16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence

EXPERT SOURCES MEDIA ALERT: QUOTE THIS WOMAN+

At Quote This Woman+, we believe that by increasing the voices of women and gender non-binary people in the media, we start to legitimise their stories. This is a hugely important step towards allowing victims of gender-based violence to be heard, believed and protected. As members of the media, we encourage you to a) ensure you give gender-based violence the media space it deserves as a pandemic, and b) quote women+ throughout the year to strengthen our collective voices. Our yearly focus on gender-based violence around 16 days of activism is a great refocusing event, but we need to be committed to change the rest of the year as well.

1.

GENERAL EXPERTS ON GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE

Desiree-Anne Martin (Cape Town)
Martin is the director, facilitator and registered therapist at seven & eight integrated consulting. She runs workshops at high schools about toxic relationships, boundaries and sexual consent. She is a director/shareholder of Prospect Hill, an outpatient therapeutic group practice, and is on the exco of the Life Righting Collective. Further, Martin is a mentor for the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, and an honorary staff member of the family medicine faculty at Wits. 
Media tags: gender-based violence (GBV), abuse, trauma, mental health issues, womxn, youth, addiction recovery
COVID-19: impact of COVID-19 on mental health of the youth
Contact details: hello@desireeannemartin.com

Frederike Bubenzer (Cape Town)
Bubenzer is a senior project leader in the justice and peacebuilding programme at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. She is working on a research project on the interconnectedness between mental health and peacebuilding. The hypothesis underlying this work is that communities are likely to continue to be caught in cycles of pain and conflict if historical and intergenerational trauma is not acknowledged and integrated into long-term post-conflict reconstruction and social transformation efforts (including historical dialogue).
Media tags: gender, gender-based violence (GBV), justice, social justice, peacebuilding, war trauma, importance of dialogue, social transformation
Contact details: fbubenzer@ijr.org.za 

Gorata Chengeta (Johannesburg)
Chengeta is a sexual violence researcher and freelance writer with an interest in experiences of sex and sexual violence. Her writing interests include digital activism, gender and other social justice issues. She is currently pursuing a PhD at Wits University, focusing on providing holistic and comprehensive community-based care to sexual violence survivors.
Media tags: gender-based violence (GBV), sexual violence, rape culture, rape, coercion, gender inequality, feminism, feminist activism
Contact details: chengetag@gmail.com 

Joan De Klerk (Johannesburg)
De Klerk is an educator and gender specialist, working as a consultant. She was the director of public education and information at the Commission for Gender Equality and a member of UNESCO South Africa National Commission. 
Media tags: gender-based violence (GBV), gender equality broadly, women empowerment, gender mainstreaming
Contact details: joan.deklerk@gmail.com 

Masana Mulaudzi (Johannesburg)
Mulaudzi is the Programmes Director at Sonke Gender Justice, whose mission is to advance gender justice and womxn’s rights, prevent gender-based violence and reduce the spread and impact of HIV/AIDs. She is passionate about social justice, feminist praxis and thought, and transformation of the global political economy. 
Media tags: gender-based violence (GBV), inequality, gender equality, womxn’s rights, feminist parenting, socioeconomic justice, macroeconomic policy, international development, social justice, race relations
Contact details: masana@genderjustice.org.za

Rikky Minyuku (Johannesburg)
Minyuku is a feminist human rights, development and facilitation practitioner. She is an associate director at Womaniko, a coaching and gender transformative change organisation. Previously she served as the South African director of Human Rights Watch, and was a constitutional legislation officer at the South African Human Rights Commission. 
Media tags: gender-based violence (GBV), gender bias, inequality, human rights, corporate transformation
Contact details: rminyuku@womaniko.com

Roseline Orwa (Nairobi)
Orwa is a social entrepreneur, and a gender and development expert. She has worked with sex and gender-based violence issues and rural women empowerment programs in Kenya. Orwa founded the Rona Foundation, which serves to ensure that harmful widowhood practices are eliminated. She believes that such cultural practices must be addressed for SDG 5 (achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls) to be met by 2030.
Media tags: widowhood cultural practices, gender-based violence (GBV), gender mainstreaming, gender justice
Contact details: roselineorwa@ronafoundation.co.ke

Tiekie Barnard (Johannesburg)
Barnard is a gender equality activist and started the gender-based violence and femicide #ITSNOTOK_AFRICA movement in South Africa. She is an advocate for a shared value approach to business, which connects success to social progress – ‘profit with purpose’. She has started hosting discussions about the role the private sector can play to bring about change in terms of gender equality.
Media tags: gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF), gender parity in the workplace, corporate social impact, a shared value approach to business (which connects success to social progress) 
Contact details: tiekie@shiftimpact.africa

2.

GBV LAW AND POLICY

Advocate Bernadine Bachar (Cape Town)
Advocate Bachar is the Director of the largest multi-disciplinary service centre for abused women and children in South Africa, the Saartjie Baartman Centre, as well as the Chairperson of the Western Cape Women’s Shelter Movement and an admitted advocate with the High Court of South Africa. Further, she is an exco member of the National Shelter Movement of South Africa, and head of the gender-based violence advocacy programme for Soroptomist International SA.
Media tags: gender-based violence (GBV), women and children’s rights, law as it relates to GBV survivors, family law, NGO development and management, The National Strategic Plan (NSP), Domestic Violence Act (DVA)
COVID-19: GBV, shelters, women’s rights, legislation
Contact details: director@womenscentre.co.za

Florence Machio (Kitengela, Kenya)
Machio is a women’s rights activist in the areas of gender-based violence (GBV) and sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR). She has designed and implemented 25 conversations in 25 schools in Africa, highlighting the voices of young girls who have been sexually violated to policymakers. Together with others, she organised a femicide vigil in Kenya, drawing the attention of top government agencies, and resulting in budgetary allocation for a forensic lab. 
Media tags: sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR), women leadership, human rights
COVID-19: GBV as the shadow pandemic
Contact details: fmachio@gmail.com

Sanja Bornman (Cape Town)
Bornman is an attorney consulting in gender law and policy. She conducts constitutional and impact litigation in the areas of gender-based violence and gender equality; advocates for policy and law reform; and provides gender rights training and education. Bornman was the head of the Gender Equality Programme at Lawyers for Human Rights.
Media tags: sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), gender equality, human rights, women’s rights, LGBTIQ+ rights, discrimination, hate crimes, impact litigation, sexual harassment
Contact details: sanjabornman@gmail.com

3.

JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS OF GBV

Mbali Mazibuko (Pretoria/Johannesburg)
Mazibuko is a researcher at UNISA’s Institute for Gender Studies (where she is organising their 16 Days of Activism Campaign), and a PhD candidate at the University of the Western Cape’s department of women’s and gender studies. She has presented research around feminism, women’s organising and gender-based violence at local and international conferences and provided insight and clarity on these matters to the media. 
Media tags: gender-based violence (GBV), women’s protest, the role/uses of social media in fighting violence against women, femicide, ideas around gender justice and consequence for perpetrators, the place of feminism in our society, gender roles/expectations, popular media culture and gender representation, the inclusion of queer narration, women’s month, women’s representation, academia
Contact details: mbali.maz@gmail.com

Naitore Nyamu-Mathenge (Nairobi)  
Nyamu-Mathenge is the head of the Physicians for Human Rights Kenya office, responsible for the advancement of the program on sexual violence in conflict zones in Kenya. She has over a decade’s experience specializing in the advancement of women’s and girls human rights, with a focus on the elimination of gender-based violence. 
Media tags: reparations for victims of sexual and gender-based violence, womens’ and girls’ human rights, human rights, transitional justice
COVID-19: incorporating a human rights approach in response to COVID-19, sexual and gender-based violence in times of COVID-19 
Contact details: naitore.nyamu@gmail.com

4.

GBV AND THE YOUTH

Nokhetho Mhlanga (Johannesburg)
Mhlanga is a Researcher at the HSRC. Her areas of interest are gender-based violence, child sex offending, social justice, community psychology, feminism, identity politics and mentoring. Mhlanga holds a MA in social and psychological research with a thesis focussing on child sexual offending.
Media tags: gender-based violence (GBV), child sexual violence, social justice, community psychology
Contact details: mhlanganokhetho@gmail.com

Prof Shakila Singh (Durban)
Prof Singh’s teaching, supervision, research and publications are in the fields of gender, sexuality and gender-based violence at universities. She is an Associate Professor in Gender Education at UKZN and is on several gender-based violence (GBV) task teams.
Media tags: gender-based violence (GBV) at higher education institutions, alcohol and drugs at university, sexuality education in schools, teenage pregnancy, toxic masculinity
Contact details: singhs7@ukzn.ac.za

5.

LAST YEAR’S LIST

Click here for last year’s list of GBV experts if you’d like to see even more. 

6. 

CONTACTS

If you need an expert’s cell number or would like access to the rest of the QW+ database contact
– Jordan 0812436653 / jordan@quotethiswoman.org.za

PS: If you’d like to sign up to receive our updates via email, you can do so here.

Picture from UN Women