Reform of Domestic/ Family Roles

Hajiya Binta Abdulhamid was born on March 20, 1965, in Kano, the capital of Kano State, in northern Nigeria. She attended primary school and girls’ secondary school in Kano and Kaduna State. Thereafter she attended classes at Bayero University in Kano, where she received a degree in Islamic Studies. While she initially wanted to be a journalist, in 1983 she was encouraged to take education courses at the tertiary level in order to serve as a principal in girls’ secondary schools in Kano State. While other women had served in this position, there had been no women from Kano State who had done so. She has subsequently worked under the Kano State Ministry of Education, serving as school principal in several girls’ secondary schools in Kano State. Her experiences as a principal and teacher in these schools have enabled her to support girl child education in the state and she has encouraged women students to complete their secondary school education and to continue on to postgraduate education. She sees herself as a woman-activist in her advocacy of women’s education and has been gratified to see many of her former students working as medical doctors, lawyers, and politicians.

Keywords: academia and women's studies, education, reform of domestic/family roles

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

Fatma Alloo was born in Zanzibar and is a social movement activist, and journalist committed to social change. In the early 1980’s, Alloo worked as a journalist with Daily News in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She has vast international experience internationally as a journalist, including as a radio producer during the Uganda war, and in Geneva, Switzerland, and Amsterdam, Netherlands. Fatma Alloo is the co-founder of the feminist advocacy group Tanzania Media Women’s Association (TAMWA) in 1987. She is a co-founder of the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) in 1997. She is also she is a member and co-founder of Zanzibar Women on the Net (ZaWoN), of FEMNET, and of the Non-Government Organization Resource Centre (NGORC) based in Zanzibar. She is presently working with Civil Society Foundation based in Dar es Salaam. She a producer and co-producer of several documentaries, which have been shown at the Berlin Film Festival. She is an associate producer of Tanzanian feature film Maangamizi (extermination) and has won several awards for her films. She has many publications. 

Keywords: media, art/writing as activism, community activism

Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video

Chen Mingxia, born in 1948, is a researcher at the Institute for Legal Research of the China Academy of Social Sciences, and was one of the leaders who initiated an anti-domestic violence project that developed into the first large scale women's NGO in China, Stop Domestic Violence. She headed this first national women's network.
Keywords: feminist conferences, education, gender-based violence, reform of domestic/family roles
Media: Transcript (English, Mandarin), Video (English, Mandarin), Bibliography, YouTube Video (Mandarin, English Dubbed), Name Pronunciation Audio

Elisa Dal Molin was born in Feltre, in the province of Belluno, in 1975. She obtained a four-year degree in oriental languages and literature (Chinese). She has worked for many years as the regional representative  for Famiglie Arcobaleno. Since the fall of 2018, she has worked as the Secretary of the Famiglie Arcobaleno (national directive).

Keywords: politics and the law, LGBTQ+ rights, community activism, reform of domestic/family roles

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

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

Sabrina Othman Faraji is an entrepreneur, fashion designer and activist working to promote welfare of rural women through women economic empowerment programs such as tailoring courses. She has a diploma in Business Management & Public Administration from the State University of Zanzibar, Tanzania.  In her work, Faraji encourages entrepreneurship skills among women living with HIV, and recruits some of the trained women into her own enterprise (Kanga Kabisa). She also coordinates the Zanzibar International Film Festival, and many community-based activities (e.g. Marathon, beach clean-up, women empowerment workshops, hand-made crafts exhibitions for the annual Women’s Panorama of the Zanzibar International Film Festival.  Faraji is the recipient of several awards including Business Woman of the Year by Zanzibar Ministry of Trade, Best Social Venture Award by the Women’s Chamber of Commerce, and Outstanding Community Service Award by the Zanzibar International Film Festival.

Keywords: education, community activism, reform of domestic/family roles

Media: Transcript (Swahili, English), YouTube Video (Swahili, English)

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.

Keywords: community activism, gender and health, reform of domestic/family roles, feminist conferences

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

Sue Kedgley was one of the early leaders of the women’s liberation movement in New Zealand. 

She set up the Auckland University women’s liberation group in 1971 and the National Organisation for Women in 1972. She helped organise a high-profile tour of internationally acclaimed feminist Germaine Greer to New Zealand in 1972 and co-authored the first book about women’s liberation in New Zealand, entitled Sexist Society. 

Kedgley attended the first international feminist conference at Boston in 1973 and then worked as a Communications Officer in the Women’s Secretariat at the United Nations, New York, helping to organise the first international women’s conference at Mexico City in 1975 and coordinate International Women’s Year 1975. She helped set up the UN women’s group and was active in it for the 8 years she worked at the United Nations. She was Assistant Secretary of the second United Nations Conference for Women, which was held in Copenhagen in 1980. 

Returning to New Zealand in 1982, she worked for a decade as a television reporter, director, and producer, then entered local politics as a Wellington City Councillor from 1992 until 1999 when she was elected a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Green Party, serving as an MP from 1999 until 2011. She was women’s spokesperson for the Green party and Deputy Chairperson (1999-2005) and subsequently Chairperson of the New Zealand Parliament Health Select Committee (2005-2008). Sue was a Wellington Regional Councillor for six years and has served on several boards, including the National Board of UN Women Aotearoa New Zealand. She continues to be active in women’s issues and is a Convenor at the National Organisation for Women New Zealand. 

Kedgley has written six books on feminist issues, including Sexist Society (1972; co-edited with Sharon Cederman), Mum’s the Word: The Untold Story of Motherhood in New Zealand (1996), and most recently, a memoir entitled Fifty Years a Feminist (2021). In 2016, she received a New Zealand Women of Influence Award in recognition of her work towards greater gender diversity in the workplace, and in 2020, she was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for services to women and governance. 

Keywords: community activism, politics and the law, reform of domestic/family roles

Media: Transcript, YouTube Video

Li Huiying, born in 1957, is Professor of Sociology and assistant Director of the Women Research Center of the Central Party School, providing training for senior level Chinese Communist Party officials. She has succeeded in incorporating courses on gender studies in the official curriculum and runs feminist workshops for faculty nationwide.
Keywords: feminist conferences, academia and women's studies, education, politics and the law, reform of domestic/family roles, rural women and land reform
Media: Transcript (English, Mandarin), Video (English, Mandarin), Bibliography, YouTube Video (Mandarin, English Dubbed), Name Pronunciation Audio

Salma Maoulidi identifies as a feminist, public intellectual, and has roots in women’s and civil society movements within the region and globally. Maoulidi is a graduate of the University of Dar es Salaam (LLB); and Georgetown University Law School.  Maoulidi grew up in the emerging women’s and later feminist movement in the late eighties in Tanzania. She was thus in the midst of pioneering initiatives ushered in by the new rights dispensation, including serving as the first legal counsellor at the TAMWA crisis centre, providing legal assistance to survivors of GBV.  Maoulidi’s roots in Tanzania’s grassroots movement are reflected in her long engagement with civil society initiatives. She is the founding member of Sahiba Sisters Foundation and supports the Foundation for Civil Society to engage Zanzibar CSOs in policy engagement. She also worked with the former East Africa Support Unit for NGOs since 1997 as an OD consultant. 

Maoulidi has prioritised working with the global at local levels. She has worked with global initiatives/bodies such as Oxfam Tanzania; Ireland Aid; and Plan International. 

Maoulidi has also worked on local initiatives. She has many publications 

Keywords: community activism, gender-based violence, media, reform of domestic/family roles

Media: Transcript, YouTube Video

Angélica Souza Pinheiro (interviewed with Luciana Adriano da Silva) (1982-2016) was a Quilombola and black woman who studied Rural Education at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro and later tourism, focusing on community based tourism. She represented the Quilombo Santa Rita do Bracuí in the Forum of Traditional Communities of Angra dos Reis, Paraty, and Ubatuba, succeeding in creating quilombola schools. The GFP staff note with sadness the death of of Angélica in 2016.
Keywords: rural women and land reform, racial identity, education, reform of domestic/family roles
Media: Transcript (English, Portuguese), Video, YouTube Video (Portuguese, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio

Natal'ia Mikhailovna Rimashevskaia was born in 1932 in Moscow and is a professor at Moscow State University, and at the Academy of Labor and Social Relations. She helped to create the Laboratory on Issues of Gender at the Institute of Social and Economic Studies of the Population, where she worked until 2005. She is a member of the Russian Academy of Life Sciences and editor of Human Population magazine, and works on issues of demography. The GFP staff note with sadness Natal'ia's death in 2020.

Keywords: reform of domestic/family roles, gender and health
Media: Transcript (English, Russian), Video, YouTube Video (English, Russian), Name Pronunciation Audio

Luciana Adriano da Silva (interviewed with Angélica Souza Pinheiro) was born in 1981 in Angra dos Reis. She studied at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, and received a graduate degree in Rural Education. Luciana is a community leader of the Quilombo Santa Rita do Bracuí and also works with a number of other social movements and institutions.
Keywords: rural women and land reform, racial identity, education, reform of domestic/family roles
Media: Transcript (Portuguese, English), Video, YouTube Video (Portuguese, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio

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 (English, Portuguese), Video, YouTube Video (Portuguese, English Subtitles), Name Pronunciation Audio