Conference

Margaret Martin is the director of Women's Aid. Her background is in education and training, where she has 20 years experience. Margaret was a volunteer member of Dublin Rape Crisis Centre in the early 1980s. In particular, she has worked with marginalised and disadvantaged women’s education groups and was the team leader for Ireland’s first training manual for women’s education groups – “From the Personal to the Political.” Margaret acted as a consultant for NGO representatives on the Task Force on Violence against Women. Prior to working with Women’s Aid, Margaret was Projects Manager for the National Women’s Council of Ireland

Leila Sheikh is a journalist activist who has specialized in media advocacy and public education programs. She designed the first crisis centre program in Tanzania to give support to women undergoing intimate partner violence. Leila also designed a outreach and training program to sensitize Tanzania’s public about violence against women including domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment and female genital mutilation. She has written extensively on VAW and produced television documentaries on the issue, which has testimony from survivors. In 1998, Leila coordinated the lobby for the enactment of the Sexual Offences Special Provisions Act (SOSPA 1998) which changed the outlook of the judicial system in Tanzania, and amended the Penal Code to shift the blame from a rape victim to the offender. Leila is a political scientist by training, a journalist in profession and a volunteer in programs which assist women in distress- survivors of VAW, widows with HIV/AIDS and albino women who live in fear for their lives because of the trend to kill albino women in order to use parts of their bodies for witchcraft ritual. Leila has also campaigned for old women who get killed after being accused of practicing witchcraft.

Dr. Nata Duvvury is Lecturer and Co-Director of the Global Women’s Studies Programme at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Dr. Duvvury has extensive international research and program experience in gender and development, with particular emphasis on gender inequality, domestic violence, rights-based approaches to development, and civil society participation and accountability. She led a five-year path-breaking research on domestic violence in India in partnership with 20 academic institutions and NGOs., which provided the evidence needed to propel the passing of a new law on domestic violence in India. Additionally she has explored the links between women’s property and inheritance rights, HIV/AIDS, and violence against women and directed a small grants program in Sub-Saharan Africa to identify innovative interventions to strengthen the property and inheritance rights of women. She recently completed a multi-country country study on estimating the costs of intimate partner violence in Bangladesh, Morocco and Uganda. (Click here to download “Keeping Gender on the Agenda: Gender Based Violence, Poverty and Development”, a paper prepared on behalf of the Joint Consortium on Gender Based Violence by Nata Duvvury.)

Ailbhe Smyth is the former director of the the Women’s Education, Research and Resource Centre (WERRC) at UCD, where she was senior lecturer in Women’s Studies for many years. She has served on numerous State boards and has published widely on feminist issues. Ailbhe has been actively involved in the Women’s Movement and other social movement campaigns in Ireland since the late 1970s and currently works as a consultant and educator in the NGO and community sectors.