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Mona Eltahawy, Tressie McMillan Cottom & Sisonke Msimang: When All Women Have Power

Being nice won’t create the rebellions that will finally give women control of their destinies. Mona Eltahawy, Tressie McMillan Cottom and Sisonke Msimang tell us how we can change the world and bring justice within reach for women everywhere.

Just because people look like you, doesn’t mean they will stand in your interest.

Sisonke Msimang

I am a very profane woman, and I am deliberately and politically profane because violence and poverty and capitalism and racism and transphobia are the real profanity and not the fact that I say ‘fuck’.

Mona Eltahawy

We always talk about these women who have no voice, but I don’t know voiceless women.  We are writing books. We are speaking and we are putting ourselves often in great danger by doing so.

Tressie McMillan Cottom

 

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Photo credit: Yaya Stempler

This panel was chaired by Santilla Chingaipe

Speakers
Mona Eltahawy

Mona Eltahawy

Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator, and disruptor of patriarchy. She is founder and editor-in-chief of the newsletter FEMINIST GIANT. Her opinion essays have appeared in media across the world. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls (2019) took that disruption worldwide. She is a contributor to the recent anthology This Arab is Queer and is editing the anthology Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrums.  

Tressie McMillan Cottom

Tressie McMillan Cottom

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an award-winning Associate Professor of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a faculty affiliate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Her work has been recognized nationally and internationally for the urgency and depth of her incisive critical analysis of technology, higher education, class, race, and gender. Her most recent book, THICK: And Other Essays, is a critically acclaimed Amazon best-seller that situates Black women’s intellectual tradition at its center. THICK won the 2019 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and is a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in nonfiction. Along with Roxane Gay, she is the co-host of Hear To Slay, providing listeners with incisive reads on politics and popular culture: a self-styled ‘black feminist podcast of your dreams’.

Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang

Sisonke Msimang is the author of The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela and Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home. She is a South African writer whose work is focussed on race, gender and democracy. Sisonke has written for a range of international publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Newsweek and Al Jazeera.

Santilla Chingaipe

Santilla Chingaipe

Santilla Chingaipe is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker. She spent nearly a decade working for SBS World News which saw her report from across Africa and interview some of the continent’s most prominent leaders and report extensively on Australia’s diverse African communities. Her film credits include the landmark SBS documentary, DATE MY RACE and BLACK AS ME. Her latest documentary series THIRD CULTURE KIDS is currently streaming on ABC iView. She reports regularly for The Saturday Paper and is a member of the federal government’s advisory group on Australia-Africa relations.

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