Following on from the Women of Hope events last October as part of Black History Month, WOW Rotherham and WOW - Women of the World will be celebrating this year’s International Women’s Day with a panel of women discussing gender inequality, representation and leadership within communities across the borough. Hosted by Jude Kelly, Founder of the Women of the World – WOW and WOW Foundation, the panel will share stories of life in Rotherham the perspectives of five women with very different backgrounds and cultures, tackling issues of prejudice, misinformation, cultural pride and heritage and community cohesion.

LINK TO WATCH: https://youtu.be/sfqzA4voOkk

Speakers include:

Ganiat Ololade Oshodi-Shidi. Called Lola for short, Lola is originally from Lagos Nigeria and is married mum of two. She has been living in Rotherham for six years now says she loves living here because the community is full of lovely people, who had a positive impact on her life who loves living here too. Lola is a member of Mama Africa Rotherham, a community group of African women living in Rotherham, and is an active member in the community supporting people who are new to Rotherham alongside her husband.

Haiying Lin. Haiying is a single mother of three girls. Born in China, Haiying has been living in Rotherham for 11 years and is an active member of Wa Hong Community group, a group of Chinese residents living in Rotherham. She is passionate about being involved in her community and supporting her children to take part in their community group activities and loves reading.

Dina Margarita Pina. Mother to three girls and a boy, Dina has been in England for nine years now and is originally is from Portugal. A member of Mama Africa Rotherham, she is passionate about supporting people in her community and has helped many other EU communities through referrals. Dina is passionate about learning new things all the time and supporting and empowering women.

Kate Saunders: Kate is a British woman born in Sheffield, and raised in Corby Northamptonshire, she returned to Yorkshire for TRC VI form. She went on to study in Wales and taught children in London for 30 years and before specialising in English as a Second Language (ESOL). Kate is a mother of one and currently works at the Unity Centre for the food bank. She has vast experience of working with different communities of Rotherham and enjoys meeting people all around the world. She also enjoys learning Welsh which she started during lockdown.

Zaidan Ahmed: Zaidan is a Muslim Pakistani woman who was born, grew up and educated in Rotherham. She has a Masters in Education and has worked for the last in her hometown for the last 25 years. Zaidan has four beautiful children and is passionate about creating equal opportunities for the communities she represents and supports, especially young people and women so they can make the most of their lives and talents.

Their stories of Rotherham and Hope will form part of Women of the World - WOW’s national celebrations broadcasting across the globe and right here in Rotherham via the RMBC Discover Rotherham YouTube Channel.

Join WOW Founder Jude Kelly in conversation with one of her heroes - Pat Mitchell. Pat is an award-winning journalist from the US, a producer and a life-long advocate for women and girls all over the world. Here they talk aging, solidarity and resistance - and joy, too.

From founding TED Women to writing her most recent book Becoming A Dangerous Woman, Pat has many stories to tell. Come and watch this event if you are committed to holding the ladder for other women, and want to learn from the best.

LINK TO WATCH: https://youtu.be/5iJ1RyQ8aXE

Join WOW direct from Kaohsiung in Taiwan, Dhaka in Bangladesh and Brisbane Australia with stories from creating WOW festivals locally, in very different contexts. These three WOW festivals are starting to be able to create ‘in person’ events - come and hear how they’re doing it.

LINK TO WATCH: https://youtu.be/PzunfjhXKkM

Cynthia Chiang is the Head of Strategic Marketing, Marketing and Communications in National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying), where WOW Kaohsiung will be taking place. She started her passion for performing arts as a drummer in the marching band, became more enthusiastic as a dancer in contemporary dance, and found her position as an art administrator and producer. National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying)

Cathy Hunt has spent her life working in the cultural economy across the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong, as a producer, festival director, cultural strategist, consultant principally as founding Director of the consultancy Positive Solutions. As Executive Director of non profit company Of One Mind Cathy works with the WOW Foundation in London to develop WOW -Women of the World Festivals in Australia, and was the Executive Producer of WOW@Festival 2018 (Celebrating the Women of the Commonwealth) for the Commonwealth Games. WOW Australia

Ifra Iqbal is Project Manager at British Council Bangladesh. She is an experienced management professional with 6+ years’ experience in arts and culture, festival management, strategy, communications and academics. She has been leading significant cultural projects of scale and quality, with a keen focus in the arts and gender work. A committed gender rights activist and sometimes a repressed writer, Ifra holds a Bachelor of Laws from University of London and currently lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Celebrate the launch of The Hope Brigade, which goes live today at midday. WOW’s exhibition in partnership with Google Arts & Culture. A year in the making, the online exhibition features 100 trailblazing women from 10 cities and countries around the world from Brisbane to Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Across the 10 countries and regions, WOW’s exhibition - photographed by 10 up and coming female photographers and co-curated with WOW Partners from each of the 10 regions - will tell a story of global feminisms and women’s movements through the stories of 10 women from each region, each looking at 10 themes. These significant female stories will chart the changes they have seen in their own world and cast a light of the global picture, but more importantly they will act as a catalyst for the work that has to be done of the upcoming decade to keep the issue of gender equality at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Watch a short film about the exhibition from WOW Founder Jude Kelly before heading to the exhibition to explore these stories g.co/womenoftheworld

LINK TO WATCH TRAILER: https://youtu.be/h5YkkDHZVfQ

Join a panel of leading female journalists to hear what they have discovered as they report the pandemic from the UK and beyond. Featuring Alison Phillips, Christina Lamb, Laura Collins, Pippa Crerar, Megan Lucero and Ashna Hurynag, with an introduction by WOW's Founder Jude Kelly.

When the whole world becomes a warzone fighting a deadly virus, what is the impact on women, from the heart of our local communities to the heart of government? And what role has the media played in informing - and misinforming - the public?

This event will take place on Zoom as a Webinar followed by a Q&A.

Book now here

The full line-up of speakers are:

Introduction: Jude Kelly - Founder & Director of The WOW Foundation

Chair: Alison Phillips, editor Daily Mirror & chair, Women in Journalism

Panellists:

Stephanie Baker - senior writer, Bloomberg

Laura Collins - editor, Yorkshire Evening Post

Pippa Crerar - political editor, Daily Mirror

Ashna Hurynag - correspondent, Sky News

Christina Lamb - chief foreign correspondent, Sunday Times

Eva Simpson - columnist & commentator

Join WOW direct from Istanbul, Turkey, Nepal,and Favela de Maré in Rio de Janeiro Brazil to hear about how coronavirus has changed their lives, how they find their optimism, and their digital WOW festivals this March.

LINK TO WATCH https://youtu.be/k33Z35PQ6sI

Speakers include:

Esra A. Aysun Head of Arts at the British Council in Turkey. As the curator of WOW - Women of the World Festival Istanbul, which will be organized in Istanbul in 2021, Aysun curated and hosted Festival Alanı, a radio show on gender equality at Açık Radyo on air from May to October 2020. https://www.wowistanbul.org/

Dr. Madhurima Bhadra wears multiple professional hats, from Public Health practitioner to Radio Jockey to Lecturer. She has been working in Sexual and Reproductive health & WASH, lecturing on health in humanitarian situations, health policy and feminist research methods. She has worked on Radio at Hits FM and Revolution Radio @ Moksh, where she hosted a show on sex from 2012 to 2015. She is also a gender and LGBTQIA advocate and believes advocacy can be expressed through theater and creation of safe spaces to share and discuss these issues. She directed and produced The Vagina Monologues in 2020. Dr Bhadra is on the curating team at WOW in Nepal https://sway.office.com/x1qUlqDgjP62a1HD?ref=email

Dr Eliana Sousa Silva

Founder of Redes da Maré, Rio de Janeiro; Visiting Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies, Federal University of São Paulo; Honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) of Queen Mary University London

Internationally recognised as one of Brazil’s most important social activists, Eliana Sousa Silva has a PhD in Social Service from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Daughter of Northeast Brazil migrants, Eliana grew up in the favela complex of Maré in Rio de Janeiro where she married and raised two children. Eliana was elected president of the Maré Residents’ Association when she was only 22 years old and set up a community-based programme to enable residents from the largest of Rio’s favelas to follow her own path into university education. In 1996 she founded Redes de Desenvolvimento da Maré (Maré Development Networks), as a non-governmental organisation which has become a national reference point for its educational, social and cultural projects. There she has created women’s centres offering University-led legal advice, social services and counselling support as well as early-years arts programmes. Redes campaigns for better public security and supports citizens in advocating for their rights and created Maré’s first official streetmap. In 2018 she curated the first WOW - Women of the World Festival in Latin America and is part of the Global Advisory Board of WOW Foundation. WOW Rio

Listen to girls and young womxn activists sharing the experiences of the past year, why their organising is critical and why it's important to put girls at the centre.

Hosted by Purposeful’s Josephine Kamara, this 45-minute powerful conversation session draws together six womxn across Palestine, Mongolia, Sierra Leone, India and Kenya. Together they spotlight their activism and challenges, and they imagine a feminist future.

LINK TO WATCH: https://youtu.be/ZEZmEQN92Rs

Purposeful is an Africa-rooted global hub for girls organising and activism. We believe that another world is not only possible, it is already being built right here and now, in the ways that girls are organising with each other, imagining with each other, pushing us all a little further towards liberation. Along with the With and For Girls collective, we have invited activists and girls who are recipients of our Global Resilience Fund or the With and For Girls Grants. www.wearepurposeful.org

Join WOW direct from Pakistan and New York’s legendary Apollo Theatre to hear about their work, what’s driving them and their digital WOW festivals this March.

LINK TO WATCH https://youtu.be/lnpLkMb5Mas

Speakers include:

Raabia Qadir has a degree in animation and almost two decades of experience in design. She has worked extensively in exhibit design for museums and expos. Her work experience includes interactive dioramas and walkthroughs as well as software based solutions for exhibits. In the past couple of years she has done less design work and has turned to writing. Her play Mushk was performed in 2017 and found critical acclaim. She is editing her first novel and has started work on the second.

Raabia is on the WOW Pakistan curating team, and WOW Pakistan is taking place this month online. See the programme here -http://wowvirtual.pk/

Kamilah Forbes is an esteemed award-winning director and producer for theatre and television who currently serves as the Executive Producer at the World Famous Apollo Theater. Kamilah is noted for having a strong commitment to the development of creative works by, for, and about the Hip-Hop generation. In addition to her work at the Apollo, Kamilah’s directing credits include By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, written by Lynn Nottage Blood Quilt written by Katori Hall, and Sunset Baby by Dominique Morrisseau. Kamilah’s most recent directorial work Between the World and Me aired as a special event on HBO and HBO Max in November 2020 to critical acclaim.

Kamilah Forbes leads the team at WOW Apollo who have curated three amazing WOW festivals now, the latest coming up 20 - 21 March 2020. WOW Apollo 2021 - see the programme here.

Can we imagine a rape free world? Do we dare to imagine something that we don’t know how to achieve? And what do we already know about how to get there?

Join Jude Kelly as she discusses these ideas with author and activist Winnie M Li, writer and academic Jo Bourke and activist Marai Larasi.

LINK TO WATCH: https://youtu.be/YQ-Hk3-VToc

Please note that this event will discuss themes around rape and sexual violence. If you are affected by any of the discussion in this event, please visit the Rape Crisis and Survivors Network websites to find support.

This event takes place in the run up to Shameless! Festivals of Activism Against Sexual Violence in London in November 2021. The festival will be led by SHaME, research project exploring the role of medicine and psychiatry in sexual violence at London's Birkbeck University, in collaboration with The WOW Foundation. Sign up to our newsletter for updates about the festival and WOW news.

Winnie M Li is an author and activist. Her novel Dark Chapter is a fictional retelling of her real-life rape from victim and perpetrator perspectives. She has an honorary doctorate of law from the National University of Ireland in recognition of her writing and activism, and her second novel Complicit will be published in 2022. She is currently Writer-in-Residence at The SHaME Project at Birkbeck University.

Jo Bourke is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She is also the Gresham Professor of Rhetoric (London, 2019-2023). She is the Principal Investigator of a Wellcome Trust-funded project entitled “SHaME” (Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters). She is the prize-winning author of fourteen books, as well as over 100 articles in academic journals. Among others, she is the author of Rape: A History from the 1860s to the Present (2007) and The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers (2014).

Marai Larasi is a Black, African-Caribbean-British feminist advocate, community organiser and consultant who has worked in social justice for over twenty-five years, with a specific focus on ending violence against Black / Global Majority women and girls. Till May 2019 she was the Executive Director of Imkaan (UK), and she also been Co-Chair of the End Violence Against Women Coalition (UK). In November 2020, Marai was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from Birkbeck College, University of London.

Authorities warn that in 2020, we risked losing a generation or more of gains towards gender equality. In 2021, the way governments rebuild post-pandemic must prioritise women's needs. As our world braces for a global reset, it is now or never to call for women’s voices to be centred—but how? WOW UK is partnering with Women's March Global's the Global Count project and Women in Dev to host this headline event. ‘Now or Never: The Urgent Need for Data on ALL Women’ will bring together amazing thinkers for an in-depth discussion on the tangible ways in which we can put women and gender-diverse people at the centre of the global reset.

LINK TO WATCH: https://youtu.be/egR_-4vnE4k

At the crux of the conversation is data: data is a critical determinant of the quality of discussions that must result in sustainable solutions to the challenges impacting women across different demographics and geographies. However, this insight and data about women is scarce. Where it does exist, it’s systematically and divisively neglected from policy and programmatic design. The ‘Global Count’ is a poll that has reached women in 135 countries, and is growing. The poll is designed to accelerate the prioritisation of the intersectional voices of women and girls in the policies that will govern their lives. Simply put, the Global Count’s major thrust is ensuring that the voices of women and gender-diverse people are counted in policy and funding programmes.

Speakers include V (formerly Eve Ensler), Author of The Vagina Monologues and Founder of One Billion Rising ; laywer and human rights activist Tikhala Itaye; Sankara Caroline Gitau, Executive Director of Akili Dada ; Lauren Klein, Author of ‘Data Feminism’; and Mpho Mpofu from Women in Dev.

On 8 March, Letters Live will be releasing a special International Women’s Day film from the Archive. Free to watch on the Letters Live YouTube channel with all donations going to The WOW Foundation.

This special video features standout performances from women such as Olivia Colman, Gillian Anderson, Rose McGowan, Daisy Ridley and Caitlin Moran reading letters by women, about women and to women, to shine a light on the continued global fight for gender equality. Subscribe now here www.youtube.com/letterslive

LINK TO WATCH: www.youtube.com/watch?v=06O0n48anKk

Please note, this is a paid event as part of WOW UK Festival 2021. Tickets start from £5 (concessions £1). Book here

It’s a fact - the majority of the countries that have been more successful in stemming the tide of the COVID-19 pandemic are headed by women.* Yet, women are Heads of State and Government in only 20 countries worldwide, and across the board - from sport to culture, education to food, and business to politics - women are not yet, even in 2021, anywhere close to 50% of leadership positions.

Here, Hon Julia Gillard AC - the only woman to have served as Prime Minister of Australia - Mandu Reid, the first Black leader of the UK’s Women’s Equality Party, and others talk to WOW Founder Jude Kelly about political leadership and the change they want to see and this vital time in our history.

This is followed by a very special conversation with Sandi Toksvig as she takes us through her leadership heroines of the past, from her book Toksvig's Almanac 2021: An Eclectic Meander Through the Historical Year.

The event will feature performances by Anoushka Shankar and Fatoumata Diawara.

Who are the champions of solutions for the climate and biodiversity challenge? Listen to these four global changemakers talk about their personal journey, women that inspired them and what they want to see the climate and biodiversity conferences to deliver this year. More than ever do we want to see women transforming the conversation and policy and taking practical action to create a better future for our planet.

LINK TO WATCH: https://youtu.be/yyMd_oQYyE8

Led by Esmeralda of Belgique, with model and activist Arizona Muse, activist and policy maker Malini Mehra and activist and student Yetunde Kehinde.

About the speakers:

Esmeralda de Belgique - Princess Esmeralda is a member of the Belgian Royal family. She is a journalist, author and keynote speaker. She has also co-produced three documentaries and written books about her family, environmental issues and female Nobel Peace Prize winners.

Esmeralda is a passionate human rights’ campaigner, particularly for the rights of indigenous people, and an environmental activist. She has spoken out against colonialism, racism and climate injustice and she believes that we all have a responsibility to confront the past and build a better society in the future. In 2019, she took part in the Extinction Rebellion protests in London and was one of 1,200 people to be arrested.

She is the President of the Leopold III Fund for Nature Exploration and Conservation, founded in 1972 by her late father who was one the first European to visit the Xingu National Park in Brazil during the sixties and to spend months with indigenous communities. She is also Chair of Friendship Belgium, an NGO helping the most vulnerable communities in Bangladesh through a holistic program of education, health care, women empowerment and climate adaptation.

Arizona Muse - Named as “the new face of American fashion” by leading fashion publications, Arizona Muse is an American model, ambassador and consultant for sustainability in the fashion industry.

As a passionate advocate for social sustainability and environmental regeneration, Muse collaborates and consults with fashion brands to help them incorporate sustainable practices into their core strategies. She sits on the advisory board of The Sustainable Angle, a non-profit organisation that initiates and supports projects which contribute to minimizing the environmental impact of fashion industry, and has been involved with the Fashion Revolution and the Green Carpet challenge during Milan Fashion Week. She currently resides in London with her husband, son, and newborn daughter.

Malini Mehra is chief executive of GLOBE International, the environmental legislators organisation. She has more than three decades of experience on sustainability, gender, human rights and climate in multiple sectors. From leading international campaigns at Beijing (1995), Kyoto (1997), Seattle (1999), Copenhagen (2009) and Paris (2015) for Friends of the Earth International, Oxfam and other NGOs to founding an award-winning Indian climate & sustainability NGO, she has co-authored the UN’s Human Development Reports and advised the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, on UN reform. While in the UK government, Malini was the architect of the UK’s sustainability partnerships with China, India, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico and has advised CEOs of companies including Unilever & BHP Billiton. Currently, she is a commissioner to the Mayor of London on sustainable development, an adviser to the head of the UN’s disaster risk agency and serves on numerous boards including China Dialogue and EcoPeace Middle East.

Yetunde Kehinde is an aspiring economic geographer and Geography Undergraduate at the University of Oxford. Employed by Action for Conservation, she is contracted to the Natural History Museum working as the Youth Advisory Panel Co-Facilitator as a part of their Urban Nature Project.

Inspired by her geography teacher to get involved with social action when she was 14, it all started with a few people from her geography picking up litter that laid along the River Thames. Social action has shown her that she can make a difference to the world we all live in, and has given her the confidence to believe that the younger generation are the future and can contribute to a crucial and much-needed change in society and our fragile environment.