A special prize was awarded to Diana Russell, the feminist scholar and academic, who died this year at the age of 81. Diana devoted her life to the fight against male violence against women and was best known for her work on femicide. You can read Julie Bindel’s obituary of her here.
Magdalen Berns was a campaigner for lesbian and other women’s rights. She produced YouTube videos in defence of women’s private spaces and sex specific rights. She had a wide reach in introducing new women to radical feminism and faced down a lot of hostility for publicising her views. Magdalen died in September 2019, aged 36.
Meena Patel joined Southall Black Sisters in 1987. Since then she has spearheaded SBS’ campaigns to raise awareness of the violence experienced by Black and ethnic minority women. She also runs SBS’ survivor involvement work, and helps other women to politicise their experiences: many of these women have gone on to campaign with SBS. Meena […]
Jean rides her bike for each of the women murdered by men as a result of intimate partner or family violence. She began the project in 2017 by riding for all the women murdered in 2016 and have now completed 183 rides and ridden almost 5000 miles. She keeps the names of the women in […]
Helen Steel is one of eight women who together brought a ground-breaking civil claim against the Metropolitan police for their abusive practice of enabling undercover police officers to form long term intimate relationships with the women they were spying on. Helen was pivotal in organising the claimants, waived her anonymity and gave press interviews in […]
A Special Award was given to Denise Marshall, the former CEO and extraordinary feminist who passed away on the 21st of August 2015. The award was accepted on her behalf by her widow Lisa Alabaksh. During her lengthy career within the women’s sector, Marshall was the founder of an internationally acclaimed scheme, the Poppy Project, which […]
Davina is the Director of AVA, which she took up following five years at L.B. Islington as the first local authority Domestic Violence Co-ordinator in the UK. From 2000-08, she had responsibility for developing and implementing the London Domestic Violence Strategy for the Mayor of London. She has worked in the field of violence against […]
Gill has been involved in women’s activism – raising awareness, organising feminist conferences, and setting up the first refuges, rape crisis centres, and incest survivor groups. In 1990 she co-founded the Violence Against Women Research Group (now the Centre for Gender and Violence Research) that pioneered activist-based research and has become one of the world’s […]
The Lin Groves Special Award Leyla underwent FGM (female genital mutilation) at the age of seven — an act that changed her life — and as an adult she has ceaselessly campaigned to ensure that other young girls do not suffer the same fate. Since 2002 she has been working and fighting for the right […]
Stígamót, an organisation based in Reykjavik, Iceland that campaigns against sexual violence has been awarded this year’s special prize for innovative feminist campaigning. Last year it successfully campaigned to criminalise the purchasing of women in prostitution, and this year it brought about a ban on strip clubs. The ban on commercial sexual activity is not […]
Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize 