By Maria Marti and Jessica Schwarz As the month of June is Pride Month commemorating the impact and importance of the LGBTQ+ community, we thought it fitting to make everyone aware of the brilliant lesbian romance that is Rafiki (2018). In line with our series on altering the distribution of narrative power in media, Rafiki…
Re-readdressing intersectional feminism
by Mia Martí About a year ago, I wrote an article for this blog discussing the term ‘intersectionality’ and the need to incorporate it in our understandings of feminism. The term has travelled a lot since I last discussed it. It now almost appears to be a buzzword, regularly discussed in mainstream media, and central…
THE REDISTRIBUTION OF POWER THROUGH ARTS (Part I: Literature)
By Maria Marti and Jessica Schwarz Both in the past and present, most spaces have been dominated by men, typically white, and their Westernised narratives. An article by The Guardian addressed this asymmetry, discussing that organisations as Vida, an American organisation for women in the literary arts, has inquired the reviews and bylines in a…
Calling the Strong and the Beautiful: On Mental Health, Coming Forward and Sisterhood
by Hillary (Sonny) Hurst Women. We are strong. We are beautiful. We need each other. The feminist movement is powerful and has taken the world by storm in recent months, but while we are busy in this noble and necessary pursuit of advocating for women’s rights and equality, let’s all take a second to…
The Whistleblower: The UN and Systemic Sexual Abuse
by Mia Martí and Jessica Schwarz There is a certain empathic yet frightful element that arises after seeing a good —and by good, I mean accurate— film or documentary, especially when it comprehends such realistic depictions of abuse and bodily colonisation. The Whistleblower is a film about that most degenerate of crimes: trafficking women for…
On Said’s Orientalism and the Westernised Other
by Maria Martí When Edward Said published his groundbreaking book Orientalism in 1978, he articulated the most compelling yet polemical critique of the implication of scholarly discourses in colonial narratives and legacies that had been made to date. Although his work has experienced a tumultuous trajectory, and it has been considered synonymous with the…
On Breaking the Silence
by Jessica Schwarz Silence around the topic of violence against women, be it domestic abuse or sexual assault, remains prevalent in society. With recent movements such as #MeToo women are slowly beginning to find their voices, letting the world know of the injustices committed against them. As noble and needed as these movements are,…
INTERVIEW: A talk about the Afghanistan of the future with my friend Damsa
“Our people do anything that is said in Islam, but the problem is that the Taliban do not have enough information about Islam, they do not know what the Koran really means” After seeing Monica Bernabe’s and Gervasio Sanchez‘s exhibit on Afghanistan, which dates back to 2014, I felt the urge to research more on…
Empowering women and girls in rural Tanzania
Jess McCoy I just arrived back to the United Kingdom after spending a month in Tanzania researching gender differences in education, motivation, aspirations, and in technology for my dissertation. In addition to researching for my own dissertation, I was also researching on behalf of HDIF (Human Development Innovation Foundation) with three other post-graduate students…
It’s time to readdress our feminism
Maria Martí We can all agree by now that women across the world encounter countless challenges to achieving the same rights and chances as their male counterparts. Challenges that emerge in the form of deep rage inside of women all around the globe, and that have been recently taking shape in the fourth-wave feminism…
Women for Women International Newcastle University 