The Feminist Lens

Join Peris Thuo and Nina Park interview the incredible Gloria Onitiri about her career, racism in the UK, and some words of wisdom and lasting hope. You would have seen Gloria at the in The Taming of the Shrew as Katherine and also as Guardiano in Women Beware Women, Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol at The Old Vic, as one of the Fates in Hadestown at the National, Yomi in Chiaroscuro at The Bush, Nala in Disney’s The Lion King, Rachel Marron in the original cast of The Bodyguard and much more.

Gloria is also the Founder of Letter to a Black girl Podcast. Which is a podcast full of musings and roundtable discussions with the best of Black British Women.

It is so refreshing having someone like Gloria who through her podcast celebrates and empowers Black Women in the UK, and also provides a platform for Black Women to tell their story and their truth in a mainstream format. This is incredibly important as we know black women are often ignored and overlooked in society.

Gloria IMBD

Glorias Instragram 

Glorias Twitter 

Hello everyone! Welcome to this weeks episode of the Feminist Lens podcast with Nina de Ayala Parker and Peris Thuo! Today we are joined by Carmel McConnell MBE, author and campaigner, who campaigns on child poverty, education and well-being. Carmel is the Founder of the children’s charity Magic Breakfast. You may remember or know of Magic Breakfast when they collaborated with Macus Rashford and Jack Monroe on the free school meals campaign which ended in the Government’s U-turn on school meal vouchers during the christmas holidays of 2020. Or you may know magic breakfast in their own right as one of the most important children’s charities in the UK, which dedicates their work to eliminating child hunger by providing free breakfast to schools across the UK. Carmel stepped back from day to day involvement in the charity in 2020, but continues to use her voice to campaign on behalf of hungry schoolchildren.

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Hello Everyone and Welcome to the Feminist Lens podcast, brought to you by Women for Wanawake.

On today’s episode Nina Parker and Peris Thuo will be speaking to Kerry Abel, Chair of Abortion Rights UK. Which is the national member-led pro-choice campaign. Who campaign to defend and extend women’s rights and access to safe, free, legal, and local abortion. They oppose any rollback of the legisilation and restrictions to abortion access.

It’s more than 50 years since abortion was made legal in Britain and we think women’s rights should be advanced not driven back. A consistent three-quarters of people support a woman’s right to choose in Britain. They believe the law should be brought into line with public opinion – so that women can make their own reproductive decisions without the current unfair legal barriers, obstructions, and delays.

Helen Pankhurst CBE...Need we say more? Yes we shall! For the last episode of Season 1, join Nina de Ayala Parker and Peris Thuo in conversation with the incredible, kind and devoted Helen Pankhurst. 

Helen Pankhurst is a women’s rights, an international development practitioner working mainly in Ethiopia for CARE International and a Trustee of ActionAid, a Professor at MMU and the Chancellor of the University of Suffolk. Helen is the convenor of the Centenary Action Group and of GM4Women 2028 and is the granddaughter of Sylvia, great granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, leaders of the British suffragette movement. To reflect on the progress since the struggle for the vote. 

In 2018, she wrote Deeds Not Words, the Story of Women’s Rights, then and Now - available here

What an incredible conversation, we hope you feel inspired to go out and fight for gender equality too after listening to this beautiful conversation with Helen Pankhurst, Peris Thuo and Nina de Ayala Parker. 

Trigger warning: We speak about Sarah Everard , Police brutality and misogyny and also domestic violence , and FGM .

Today we will be speaking to an incredible woman, she is a photographer, activist, and founder of the podcast Cheer Up Luv, Eliza Hatch. Eliza has created and supported a network of women and girls who are fighting to end sexual harassment by retelling very powerful and often emotional stories of sexual harassment on her podcast, and on her social platforms.

As we know sexual harassment is in many ways a epidemic across the world, and ever since the term was coined in America in the 70s, women have been able to report it with greater ease, but still, not enough is being done to stamp it out. Have you ever been cat called in the street, or maybe a colleague has commented on your skirt on live tv *cough* Piers Morgan *cough*? We are so excited to speak to Eliza about what we can do, what solutions there are and how optimistic she is about the future.

Eliza Hatch Instagram 

Cheer Up Luv Podcast 

Rights of Women Free Legal Help Line 

Women For Wanawake Online:

Wofwa Instagram 

Wofwa/Feminist Lens Instagram 

Today we will be speaking to two incredible guests who are here to represent and in their own right and expertise the Global ‘Gender and Covid19 Working Group’, which brings together academics from around the world, who conduct real time gender analysis to identify and document the gendered dynamics of COVID-19 and gaps in preparedness and response. Wow, this is possibly the most relevant interview and one which we are super, super excited about.

There has been a lot of misinformation and nervousness around covid’s impact on women from care, to treatment, to humanitarian intervention, to covid actually effecting our path to equality, by slowing it down, Our two experts representing this global working group will be able to help us make sense of it all. 

Anne Ngunjiri, Senior Technical Advisor for Gender Based Violence, and Violence against Children Programs, LVCT Health in Nairobi, Kenya. In the Gender-COVID working group, Anne’s role is to conduct interviews with the marginalized population of women in urban informal settlement to better understand the secondary effects COVID has had on their  lives, specifically health, social and economic wellbeing. The intention with the data generated is to disseminate to policy and decision makers to better inform their gender responsive plans at county and national level across relevant ministries, departments and agencies.

Clare Wenham, Assistant Professor of Global Health Policy at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Clare specialises in global health security and the politics and policy of pandemic preparedness and outbreak response, through analysis of influenza, Ebola and Zika. Her work considers global health governance, role of WHO, national priorities and innovative financing for pandemic control, particularly in Latin America.

More recently she has been analysing the downstream effects of global health security policy on women, with a forthcoming Oxford University Press book offering a feminist critique of the Zika outbreak, and co-founding and co-leading the Gender&COVID project and working group. Her work features in The Lancet, British Medical Journal (BMJ), Security Dialogue, International Affairs, BMJ Global Health and Third World Quarterly. She previously worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, delivering projects relating to surveillance and transmission of infectious disease.

Find their work: 

The Gender & Covid-19 Working Group website 

Gender & COVID19 Working Group on twitter 

Clare Wenham on twitter 

Anne Ngunjiri on twitter

Peris and Nina spoke to the earthmoving, world-changer, politician, film maker, festival organiser and cultural consultant, who started off her extensive career by breaking through the glass ceiling of 1960s UK tv broadcasting, as the first ever black person to report the news on UK TV, Barbara Blake Hannah.

More than 50 years later, the Press Gazette has created the Barbara Blake-Hannah Award to celebrate upcoming journalists from ethnic minority backgrounds - in the hope of inspiring others in the future.

Wow. Barbara I cannot begin to express how excited and grateful we are to talk to you and for you to give us some of your precious time and wisdom. We started Women for Wanawake and this podcast The Feminist Lens, to inspire and empower, and to educate, break down barriers and have conversations that will change the world.

Buy Barbara Blake Hannah's Books: 

This episode is split into two parts. It is a bit different to our usual in that we are speaking to Men. We believe that to realise and achieve full Gender equality women must engage with and work with men.

We believe that men can indeed be feminists, and that right now more than ever before we need more men championing women’s rights. We simply cannot leave men out of the conversation if we are to achieve gender equality. On that note, we are glad to have two male guests who are progressive, represent hope and see Women as equals. In addition to being forces in their fields and contributing to making society a better place from Policy, sustainable living and finding real, tangible solutions to issues facing the world today.

Adeyemi Adeyemi MBE is the Co-Chair for the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Staff Network of NHS England and NHS Improvement and was awarded an MBE for services to Global Health policy. Ade is also a Global Health policy expert who is also a Director at the Think Tank Chatham House, where he supports Ministry of Health stakeholders across Africa, by strengthening their leadership and policy development capacities. He is also the Managing Director of the world’s biggest Global Health Jobs platform www.globalhealthjobs.com. Ade is also the founder and Executive Director for the African Healthcare Hackathon (www.ahhack.com), Ade is also studying for a Doctor of Philosophy in Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London.

Calum Millbank is a Mechanical Engineer, currently working across the UK to decarbonise our cities. Calum has previously campaigned on social justice issues, focusing on climate.

Womens Refuges in the UK:

https://www.refuge.org.uk/

https://www.womensaid.org.uk/the-survivors-handbook/what-is-a-refuge-and-how-can-i-stay-in-one/ 

https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/womens_refuges

This episode is split into two parts. It is a bit different to our usual in that we are speaking to Men. We believe that to realise and achieve full Gender equality women must engage with and work with men.

We believe that men can indeed be feminists, and that right now more than ever before we need more men championing women’s rights. We simply cannot leave men out of the conversation if we are to achieve gender equality. On that note, we are glad to have two male guests who are progressive, represent hope and see Women as equals. In addition to being forces in their fields and contributing to making society a better place from Policy, sustainable living and finding real, tangible solutions to issues facing the world today. 

Adeyemi Adeyemi MBE is the Co-Chair for the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Staff Network of NHS England and NHS Improvement and was awarded an MBE for services to Global Health policy. Ade is also a Global Health policy expert who is also a Director at the Think Tank Chatham House, where he supports Ministry of Health stakeholders across Africa, by strengthening their leadership and policy development capacities. He is also the Managing Director of the world’s biggest Global Health Jobs platform www.globalhealthjobs.com. Ade is also the founder and Executive Director for the African Healthcare Hackathon (www.ahhack.com), Ade is also studying for a Doctor of Philosophy in Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London.

Calum Millbank is a Mechanical Engineer, currently working across the UK to decarbonise our cities. Calum has previously campaigned on social justice issues, focusing on climate. 

https://www.refuge.org.uk/

https://www.womensaid.org.uk/the-survivors-handbook/what-is-a-refuge-and-how-can-i-stay-in-one/ 

https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/womens_refuges