GIRL POWER:

A Profile on Jacqui Hunt, London Director of Equality Now

Words: Emily Rawson

Jacqui Hunt is relaxed back in her arm chair with her hands folded on her lap. She

bites her lip and begins to shake her head slowly, “They‟re just horrible, horrible

stories that I can‟t imagine people would do to each other- and that‟s only on the

violent side!” Jacqui is referring to the India Gang Rape Case Equality Now recently

ran a campaign for, where an iron bar was used during the attack Although she may

be showing signs of disbelief, Jacqui shrugs it off, not in a spiteful way, but in a way

that shows just how thick her skin has grown to such incidents since working with the

women’s right organisation for over ten years.

To prove her willpower and strength, various DVDs sit behind her on her

bookshelves, one of which reads, „An Execution of a 17 Year Old Girl‟, as well as

brightly coloured campaign posters covering every inch of her office walls. Masses of

paperwork flood the cabinets, and opened up on her computer are still incomplete

power points and word documents. It seems that even at half six in the evening after a

long day at work, she is willing to discuss her passion and the importance of women’s

rights.

“We were founded just over 20 years ago and we were looking to support work against violence and discrimination against women because 20 years ago traditionally the international human rights groups weren’t particularly focusing on women and there was a huge need to look at women’s needs.” Jacqui deliberately emphasises on the fact that it wasn’t too long ago that a man would get away with beating his wife to death, “so we focus then on women’s rights, we’re trying to promote women’s rights and protect them too.” Jacqui’s seen it all, and working from project to project, her passion for protecting women’s rights has taken it’s toll yet the satisfaction she describes is invaluable , “The one (project) that I was most personally involved with that took a lot of my personal energy was campaigning for a new mechanism in the UN for a working group on discrimination against women and we started that campaign five years before we actually got it… but we finally got it done in the end of 2010 and that was a huge achievement.”

Being the London Director of Equality Now, Jacqui points out that there are a lot of things she had to keep disclosed, one of which is her personal life, but on this occasion she simply smiles up at me as if she was reflecting on a childhood memory, “I think I’ve always had a really deep sense of fairness and justice, not necessarily on women’s rights, but even just for a very long time I’ve always deeply felt unfairness and what that means, so it’s not that there’s been one particular issue, it’s just something I’ve been feeling strongly about for a very long time.”

With the world moving forward, and Equality Now with it, Jacqui’s inspiration was sparked off for her latest project not by a headline story, but rather who was writing them. Her blog, ‘Everyday Sexism in the Media’ was inspired by Laura Bates blog ‘Everyday Sexism’, and the blog allows “people to contribute their own experiences of the media, so looking at their own examples and trying to highlight the problem, and show people what the issues is so we can all work towards changing that.” Jacqui recalls spending in “a two week period where EN studied 11 national newspapers, and in that 2 week period there were 13,00 sexist references of one kind or another.” With hundreds of thousands of members around the world, the campaign has been powerful enough to make its way into the Leveson Enquiry Report, of which has made the campaign one of the most successful to date.

Although the Everyday Sexism in the Media campaign has skyrocketed overnight, there are dozens of countries and cultures out there that still need Equality Now’s help, and Jacqui makes it very clear that she won’t take a break out from her work. “I think we saw awful things every day, but the good thing is that there are a lot of people working their hardest, I included, changing this internationally.”