Mehreen Faruqi

‘I see an unashamedly feminist country where the patriarchy is dismantled, where access to abortion is unambiguously legal, where the safety of women is of the utmost importance and violence against women is confronted as the crisis that it is.’

Mehreen Faruqi is the Greens’ Senator for New South Wales, and the first Muslim woman to become senator in Australia. Faruqi has been involved in feminist and anti-racist activism throughout her life. She introduced the first ever bill to decriminalise abortion while an MP in New South Wales Parliament and won the closure of pregnancy discrimination loopholes. Faruqi’s work for reproductive rights was recognised with the feminist Edna Ryan Grand Stirrer award in 2017 ‘for inciting others to challenge the status quo’. Her ‘Love Letters to Mehreen’ series has highlighted the online harassment, bullying and toxicity experienced by women of colour in public life.