In our second episode on exploring love as a basis for organizing and solidarity, we interview Pregs Govender (South Africa) and Srilatha Batliwala (India) – both globally well-known feminist activists and authors. Pregs aligns love with the inherent dignity of human beings and speaks eloquently of how oppressive systems, from apartheid in South Africa to Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people, use power to eradicate our humanity. What can we do about it? Srilatha offers brilliant insi...
Jul 12, 2025•47 min•Ep. 30
In the new season of the Gender at Work podcast – What’s Love Got to Do With It? – we ask the question - can love in the vision of Audre Lord, bell hooks, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, Mahatma Gandhi and so many social justice leaders worldwide, help us in shifting systems of oppression. How does social justice action from the basis of love help us to transform ourselves while also eliminating the profound cruelty and manipulation we see all around us? And how are women and gender equality l...
May 23, 2025•29 min•Ep. 29
May 19, 2025•3 min
In this episode of the G@W podcast, we delve into Feminist Foreign Policies and look at some of the opportunities, challenges and contradictions inherent in them. We also explore some of the collective aspirations of feminists for Feminist Foreign Policies. These would be important questions to ask at any time but now they are especially important as some of the very governments that have announced Feminist Foreign Policies support Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza or are themselves major arms manu...
Feb 26, 2024•56 min
Many feminists around the world believe that there is a war on against women and some are calling it “gender apartheid”. The global campaign to end gender apartheid focuses particularly on Iran and Afghanistan. In this episode we explore this term “gender apartheid” – where it came from and what some of the Femilemmas around it are. We look at its usefulness in addressing what is happening to women and girls in Iran and Afghanistan today. We speak to Dr. Sima Samar, the former Minister of Women’...
Nov 06, 2023•56 min
In this episode, three graduate students from the American University of Beirut, Maria Hamarneh, Elvira Abi Zeid and Leil Younes, question male allyship for women’s rights and feminist values in a social media context heavily influenced by toxic misogynists targeting young men and boys. They reflect on the ways that, as in many parts of the world, women’s rights are under attack and work on gender equality is being undermined or rolled back, including by ultra-right wing, fundamentalist groups. ...
Aug 01, 2023•31 min
Femilemmas about gender identities, about who is a feminist, about inconsistencies when government leaders claim feminist mantles and so on, have been percolating for years. We held a Femilemmas PopUp at the 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York in March to hear what Femilemmas were on the minds of participants there. In this episode we share a few - Anne Marie Goetz (New York University, New York City) explores the Femilemmas inherent in feminist foreign policies; An...
May 01, 2023•26 min
In this teaser, Aruna and Joanne bring up the theme of their upcoming season: Feminist dilemmas, or, as they refer to it, Femilemmas.
Mar 08, 2023•5 min
G@W has a new Executive Director - madeleine kennedy-macfoy. Welcome madeleine! In this episode, we introduce madeleine and invite the past EDs of Gender at Work to think about what the opportunity and challenge mix has been over the decades at G@W and what learnings and dilemmas they have to share with Madeleine as she steps in. We build on a theme that we’ve explored over the past episodes of the podcast: feminist leadership transitions. Like many of those we interviewed, we tried as much as p...
Feb 20, 2023•1 hr 8 min
How do feminist organizations get beyond ‘calling out’ to repair and care? What can we learn from feminist leaders who are experimenting with strategies to build trust, reverse practices that undermine feminist collective action, and prioritize care, connection and thriving? In this episode, we talk to Michal Friedman, a longtime associate of G@W, a feminist activist and a personal and social change facilitator based in South Africa and Janet Wong, a close partner of G@W and former UN Women Coun...
Dec 21, 2022•56 min
What is driving the growing numbers of implosions that many social justice groups around the world – including feminist organizations and networks -- are experiencing? Coming on the heels of the #Me Too movement, the flashmobs inspired by the “ El Violador Eres Tu!” movement, and the Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd, we started to witness staff in feminist organizations publicly calling out abuse of power, racism, gender discrimination and other forms of exclusion...
Aug 09, 2022•54 min
We just completed the seminal month for women’s rights globally – worldwide celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8th, innumerable events worldwide for Women’s History month in the United States, and the 66th UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) recently concluded. Women’s rights and feminist organizations and movements are the drivers of change for gender equality yet, the question of how feminist organizations grow and thrive, the tensions they experience between principles a...
Mar 31, 2022•1 hr 8 min
In our last episode we talked about the challenges of dismantling patriarchy and promised that our next episode would start to unpack different strategies to topple patriarchy. We have chosen to focus first on how leadership transitions happen and what happens to the leaders who choose to leave. There is a generational shift in leadership of feminist organizations around the world and we can see that these shifts happen differently in different contexts. They represent a way in which we both wre...
Jan 13, 2022•1 hr 10 min
In a passionate and wide-ranging conversation, Kumi Naidoo and Aruna Rao explore hope, fear, Black Lives Matter, feminist principles, intersectionality and structural change. They ask whether the institutions that were set up to protect us, like the police, and to enable social change, such as social services, the UN, and international development organizations, have failed us and whether we should keep trying to change them from the inside or tear them down and start again. This episode is a re...
Oct 01, 2021•1 hr
Look around you and you’ll find many conversations about reimagining and transforming how we live and work – from how we enable the plant to thrive, to new ways of envisioning economics. And in all kinds of organizations, we are seeing real challenges to what was previously unchecked - abusive power dynamics, toxic work environments, sexual harassment, racism, and discrimination against all kinds of people who don’t fit what was considered ‘the norm’. In this episode – the first in a series of t...
Aug 11, 2021•47 min
On the eve of the Generation Equality Forum (GEF) in Paris, Aruna Rao and Joanne Sandler – veterans of the 1995 Beijing conference – have an intergenerational talk with three young activists: Priya Kvam and Amani Jui from Breakthrough US and Natalia Escruceria Price, an independent consultant formerly with JASS. Our exchange with these young activists highlights our differing vantage points on a number of ideas, from patriarchy to transnational organizing to how we understand current and future ...
Jun 25, 2021•39 min
Gender mainstreaming and the two-track approach to achieve gender equality were two strategies for strengthening organizations' action on gender equality that grew out of the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women. Twenty-six years later, the world looks very different with multiple crises of inequality, violence against women and LGBTIQ people, climate extinction and less faith in democracy and the old social contract. Have our strategies delivered on their promise? Are they still fit for purpose? Sh...
Apr 28, 2021•28 min
Can the UN Deliver a feminist future? This question is posed by Anne Marie Goetz (Professor, NYU) and Joanne Sandler (Senior Associate G@W and former Deputy ED, UN Women) in the June edition of Gender and Development. Join us for a lively discussion on this question in the latest episode of the Gender at Work podcast. Anne Marie and Joanne are joined by long-time feminist activists Geetanjali Misra, Executive Director of CREA and Lina Abou Habib from the American University in Beirut, and young ...
Oct 12, 2020•1 hr 15 min
How do you break up violent ways of behaving and the exercise of power over? How do change what is considered normal? How do you create a new culture that values others no matter how different they are? A community in Gauteng, South Africa, supported by Gender at Work and the Labor Research Service, launched an initiative called Letsema 5 years ago to end gender based violence in their community. In this episode, they tell us about the dialogues they had across very different people and groups r...
Jul 07, 2020•33 min
We are living in a time, which adrienne marie brown describes as apocalyptic - a time that demands that we draw our imagination to think beyond what is politically possible, which she says is “simply not enough”. What does feminist leadership look like in such times? In this episode, we talk to two globally recognized, inspiring feminist warriors from South Africa, Pregs Govender, a former ANC member of parliament and Deputy Human Rights Commissioner, and Phumi Mtetwa, an award winning anti-apar...
Mar 29, 2020•56 min
This episode walks us through Catherine Claxton’s story, which has been assembled by G@W Senior Associate Joanne Sandler and Julie Thompson, both long time UN staffers. Catherine's lawyers -- Mary Dorman and Ellen Yaroshefsky -- recount the events that led Catherine, a junior UN staffer, to charge an Undersecretary General with sexual abuse. What unfolded in response mirrors the Me Too stories of today. Patriarchy closed ranks around the perpetrator and demanded allegiance to authority from thos...
Nov 19, 2019•25 min
At a time when conservative, fundamentalist and fascist forces appear to achieving political dominance, the need for progressive movements to build strong alliances and collective resistance appears paramount – yet, few such alliances are visible and sustaining cross-movement solidarity is very hard work. This episode explores why this is the case, what are the fault lines, and some success stories of cross-movement alliances and the lessons we can learn from them. Participants include: Aruna Ra...
Jul 22, 2019•51 min
This episode examines why we need to reimagine prevailing ideas around consent, pleasure and danger as embedded in our laws, social norms, and feminist movement politics. The discussion explores why pleasure needs to be moved from the margins of feminist agendas to be viewed as integral to dismantling patriarchy; why the connections between pleasure and danger must be rethought; and why consent must be disconnected from a protectionist approach that denies the agency and right to choice of indiv...
Jul 15, 2019•1 hr 3 min
Language is often the medium through which exclusion, stigma and invisibilisation of certain groups, experiences and identities is normalised and justified. This podcast discusses whether and why language and terminology matter, how new words and frames can be created in diverse cultural contexts to claim power, presence and voice, and analyses the hijacking of progressive feminist language by conservative political movements. Participants in this episode include: Aruna Rao (moderator); Jayanthi...
Jul 08, 2019•51 min
Social power and injustice are often expressed and experienced through inclusion and exclusion. This episode explores what constitutes inclusion or exclusion, who are the most excluded groups and identities, and how diverse constituencies are connecting to challenge their marginalisation. The role of creative people in raising awareness about exclusionary politics is also explored. Participants in this episode are Aruna Rao (moderator), Janet Price, Independent Activist, UK/New Zealand; Thea Kho...
Jul 04, 2019•40 min
Various narratives, social norms and political agenda underlie the criminalisation of people based on their gender identities, sexual expression, reproductive choices or occupation (such as sex work). This podcast explores the impacts of this approach not only on these groups, but on societies as a whole, and the nature of resistance to criminalisation. Participants for this episode are: Aruna Rao, Lady Grew, Sara Hossain, Estefania Vela Barba and Mindy Roseman. Gender at Work and CREA co-develo...
Jun 27, 2019•55 min
It’s almost 25 years since the landmark women’s conference held in Beijing in 1995. What did women achieve at Beijing and what are some of the key new and unfinished feminist agendas? In this podcast Joanne Sandler, the former Deputy Director of Unifem and current senior associate G@W starts us off by tracing some of the intentions, magic and results from Beijing. Then we discuss the new and unfinished agendas in the area of LGBTQ rights, economic inequality and disarmament and human security wi...
Feb 13, 2019•33 min
There is no greater time than now, when we are experiencing a tremendous pushback against women’s rights and women’s rights defenders, to search for new and powerful ways to express ourselves and advocate for change. In this episode, we meet three powerhouse artists and activists: former Ford model and philanthropist, Monica Watkins, Australian singer-songwriter Jess McAvoy, and no-bounds visual artist/activist Sarita Kvam. Their narratives speak strongly to the human condition, what drives indi...
Dec 13, 2018•27 min
In 2015, Gender at Work founders and podcast hosts Aruna Rao and David Kelleher, along with Gender at Work Senior Associate, Joanne Sandler and Knowledge Strategist, Carol Miller, collaborated to write a book that has proven to be a must-read for feminists. Gender at Work: Theory and Practice for 21st Century Organizations is a culmination of four activists' dedication, experience and thought leadership developing and employing a holistic approach to improve gender equality globally. In this nin...
Oct 01, 2018•30 min
This week, David and Aruna speak with three powerful change makers collaborating to form the UN Girls' Education (UNGEI) initiative to end school-related gender-based violence in Sub-Saharan Africa. Leading the initiative is a trifecta of development practitioners, action-oriented researchers and behavior change experts – Nora Fyles (Head of Secretariat for the UN Girls’ Education Initiative), Madeleine Kennedy Macfoy (Coordinator in the Human and Trade Union Rights and Equality Unity, Education...
Jun 20, 2018•37 min
