Hello, I’m Sarah and I feel very lucky to be the project co-ordinator for the Speaking Out project. When I was told that I was being offered the job, I remember that my initial reaction was to ask the interviewer ‘really?’. I couldn’t quite believe that I was going to get to contribute to this fantastic project. Now that I’m 3 months into the job, this feeling is combined with quite a few ‘gulp’ moments when I become concerned about doing the project justice. Thankfully I’m not working on this project on my own but I’m surrounded by a fantastic project team, a hugely supportive steering group, and many other women within the Women’s Aid network and beyond who have welcomed this project with such enthusiasm.
So who am I and why am I coordinating this project? I was born in Dundee and grew up in Forfar, a small town on the East Coast of Scotland. My family are from Ireland and my mum was a real inspiration to me growing up. I remember as a child my mum telling me that ‘we like Germaine’ when Germaine Greer appeared on the television. My mum regarded herself as a feminist but thought that feminist activism was for university women and not for the likes of her. Of course raising her two daughters, with the help of my dad, to believe that feminism was a good thing was feminist activism even if she didn’t recognise it as such.
My interest in women’s history and politics then emerged during my undergraduate studies at the University of Dundee. I had assumed that women were now equal and campaigns for equal rights were something of the past. Discovering in a first year politics lecture at the age of 17 that I was going to be paid less, receive less of a pension and that those making the laws in Britain were mainly white men, caused me to reassess my understanding of feminism. It led me to discover that far from being a historical event, feminism was living and breathing and relevant to my own life.
It then became really important to me to find out everything I could about women who had spoken out in the past, who had stood up and campaigned for women’s rights, and to think about the lessons and legacies from the past and how it related to issues affecting women today. It led to a PhD thesis on the Women’s Liberation Movement in Scotland which took me on the best journey of my life both in terms of travelling the length and breadth of the UK to meet and listen to fascinating women who had been active in the movement, but also in terms of my own understanding of and identification with feminism. It helped me to feel more confident about making feminist demands and to work with others to campaign for women’s rights.
So this is why I feel lucky to be working on this project. Not only am I re-engaging with the history of feminism but I’m learning such a lot about the courageous and fearless women who set up Women’s Aid and those who sustained and developed the organisation. Their stories are inspiring and we’re looking forward to sharing them with all of you.
