Focus: Gender/Women

Korto Reeves

Korto Reeves is currently the global Head of Women's Rights in ActionAid International, a social justice federation in 43 countries. Over the last 13 years, she has worked with the organization in several positions, including Country Director in Liberia from 2010 to 2016. She has 20 years of professional experience working across Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, and with USAID and UNDP. She is an African feminist and strategic civil society leader in Liberia and on the continent. A significant contributor to shaping feminist discourse on multiple and intersecting issues in the region, she is a member of the Urgent Action Fund-Africa and Sustainable Development Institute boards. As a…

Fatema Jafari

Fatema Jafari is a women’s rights advocate and public official working as a member of the Provincial Council of Herat for more than 10 years, where she serves on a number of committees related to women’s rights in Afghanistan. As the head of the family support committee for three years, she facilitated the creation of an umbrella group of roughly 80 women’s organizations to help coordinate their efforts. Previously she participated in three Loya Jirga Assemblies (consultative councils) for peace and security issues from 2009–2013 and recently the Peace Loya Jirga in April 2019. She has worked on several advocacy campaigns opposing violence against women and has pressed for greater…

Hoda Elsadda

Hoda Elsadda is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cairo University. She previously held a Chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at Manchester University, and was Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World in the UK. She was Carnegie Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University in 2014-2015. In 1992, she co-founded and co-edited Hagar, an interdisciplinary journal in women’s studies published in Arabic. In 1997, she co-founded and is currently Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Women and Memory Forum (www.wmf.org.eg), a research organization which focuses on reading Arab cultural history from a gender-sensitive perspective. She is a member of the…

Tania Bruguera

Tania Bruguera is a political performance artist who explores the relationship between art, activism, social change, and political and economic power. Born and raised in Havana, several of her exhibitions have interrogated and “re-presented” events in Cuban history. Tania explores both the promise and failings of the Cuban Revolution through performances that provoke viewers to consider political realities masked by government propaganda and mass-media interpretation. In 2011, Tania started Immigrant Movement International, a multi-part artwork that will ran through 2015. She spent a year living in a small apartment in Corona, Queens, with five undocumented immigrants and their children. Engaging both local and international communities, as well as working with…

Thora Arnorsdottir

Thora Arnorsdottir is Managing Editor at Iceland's Kveikur, RUV TV, a television program focused on investigative journalism. In addition to being a renowned media personality and documentary filmmaker, she was also a 2012 candidate for the Presidency of Iceland. Although she lost the election by a narrow margin, Thora sparked international debate on gender roles and equality: she was 8 months pregnant with her third child when she announced her candidacy. Thora has worked at Icelandic National Broadcasting Service as a news editor and journalist, and she is Founder and Owner of Hugveitan, a documentary production company that has created films including Outlaws: The Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Society…

Subhashini Chandran

As Vice President, Social Impact, Asia Pacific (AP) at the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth (CFIG), Subhashini Chandran is responsible for overseeing, executing, and scaling the Center’s strategy in Asia Pacific, contributing to global and regional objectives. In her role, she drives all regional CFIG activity covering programs, data and insights, strategic engagement, and partnerships.  Subhashini has 25+ years of experience spanning the private and development sectors. She began her professional journey as an entrepreneur, growing her family’s tea farm in South India, to be one of India’s largest privately owned tea companies, employing ~7000 women. More recently, she has focused on the inclusion of small businesses and women-led enterprises…

In Defense of Feminism

Can Data Make India a Safer Place for Women?