Professor Liz Kelly joined a BBC Radio panel in sharing stories, tactics, goals, and challenges in the campaign to end male violence against women.
Date: 07 June 2022
Professor Liz Kelly featured on Samira Ahmed’s BBC Radio 4 series Generational Change, discussing her work and activism in the ongoing campaign to end violence against women.
The documentary (now a podcast) brought together four feminists from two different generations, reflecting on the on the challenges and breakthrough moments and discussing their differences, philosophically and culturally.
Professor Liz Kelly, who has worked in the field of violence against women for almost five decades, is the Director of the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at the University. She is also a professor of sexualised violence and holds the Roddick Chair on Violence Against Women.
She shared the story of how she first found herself at a Women’s Liberation Movement meeting, becoming part of the group that set up the UK’s second refuge outside London for women suffering from abuse in Norwich in 1974.
“We organised as a collective, we didn’t have paid workers, we called ourselves a support group”.
Within eight days of opening the refuge it was full.
The podcast was hosted by veteran BBC journalist Samira Ahmed and social change consultant Katherine Rake, former Chief Executive of The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for gender equality and women's rights. Joining the conversation were Julie Bindel, author and journalist and campaigner, Jessica Taylor a psychologist, feminist author and campaigner, and Meena Kumari, who works in frontline with victims and perpetrators of abuse.
They shared stories of their individual experiences,the barriers to change, and what inspires them to continue fighting for an end to violence against women.
