By Fi Gilligan
In May 2020, we launched our #BecomingSAHR Instagram Live series: a multilingual series of candid conversations about feminism, gender justice and human rights. Every week, we pass the mic to an activist, humanitarian leader or founder of a frontline feminist movement or organization from a different part of the world, to shine a light on these incredible and, too often, hidden efforts.
Through the series, we aim to share stories of hope, progress, accomplishment and change in this ever evolving journey of gender justice. We chose to do the series in 20 languages to increase access to multi-varied perspectives among defenders whose first language is not English. …
By Fi Gilligan
Compiled from SAHR’s “Gender Justice Wednesdays” series on social media. Follow SAHR on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
You will remember the #ChallengeAccepted trend, which, in August 2020, saw our feeds flooded with monochrome selfies of women. While the black and white challenge appears to have started in 2016 to raise awareness of breast cancer, the repurposed hashtag gained momentum again in Turkey in July after the brutal killing of 27-year old Pınar Gültekin, who was allegedly murdered by her ex-boyfriend because she refused to be with him.
As a mark of protest against skyrocketing rates of femicide, honour killings and gender-based violence in Turkey, campaigners began posting monochrome photos on Instagram in order to emphasise how pictures of murdered women end up in black and white in the pages of newspapers. …
By Shruti Mishra, Aditi Pradhan and Natasha Latiff
The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG), the second woman to serve as a US Supreme Court justice, has undeniably created a void worldwide for the defenders who have studied her. She lived a life championing human rights and gender justice. She was a trailblazer, a voice of change and a source of power who left behind a body of work which is not near its end and one which we have to continue to build on.
Born in 1933, RBG was of Ukrainian and Austrian descent. She was 1 of only 9 women students in her cohort to read law at Harvard Law School, admonished by the Dean for “taking a man’s place”. She excelled, joining the Harvard law review and trudging through law school whilst caring for her newborn and an ailing cancer-stricken husband. Despite coming in first in class, law firms flinched at the notion of hiring her, a woman, which led her down a different path to become Columbia Law School’s first female tenured professor. In 1972, she co-founded the Women Rights Project at American Civil Liberties Union, fighting more than 300 gender discrimination cases between 1973 to 1974. …
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