Intersectionality

Aleisha Amohia graduated from Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science (majoring in Computer Science and specializing in Artificial Intelligence) and a Bachelor of Commerce (majoring in Management and minoring in Information Systems). While at VUW, she was President of VUW Women in Tech for two years. She is now the Koha Technical Lead at Catalyst IT, an open source software company, where she started as an intern in 2014. Aleisha is a passionate young advocate for diversity and equity in all spaces, particularly in the technology industry. She is currently Co-President of the Wellington Branch of the National Council of Women in New Zealand (NZ) and has previously served on the Boards of the YWCA Greater Wellington, the Wellington Alliance Against Sexual Violence, and the Māori Design Group at InternetNZ. In 2022, Aleisha was a finalist for the NZ Impact Awards for contributing a young, Māori, Asian and female lens to NZ's gender equity movement, and other diversity and inclusion initiatives. 

Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, indigenous issues, intersectionality

Media: Transcript, YouTube Video

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), Video, Bibliography, YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Cathy Cohen, born in 1962, is the former co-chair and a founding board member of the Audrey Lorde Project in New York. She served on the board of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, and the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY. Cohen was a founding member of Black AIDS Mobilization (BAM) and a core organizer of the International Conference, Black Nations Queer Nations. Cohen has also served as an active member in many organizations, such as the Black Radical Congress, African-American Women in Defense of Ourselves, and the United Coalition Against Racism.
Keywords: LGBTQ rights, intersectionality
Media: Transcript (English), Video, Bibliography, YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

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)

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), Video, Bibliography, YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Anna Gruszczynska was born in 1978. She studied English and Spanish Philology at the University of Wroclaw and at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. In 2001, Gruszczynska started a chapter of The Campaign against Homophobia. She has organized marches and campaigns calling for gay and lesbian rights in Poland. Gruszczynska is firmly committed to fighting homophobia and regularly publishes articles about the topic in feminist magazines.
Keywords: LGBTQ rights, intersectionality
Media: Transcript (English, Polish), Video (English, Polish), Bibliography, English YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Prue Hyman, born in England in 1943, is a feminist economist. She moved to New Zealand in 1969 to work at Victoria University, Wellington, eventually becoming an Associate Professor of Economics and Gender and Women's Studies until controversial restructuring between 2008 and 2010 abolished Gender and Women's Studies. She has also advised the New Zealand government through her work at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (1989-1990). Hyman studies the personal aspects of economics, such as how work is valued, with a particular focus on living wages and pay equity. 

She has written two books: Women and Economics: A New Zealand Feminist Perspective (1994), and Hopes Dashed?: The Economics of Gender Inequality (2017). In 2000, she was commissioned by the New Zealand Police Force to write an influential report titled Women in CIB: Opportunities for and Barriers to the Recruitment, Progress and Retention of Women in the Criminal Investigation Branch. While retired from university work, she continues to champion gender pay equity issues. 

Keywords: academia and women's studies, intersectionality, politics and the law

Media: Transcript, YouTube Video

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

Anita Lombardi was born in Vittorio Veneto in 1988. She graduated from college with a degree in Philosophy and works as a freelancer. She works as the Secretary of the Board  of the Lesbian Association in Bologna. 

Keywords: LGBTQ+ rights, intersectionality

Media: Transcript (Italian, English), YouTube Video (Italian, English Subtitles)

Elisa Manici was born in La Spezia in 1975. She received her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Bologna. She works as a penniless journalist and temporary librarian. She has been involved in various groups, including Leftist Youth, ArciLesbica, and Cassero. 

Keywords: LGBTQ+ rights, intersectionality, politics and the law

Media: Transcript (Italian, English), YouTube Video (Italian, English Subtitles)

Netia McCray is an educator whose global non-profit organization, Mbadika (bah-GEE-kah), has helped thousands bring their ideas to reality through leveraging STEM. For over 10 years, Netia has worked to demystify STEM in order to make it accessible to typically disadvantaged groups. As a March 2020 Longhauler, she has witnessed first hand the short and long term devastation that Long COVID has brought to not only her community but to communities worldwide. Netia believes knowledge is power and being able to obtain appropriate care and support starts with equitable access. Through her work with C-19 LAP, she utilizes her educational background to demystify Long COVID and recovery for communities like hers that shouldered the burden of the COVID pandemic.

Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, education, intersectionality

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

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

Anjum Rahman was born in the village of Mahuwara in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Her family moved to New Zealand from Canada in 1972 when she was five years old. She became a naturalised New Zealand citizen in 1976. She was a chartered accountant for 30 years, working with a range of entities in the commercial, farming, and not-for-profit sectors.   

Rahman was a founding member of the New Zealand Islamic Women's Council, an organisation formed in 1990 to bring Muslim women together and represent their concerns and was the media spokesperson. She is also a founding member of the Shama Ethnic Women's Trust and served as a trustee on its board from 2002 until 2019. Shama supports ethnic minority women through its social work service, life-skills classes, and community development. Rahman has worked in the area of sexual violence prevention both as a volunteer and as part of Government working groups.   

Rahman was a spokesperson for the Muslim community following the Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019, in which 51 people were killed and 40 injured. In media interviews following the attack, she voiced frustration at the failure of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and other government agencies to take concerns about violence towards the Muslim community, Islamophobia, and the rise of the alt-right in New Zealand seriously. In response to the attacks, Rahman established the organisation Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Tāhono to combat discrimination.   

Anjum was an active member of the Waikato Interfaith Council for over a decade, and was a trustee of the Trust that governs Hamilton’s community access broadcaster, Free FM. She is currently a trustee of Trust Waikato, the largest funder in the region, and on the governing council of InternetNZ. She is a member of international committees dealing with violent extremist content online, being the co-chair of the Christchurch Call Advisory Network and a member of the Independent Advisory Committee of the Global Internet Forum for Countering Terrorism.   

In the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours, Rahman was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to ethnic communities and women; she was also shortlisted for the New Zealander of the Year Award. 

Keywords: intersectionality, politics and the law, racial identity

Media: Transcript, YouTube Video

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

D. Sharifa, born in 1966, has taken a stand on Muslim women's rights. She runs STEPS in Tamilnadu, an organization focused on the women's rights awareness, especially Muslim women. She has been fighting to build a mosque for Muslim women, and has received several national awards for her work among women.
Keywords: intersectionality
Media: Transcript (English), Video, Bibliography, YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio

Andrea Lee Smith, born in 1966, is an activist/educator. She served as a delegate to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durbin (1991), representing the Indigenous Women's Network and the American Indian Law Alliance. She is one of the founding members of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, and is the co-founder of the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations (WARN). She has organized several conferences, including the Color of Violence I & II Conferences, Race, Gender and the War Community Forum, and Decolonizing Methodology and Beyond: Constructive Proposals for Indigenous Methodologies.

In the period since this interview, significant doubt has been cast on Dr. Smith's assertion of a Native American or Woman of Color identity. We have retained her interview in this collection of oral histories because her interview was part of the original archive, and because we believe that scholars can and should study what she said in the interview in the context of subsequent conversations (see the articles below, including an open letter from Indigenous women, for more context).
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