Ahead of the Women of the World Festival, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this weekend, Jude Kelly explains why she founded it – and why it’s still necessary. Emma Higginbotham reports.
Jude Kelly, founder of the Women of the World Festival, was only little when she first experienced the unfairness of being a girl: whenever she was playing knights and dragons with the boys, they cast her as the damsel in distress.
‘I was always being tied up and put in the corner,’ recalls Jude. ‘If you were a girl, you weren’t allowed to have a sword or a horse, you had to just basically be rescued. I couldn’t have called that feminism, but I remember being cross.’
She was cross again as a teenager, when her physics teacher told the class that women had inferior brains to men. She was even more cross when her (all-male) lecturers at Birmingham University dismissed her ambition to become a theatre director, purely because of her sex.
‘Most women have moments along the way don’t seem that significant, but you put them all together and they become barriers to your confidence,’ says the 65-year-old. ‘Then when you do meet people, my dad was one of them, who go “Don’t listen to them, you can do anything”, you are so relieved.’
Jude proved those lecturers laughably wrong by becoming one of the most accomplished theatre directors in the country, staging award-winning productions everywhere from the Royal Shakespeare Company to the English National Opera. By 2006 she was artistic director of Britain’s largest cultural institution, the Southbank Centre.
‘I’ve had a very happy and successful career, but that’s not because I’m talented,’ insists the mother-of-two. ‘It’s because somebody got me the vote, somebody got me education, somebody got me birth control, and you realise that in other parts of the world you wouldn’t be able have those chances, however much flair or determination you have.’
In 2010, Jude decided to take action. Realising that she could use her position as a platform to tell the stories of girls and women from across the globe, she launched the Women of the World Festival to coincide with the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day.
Held over a weekend at the Southbank Centre with keynote speakers, debates, workshops and a women-led marketplace, the Festival was a resounding hit.
Fast forward 10 years and WOW has blossomed into a global movement. Jude has given up her Southbank Centre job to become full-time director of the WOW Foundation, and festivals are now held in 20 countries on (nearly) every continent. ‘I think Antarctica is the only place that we’re not,’ she says.
In London, this year’s three-day WOW Festival will have a celebratory feel. Thousands of people will flock to see inspirational speakers including Sandi Toksvig, Naomi Wolf and Samira Ahmed join artists, activists, refugees, politicians, writers and business leaders to celebrate women and girls, and lay the pathways to a more gender-equal future – whether that’s through lobbying parliament, or rethinking how best to raise our sons.
The basic model for the Festival is the same as it was 10 years ago. ‘The biggest difference is it’s grown enormously,’ says Jude. ‘We have women there from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all ages, and that’s incredibly important because you can’t learn about a different way of looking at the world just from speaking with your own little group.’
Nor, she adds, do you have to be female to attend. ‘I always say if you identify as a woman, or you know a woman, it’s for you.’
What’s changed in the last 10 years? ‘When I started WOW, people were really tentative about having a conversation around girls’ and women’s rights because, certainly in this country, there was a feeling of “Haven’t we achieved everything we needed to achieve?”. But actually so much has come to light since then.
‘You can have many laws around equal pay – doesn’t mean it’s achieved. You can have many laws around domestic violence – doesn’t mean the culture changes. If you live in a world which continually reinforces the idea that boys and men need to be in charge, whether it’s in the playground, at work or at home, then all those rights that people win are conditional on them being delivered by people who might not even agree with them, or notice that they matter.’
Happily, though, a cultural shift seems to be underway. ‘People are much more open about things that couldn’t be discussed before, like period poverty, menopause, miscarriages, childlessness, rape, sexual harassment,’ says Jude. ‘There’s a determination now to reverse the idea that these are things that we should be ashamed of. And unless you are prepared to talk about them, there’s no way you can find new methods of solving those issues.’
Jude is, she says, hugely proud of WOW. ‘I’m incredibly moved by it, actually, and you also feel part of history. Women’s history gets caricatured as a small number of fierce, hairy, angry women doing certain things at certain times, and you realise that actually it must have been about so many women having conversations, gathering together, and then having the contradiction of rushing home to cook their husbands’ dinners.’
And her hopes for the future? ‘I want women to be more courageous, and face up to why we allow micro-humiliations to pass through all the time. We’re groomed to be nice, we don’t want to live our lives having rows with people, so it’s a very complicated thing.
‘But everybody who’s coming to WOW feels like I do, which is “Here’s our go in history to make a change”. Let’s do it!’
Highlights at this year’s WOW Festival
Corporates Get Naked
In 2018 there were more men called David leading the UK’s biggest companies than women, and the percentage of female execs is worryingly low at 10.9%. This panel looks at why gender, race, class, queer culture and disability are not translating into the business world.
Shazia Mirza: Coconut
Comedian Shazia Mirza explores the art of survival in a world of crocodiles, coconuts and alpha males, and asks burning questions such as: ‘Why is everyone fighting? Who is Alexa? And why are there no women left with real eyebrows?’
Your Money or Your Life
Did you know that women couldn’t open a bank account in their own name until 1975? Panellists discuss how to feel more confident dealing with money, and how to get the best out of your personal finances.
The C Word
Breast cancer is the UK’s most common cancer, with about 55,000 women diagnosed each year and 11,500 dying from the disease. Hear personal stories from survivors, including award-winning entrepreneur and ‘breast cancer warrior’ Leanne Pero.*
#March4Women Rally at WOW
This year #March4Women and WOW are joining forces in support of women on the front line of the climate crisis. An indoor rally at the Southbank Centre is followed by a march through central London to Parliament Square.
The WOW Festival is at the Southbank Centre, London, from 6 to 8 March. Day passes cost £40. Southbankcentre.co.uk.
An edited version of this feature was published in Waitrose Weekend in March 2020 (c) Waitrose