WOW Festival: The Lowdown
- fundamental.
- Feb 15, 2017
- 5 min read
Event at Women of the World Festival. Image by Southbank Centre on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
The Women of the World festival is a UK-based festival that celebrates the achievements of women and girls as well as looking at the obstacles they face across the world. It seeks to inspire new generations of young women and girls. And that’s what we’re all about here at fundamental.
It takes place in the Southbank Centre from 7-12 March and can cost just £22 for a whole day, and with 50 per cent off for concessions (students, I’m looking at you) there’s no excuse not to go.
If you enjoyed our Badass Bitches segment, make sure to check out their ‘Badass Feminists of History’ talk. Or if you feel like you can do a better job of running the country, and want to release your inner Leslie Knope, from Parks and Recreation, join The Parliament Project for a workshop called ‘How to Get Elected’ and make steps towards world domination.
Does the women’s rights movement marginalise disabled women? Visit the ‘Disability, Women and Taking Action’ debate to watch a panel of speakers. Disability justice activist, Lydia X Z Brown, will discuss why disability is so often left out of conversations about intersectionality and the key battlegrounds disabled women are fighting on.
Saturday is a particularly interesting day at WOW. From Irish Catholic unmarried mothers to forced marriages and domestic abuse, women often carry shame as an unspoken burden. Speakers including founder of Karma Nirvana, Jasvinder Sanghera, who supports victims of honour crimes and forced marriages, and writer and Irish Times journalist, Róisín Ingle, examine how shame has been used to control women for centuries.
The Sunday explores the situation on the ground for Yazidi women and girls in the Middle East, and how the British Government and us as individuals can contribute to the fight. This comes after the UN confirmed in June 2016 – nearly two years after ISIS kidnapped 5000 Yazidi women and girls in Iraq, and slaughtered thousands more of their community – that these atrocities constituted a genocide against the Yazidi people and called for international support for survivors.
The BBW (Big Beautiful Women) talk examines why fat is still a feminist issue. In this talk, speakers discuss why the media still has a problem seeing fat women as sexy, and how fat activists and plus-size bloggers are changing the landscape.
According to the World Health Organisation, more than 50 per cent of women in the UK drink too much. Why have British women become some of the heaviest drinkers in the West and do traditional approaches to getting back on the wagon work for women?
If you like our Ode to Toilets, then go along to ‘Why Toilets Are Still A Feminist Issue?’ and find out why you should give a shit about toilets and what’s being done to achieve 'potty parity' both in the UK and globally.
Our top 3 WOW events
Adventures in Menstruating poster. Used with permission of Chella Quint
1. Adventures in Menstruating
Get ready to join in with the Menstrual Product Mambo as comedian, Chella Quint, brings her showAdventures in Menstruating to the Women of the World Festival.
Quint is on a campaign to make the world as #periodpositive as she is. She said: "There is so much negativity about menstruation and reproductive health, that we have to counteract it."
Her show started as a sex education class when she became head of PSHE at her local school, but found that comedy was the best way to get people to understand the biology of menstruation, and put them at ease so that they could ask any questions.
And Adventures in Menstruating was born.
Quint wants to make sure people who aren’t represented by mainstream messages about menstruation have access to the show. "It’s about being inclusive of menstruators on the margins, like those who identify as non-binary, trans guys, or disabled people…I hope all of the audience will enjoy singing, dancing, and poking fun at period taboos," she said.
Adventures in Menstruating is on at 3pm on 11 March.
Women Pressers strike over wages, New Jersey. Image by Kheel Center on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
2. Please Sir can I have some more?
A study by CASS Business School and the universities of Warwick and Wisconsin has found that women ask for pay rises as frequently as men, but that they’re 25 per cent less likely to get one. In comes the Southbank Centre’s Women of the World Festival. A five-day event, from 7 to 12 March to mark International Women’s Day. This year, one of their events, talks and sessions is aptly titled ‘Please Sir Can I have Some More?’ with the aim of teaching festival-goers how to make their case for a higher wage.
Starting at 11.30am in the Green Bar at the Royal Festival Hall, the interactive workshop will start by making sure women know their own worth, and then how to ask for that all important rise; and it’s not a moment too soon. A survey by the Resolution Foundation predicted that by our mid-forties, millennial women will be paid 30 per cent less than our male counterparts. And that looks even worse if you’re planning on having babies. Twelve years after their first child, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that mothers were earning a third less per hour than their male colleagues.
Things aren’t all doom and gloom though. The Resolution Foundation did find that for millennials the gender pay gap has halved to 5 per cent. This is certainly a good start, but something must be done to make sure women in their twenties aren’t still facing those odds in a decade. So head to the session and let’s start making that change.
Gillian Anderson speaking at Comic Con. Image by Gage Skidmore on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
3. Gillian Anderson
She rose to fame as Agent Dana Scully in The X-Files; tapered grey suits and 1990s crop included. Her on-screen portrayals are complex, strong women, and now she’s smashed the feminist agenda with her very own women’s manifesto. She’s taking on the empowerment of women – with liberal use of the word fuck.
Last year, Anderson became outspoken about being paid half the money that her X-files co-star, David Duchovny, was offered for the reboot of the famous series.
When she first revealed this pay disparity in the Hollywood Reporter, she said: "I think it’s important that it gets heard and voiced to get us to be paid fairly. I worked really hard toward that and finally got somewhere with it."
She later revealed that she did end up being paid the same as Duchovny, but this ordeal proved that we need women like Anderson now more than ever.
Gillian Anderson and Jennifer Nadel are launching their new book, WE: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere at this year’s WOW Festival. WE is less of an essay but instead a rallying cry to create a life that has greater meaning and purpose. Anderson and Nadel want women to support and encourage each other, and WE gives us the tools to do it.
Together, they discuss their book in conversation with Jude Kelly, Southbank Centre’s artistic director and founder of WOW festival.
Head over to the Royal Festival Hall for Gillian’s talk on 10 March at 8pm and be inspired.
To find our more about the Women of the World festival, visit the Southbank Centre website.
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