The White Ribbon Campaign UK Contributes to the New UK Feminista

This past Wednesday afternoon, the London office of the White Ribbon Campaign UK attended a consultation meeting at the Amnesty International Human Rights Action Centre for the newly formed UK Feminista. UK Feminista was formed by co-directors Kat Banyard and Anna van Heesvijk. In their own words:

UK Feminista is a unique and innovative organisation being launched in March 2010. UK Feminista aims to build a national movement of feminist activists and mobilise them to effect real and lasting change in gender relations. Activists will be mobilised primarily through campaigns coordinated by other women's rights organisations in the UK. The ultimate vision of the organisation is that women in the UK live free from sexism and enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Gender inequality remains endemic in the UK: 100,000 women are raped every year, less than 20% of MPs are women, and women are paid on average 22.6% less than men. While recent years have witnessed a resurgence in grassroots activism aimed at ending gender inequality in the UK, it remains under-resourced and largely invisible in mainstream public life and, as a result, is limited in its effectiveness.

Yet grassroots feminist activism (campaign action taken by ordinary citizens) is critical to building public support for legislative change, addressing local community-based issues, and engaging all sections of society in the process of change necessary to achieve gender equality. UK Feminista seeks to fill this important gap and in doing so bring vital "people power" to women's rights campaigning.

This will be like a Facebook for women's rights organisations in the UK, connecting individual activists across the UK who want to get involved in a campaign or host their own event. The White Ribbon Campaign fully supports UK Feminista and will have a profile page on the website (coming soon!).