Happy International Women’s Day!
(March 8, 2024) Today, International Women’s Day, we’re excited to feature a handful of some of the fabulous and fierce lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, and allied women working all around the world for justice broadly and for LBTQ+ women in particular.
Some are working for legal gender recognition, marriage equality, and sexual liberation; others are combating gender-based violence and discrimination and organizing for women- and queer-inclusive humanitarian relief. Their methods, goals, and contexts vary, but they all share extraordinary passion, skill, and dedication to feminist and queer inclusion and empowerment.
So without further ado, let’s celebrate these and all LBTQ+ women working to make the world a better place!
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MANISHA DHAKAL, Executive Director, Blue Diamond Society (Nepal)
Active in Nepal’s LGBTQI+ movement since 2001, Manisha Dhakal has worked on projects spanning HIV/AIDS, human rights activism, constitutional campaigns, advocacy, capacity building, academic research, LGBTQI+ child rights, and more. The first transgender woman in Nepal’s Country Coordinating Mechanism for the Global Fund, Manisha is currently the Executive Director of Blue Diamond Society (BDS), the country’s pioneering LGBTQI+ rights organization, as well as the President of Federation of Sexual and Gender Minorities of Nepal.
Top Advocacy Priorities: Bridging the gap between the legal rights for LGBTQI+ people in Nepal and their implementation, such as for legal gender recognition and marriage equality.
BUKOLA LANDIS-AINA, Executive Director, Q Christian Fellowship (United States)
Bukola Landis-Aina is a first-generation Nigerian-American who is the Executive Director of Q Christian Fellowship, an organization that cultivates radical belonging for LGBTQI+ Christians and allies through a commitment to growth, community, and relational justice. Bukola is also a patent attorney, having studied Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and law at New York University. Additionally, she is ordained as a deacon. Bukola can often be found engaging in competitive sports, skiing, mentoring high school students, bringing people together, baking a cake, hosting weary travelers, and planning her next getaway with her wife and two little ones.
Top Advocacy Priorities: The vision that inspires Bukola in her work is to lead a community that prophetically models a world where all LGBTQI+ people are fully loved by family, church, and community, and Christians worldwide live up to their calling to be instruments of grace and defenders of the outcasts.
CAROL MUDZENGI, Programmes and Fundraising Officer, Voice of the Voiceless (Zimbabwe)
Carol is a queer African feminist, artist, and healing justice activist who cares deeply about decoloniality as a tool for mental well-being and collective wellness. Carol believes in trauma-informed holistic well-being with the key objective being collective care and love. She advocates for inclusion of LBQT+ persons in Zimbabwe, now with the Voice of the Voiceless collective, and has been active as an LGBTQI+ activist in various capacities for over 10 years. Carol is always seeking innovation in how queer identifying individuals can interrogate intersectionality with other struggles and build alliances with other movements.
Top Advocacy Priorities: Feminist healing justice as a catalyst for all other forms of justice to be attained.
TIFFANY KAGURE MUGO, Curator, HOLA Africa (South Africa)
Tiffany Kagure Mugo is the curator of HOLA Africa, a Pan-African sex-positive digital platform that focuses sex and sexuality on the continent through archiving stories, knowledge production and edutainment, digital community building and creating spaces that deal with safe sex and pleasure and other aspects of the politics and presence of sexuality. She hosts the sex and relationship podcast, Basically Life, and is a TED speaker. She is the author of Quirky Quick Guide To Having Great Sex, and she curated the anthology, Touch: Sex, Sexuality and Sensuality.
Top Advocacy Priorities: Bodily and sexual autonomy
NORA NORALLA, Executive Director, Cairo 52 Legal Research Institute (Egypt)
Nora Noralla is an Egyptian human rights researcher and consultant. She is currently the Executive Director of Cairo 52 Legal Research Institute and a non-resident fellow at The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. Her work focuses mainly on digital rights, sexual and bodily freedoms, LGBTQ+ rights, and Islamic Sharia from an intersectional queer feminist perspective. Her engagement with the human rights field started in the wake of the 25th of January revolution in Egypt. She has worked with different NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, Article 19, and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Top Advocacy Priorities: It is essential to identify new entry points for advancing LGBTQI+ rights in challenging contexts, such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Basic fundamental human rights, including the right to health and legal gender recognition for transgender and intersex individuals, can be attained through coordinated strategic litigation efforts. These efforts can exert pressure on MENA governments to ensure these rights, thus serving as crucial entry points for LGBTQI+ advocacy.
OLENA SHEVCHENKO, Chair, Insight (Ukraine)
A long-term advocate for LGBTQI+ and women’s rights in Europe & Central Asia, Olena Shevchenko founded Insight in 2007 to organize in support of the LGBTQI+ community in her native Ukraine. Since Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Olena has been at the forefront of establishing shelters and safe houses for LGBTQI+ Ukrainians fleeing the war, of providing food and other emergency supplies to women and LGBTQI+ people, and of advocating for LGBTQI+ inclusion in the humanitarian response to the crisis. For her work, TIME recognized Olena as one of its “Women of the Year” in early 2023.
Top Advocacy Priorities: Implementation of the Istanbul Convention (on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence); passage of the civil partnership law for LGBTQI+ people in Ukraine.
DRAGANA TODOROVIC, Executive Director, EL*C (Serbia)
Dragana Todorović is the scandalously efficient Executive Co-Director of EL*C, the EuroCentralAsian Lesbian* Community. With an unparalleled passion for the lesbian movement and an entrepreneurial spirit that doesn’t take “impossible” for an answer, Dragana (re)defines the limits of the lesbian skies, drawing from a robust and eclectic experience combining the private sector, governmental institutions, and national and regional NGOs. This fierce Yugoslavian lesbian is notably the instigator of the Balkan LGBTI network, ERA, which she led for seven years as its Executive Co-Director. A multi-hyphenated and visionary character, her numerous talents stop at drafting her own bio, which she delegates blindly to her lover.
Top Advocacy Priorities: Advocating for the adoption of the LBQ Resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which would be the first-ever international policy instrument to specifically address all forms of discrimination and violence faced by LBQ women; Lobbying for LBQ-inclusive implementation and monitoring of the Istanbul Convention, to ensure that the systems of protection, access to justice and assistance are effective for all women by adopting an intersectional approach, considering the additional obstacles faced by women from marginalized groups.