Necessary Truths: Fatima Bhutto and Mona Eltahawy

There’s a million reasons why we’re told to keep quiet on difficult subjects: propriety and decorum, convention and status, fear of retribution. When women try to introduce nuance into certain public debates, it doesn’t usually go well for them. Western media conglomerates are often more interested in protecting power than interrogating it. If a woman offers an unvarnished analysis of power structures, or a contrary view, it’s often framed as ugly, inappropriate or ungrateful.
Two of the world’s most fearless, most honest, most forthright voices unpick the challenges and pitfalls of a life of truth.
In conversation with Sisonke Msimang.
This event will be Auslan interpreted.
Featuring
Featuring

‘Millions of women suffer but they also struggle, they resist and fight. Pakistan is a harsh country, an unfair country, but it also produces women with extraordinary spirit.’ Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and grew up in Syria and Pakistan. She is the author of six books o... Read more

‘The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters.’ No voice coming out of the Arab Spring was as urgent and essential as Mona Eltahawy’s. Her new book, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, is an incendiary call to arms from a journalist define... Read more

Sisonke Msimang is the author of Always Another Country: A memoir of exile and home and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela: A biography of survival. She is a South African writer whose work is focussed on race, gender and democracy. She has written for a range of international publications including... Read more
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