. She once ran Girl Watch, an organization that focused on educating young Nigerian girls from low socio-economic backgrounds. In 2006, the World Bank appointed her as the civil society advisor on Nigeria’s working groups on millennium development goals and poverty eradication.

Keywordspolitics and the law, community activism, environment

Media: Name Pronunciation Audio, Transcript, Video, YouTube Video

Tarcila Rivera Zea :

Tarcila Rivera Zea

Tarcila Rivera Zea is a Quechua activist who has dedicated nearly 40 years of her life to defending and seeking recognition for the indigenous people of Perú. She was born in the community of San Francisco de Pujas, Ayacucho, capital of the province of Huamanga, Peru. During the 1970s, she worked as a specialized secretary in archival and library science at the Ministry of Culture of Peru, studying at the Vatican City and Argentina. She also served as secretary of Martha Hildebrandt at the National Institute of Culture. Years later she collaborated as a journalist for the Pueblo Indio magazine of the Indian Council of South America (CISA). In recognition of her work in collecting testimonies of Indigenous women raped during armed conflicts, she was invited to pursue specialization courses in human rights at the Institute for Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, The Netherlands, and the International Center for Education in Human Rights in Charlottetown, Canada. In 1987 she began to participate in international processes on the rights of indigenous peoples, as well as in United Nations conferences on Women, which led her to be invited by UN Women in 2012 to be part of her International Advisory Group on the Civil Society. Rivera Zea is the founder of the Continental Link of Indigenous Women of the Americas (ECMIA) and the International Forum of Indigenous Women (FIMI), two networks that promote the empowerment and political involvement of the world's indigenous women. As a result of all her years of activism, defending and making visible the cultures and indigenous peoples of Peru, the Permanent Workshop of Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Women of Peru and of the Center of Indigenous Cultures of Peru (CHIRAPAQ) was created. She was president of CHIRAPAQ and is currently the vice president, coordinator of the Continental Liaison for Indigenous Women of the Americas (ECMIA), member of the Board of Directors of the Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Peoples of the United Nations between 2006 and 2011. She has also collaborated in the creation of the International Indigenous Press Agency (AIPIN).

Keywords: community activism, intersectionality, racial identity, rural women and land reform

Media: Transcript (Spanish, English), Video, YouTube Video (Spanish, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio

Interviewee Photo Credit

Liubov Vasil’evna Shtyleva :

Liubov Vasil’evna Shtyleva

Liubov Vasil'evna Shtyleva, born in 1956, was a teacher of history in public schools before going back to get her doctorate in education. She then taught educational science and psychology at the Murmansk State Pedagogical Institute, worked at the Institute for Social Pedagogy at the Russian Academy of Education, and was the principal research associate at the Institute of Childhood, Family and Upbringing at the Russian Academy of Education. She has worked on issues of education and gender in Russia and internationally.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, reform of domestic/family roles, community activism, feminist conferences
Media:
Transcript (English, Russian), YouTube Video (English, Russian), Video (Russian), Name Pronunciation Audio

Sista II Sista :

Sista II Sista

Sista II Sista is a Brooklyn-wide, community-based organization located in New York. It is a collective of working class young and adult Black and Latino women building together to model a society based on liberation and love. The organization is dedicated to working with young women of color to develop personal, spiritual and collective power, and is involved in a variety of projects, including The Freedom School for Young Women of Color, The Big Mouth Project, and Sista Liberated Ground.
Keywords: community activism, gender-based violenceintersectionality
Media: Transcript (English), VideoBibliographyYouTube VideoName Pronunciation Audio

Maureen Taylor :

Maureen Taylor

Maureen Taylor (interviewed with Marian Kramer) is a social worker and community activist. She has served as chair of the Michigan Welfare Rights organization and was elected treasurer of the National Welfare Rights Union. She defends recipients of public aid at the Michigan Family Independence Agency in case disputes, and directs the Detroit NFI Community Self Sufficiency Center. She was awarded the National Community Leader Award from the National Black Caucus in Washington, DC. Taylor and Kramer spoke at a rally in Detroit, Michigan in June 2020, and a video of their speech recorded by the group Detroit Will Breathe can be found here.
Keywords: gender and health, media, community activism, politics and the law
Media: Transcript (English), VideoBibliographyYouTube VideoName Pronunciation Audio

Katherine Soto Torres :

Katherine Soto Torres

Katherine Soto Torres, born in 1993, studied Sociology at the Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal and is currently completing a Master's in Public Policy at the Universidad Católica-Peru. She is the daughter of migrants and the first in her family to have access to a college education. Kate is a young activist, recognized by the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations for her work with Carabayllo youth through her club of girls SULANS (Siempre Unidas Lograremos Alcanzar Nuestros Sueños; United Always We Will Reach our Dreams), which works to create safe and empowering spaces for young girls. Among other awards, Katherine received the “Order of Merit for Women” from Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra in 2018, in recognition of her social work in the promotion of women's rights and the fight for gender equality. Kate founded Mujeres Desaparecidos Perú (Missing Women-Peru), an organization that reports cases of missing women and girls and was born out of the disappearance of her friend Solsiret Rodríguez, who is still unaccounted for. Kate is also the coordinator of the CHIRAPAQ, a Centro de Culturas Indígenas del Perú project that promotes the affirmation of identity and the recognition of indigenous rights in the exercise of citizenship, with a special commitment to indigenous children, youth and women.

Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, community activism, sex work

Media: Transcript (Spanish, English), Video, YouTube Video (Spanish, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio

Interviewee Photo Credit

By SouhiroZ. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Katherine_Johana_Soto_Torres.jpg. Creative Commons. Accessed 2 February, 2021.

Gahela Tseneg Cari Contreras :

Gahela Tseneg Cari Contreras

Gahela Tseneg Cari Contreras, born in the early 1990s, is a transgender woman who began participating in politics in 2015 in the National Youth Congress held in Huaraz. Gahela grew up in a rural area of ​​the Ica region. Her early life reflects much of the upheaval of Peru's recent history. Her mother was a peasant leader, native of Ayacucho, who was saved from forced sterilization ordered by the government of Alberto Fujimori. Her father was forced to flee Peru because of threats from terrorists, who besieged the work of union leaders. Both became immigrants, as did another 7 million Peruvians who mobilized internally for political or economic reasons. At age 27 she ran to become the first transgender woman in Peru’s Congress in the January 2020 elections, campaigning with what has been described as one of the most courageous and intersectional programs of the emerging and diverse Peruvian left. Although she did not win a seat, she has continued her political activism to transform issues of equity and discrimination among LGBTI individuals.

Keywords: community activism, LGBTQ+ rights, politics and the law

Media: Transcript (Spanish, English), Video, YouTube Video (Spanish, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio

Ruth Vanita :

Ruth Vanita

Ruth Vanita, born in 1955, is an author and professor at the University of Montana, where she teaches courses in the Humanities, Literature, and Women's Studies. She was formerly a reader in English at Miranda House and the English department, Delhi University. She is one of the founding co-editors of Manushi, India's first feminist journal.
Keywords: education, gender-based violence, LGBTQ rights, community activism, academia and women's studies
Media: Transcript (English), VideoBibliographyYouTube VideoName Pronunciation Audio

Elizabeth Viana :

Elizabeth Viana

Elizabeth Viana (interviewed with Giovana Xavier) was born in 1954 in Rio de Janeiro and is a sociologist. She helped found the Group Lima Barret and actively participated in the democratization process of the country. She has been involved with the Nzinga Collective of Women, the Unified Black Movement (MNU), and the Black Action of Nilópolis. She has been the Legislative Assistant at the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro for 35 years.
Keywords: community activism, racial identity, academia and women's studies, reform of domestic/family roles
Media: Transcript (EnglishPortuguese), Video, YouTube Video (Portuguese, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio

Shirley Villela :

Shirley Villela

Shirley Villela, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1964, began her professional work in gender issues while living for three years in the USA, volunteering at the International Gender and Trade Network. Since 2012, she has been the Coordinator of the Maré de Sabores project, a vocational training project for women in Rio.
Keywords: feminist conferences, community activism, education
Media: Transcript (EnglishPortuguese), Video, YouTube Video (Portuguese, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio

Wei Tingting :

Wei Tingting

Wei Tingting, born in 1988 in Guangxi, China, a Chinese LGBT and Feminist activist, majoring in sociology in college and graduate with an MA in anthropology from Wuhan University. She started to get involved in feminist and LGBT movement since she produced and staged Vagina Monologues in Wuhan in 2007. She is the co-founder of national bisexual network in China, founder of Guangzhou Gender and Sexuality Education Center, and on the committee/counselor of several LGBT and feminist organizations.She was co-listed as the “10 of the Most Inspiring Feminists of 2015” by MS Magazine in the US. She is also a psychology counselor, writer, documentary producer and director. The documentary We Are Here she produced was screened in many countries.
Media: Transcript (English, Mandarin), Video, YouTube Video (Mandarin, English Subtitles)
Giovana Xavier :

Giovana Xavier

Giovana Xavier (interviewed with Elizabeth Viana) was born in 1979 in Irajá. She is a professor of History at The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. As a black intersectional feminist, Giovana situates her activism in the academy, especially through her work with black students at the university. At the last contact, she was involved in the project “Black Professors in the First Person: History Teaching and Activist Research.”
Keywords: community activism, racial identity, academia and women's studies
Media: Transcript (EnglishPortuguese), Video, YouTube Video (Portuguese, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio

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