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Sanam Hi everyone, welcome to If You Were In Charge with me, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini.
Kavita Ramdas And me Kavita Nandini Ramdas.
Sanam We are back after the summer and very excited to be starting with this episode marking really two feminist icons who have departed. Dolly Parton. Gloria Steinem. Yeah.
Kavita Ramdas Gloria Steinem.
Sanam And you know, just with Dolly, I for me what was poignant was that she, like so many of the more recent actors and and singers and people who've died, they are kind of the soundtrack of our generation globally, in a strange way. I mean it's you know, at least in the West for sure, but they they've been present in such a strange way, and I it just feels like a big loss somehow that this voice has gone. Gloria Steinem You probably know her more than I do. I ironically, because I never really met her, even though she knew about the WPS agenda, I I never actually met her in person.
Kavita Ramdas I met her many times and most recently we had dinner together with a group of other long-term activists in the feminist movement, just before Christmas last year in her amazing little townhouse in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. House that has really come to be a place for feminist gatherings, as many of the obituaries said. But yeah, kind of interesting to have these two very well known American. icons, one in the space of feminist movements proper, and one in the space of, as you said, entertainment and music and the soundtrack of a certain generation of us. And yes, I do think around the world, of course, based on class and exposure to Western stuff, of course.
Sanam But but also kind of embodying certain values. So the fact that Dolly Parton had her imagination library and was giving books in in the US and Tennessee and poor areas, but also here in England. Or you know, so many people have said, you she could have been a billionaire, but she wasn't because she gave the money back. I mean, again, it feels like a certain generation that it wasn't about just accumulation of wealth, it was actually about giving back. And you just wonder whether that sentiment is still alive in a n younger generation.
Kavita Ramdas And I think very much so when you think about Gloria's having been responsible for being a founding mother of the Ms. Foundation for Women, which was the very first women's foundation. It inspired countless others, including the place that I had the privilege of leading the Global Fund for Women and Mama Cash, which was the Dutch Women's Fund. But really the Ms. Foundation for Women was the very first time that women had gotten together and said, Well, if nobody else aka mainstream foundations will fund what women are doing, including, by the way, women artists, women filmmakers, women musicians, then we're going to do it. And we're going to do it in a particularly feminist way, which was neither Gloria, who grew up poor in a trailer park actually in Ohio, nor Dolly grew up with means, right? But they one of them made a lot of money as a as an entertainer. And then Gloria by creating the Ms. Foundation for Women, created a sense of a shared philanthropy. So people gave to the Ms. Foundation for Women and then the Ms. Foundation for Women paid it forward. So and I I I think that's kind of an amazing thing to, as you said, to talk about what giving back meant to both of them.
Sanam Yeah, and it it's you know, I sort of I always think about myself as the next generation of that came through because for two reasons. One, I did not grow up in America, and and ironically when I think back to my mother's generation in Iran, who was roughly the same age as Gloria, actually pretty much the same age you know, in Iran of the seventies, w if you were in the public administrative sector. You if you were a school teacher or a hosp in in in the medical s work, I mean, if you worked for the for public service, they had equal pay. So that wasn't an issue. Abortion was it existed. It was I mean, again, it might not have been accessible to very poor people for sure, because the birth rates were, you know, something like seven, seven to eight, you know, children. But it existed and it wasn't illegal, right? It was interesting for me that The question of feminism was really not centered to my upbringing because I lived with it in Iran and then in England going to girl school. And then in the work that we started doing on women, peace and security, it came so much from the non Western world that there was a disconnect in many ways for those of us generationally and around the question of peace and security coming from, as I say, non Western contexts or or war zones as opposed to a you know, non-war zone. And being disconnected from that feminist tradition. So there were bridges and some overlaps, but there were also silos, which is really, really sad. 'Cause I wrote from his magazine many years later. Well
Kavita Ramdas Like you, I was growing up in a different part of the world in nineteen seventy-two when the Ms. Foundation was formed. Abortion was already legal in India. it had just been made formally legal in nineteen seventy-one. And indeed, I think one of the thoughts that I've had as I've been watching everybody post on LinkedIn their pictures with, you know, themselves or LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram, their pictures with Gloria, you know, when they last saw her, they were good friends. Something that I'm trying quite consciously not to do anymore because I I just feel like this has become a whole performative thing that we do now on social media. Whereas I think there was a different time in which you grieved for people who you missed, but it was and even if they were public figures, the way you grieved is, you know, you went to the funeral or you stood in long lines for the procession. And now it's sort of as much about your picture as it is the person who's past, right? I think that that that to me was really striking. You know, I knew her, I knew her. Don't know how much that was the case with Dolly, but I think what came to mind when you were talking about Iran, Sanam though, is that here we've had three weeks maybe in global headlines, certainly across the West, with Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem. And I just keep thinking of all the women in our parts of the world, in Iran, in Iraq, the Fatima Mernissi, the Umm Kulthums, you know, the the Lata Mangeshkars, the the f both the famous singers who were quite extraordinary, and the extraordinary activists and feminists who really changed. I mean, the abortion law in India didn't just change magically, it changed because there were women who were active and involved and fighting. And I think that that's true for any part of our world. And so as I think about teaching this course, that you know, I'm teaching at my alma mater this. Fall, which I hope you'll come speak at, I called it feminism remains foreign. And I called it that because when I was doing my research at the Bosch Foundation on the question of a feminist foreign policy, remember how shocked I was to learn that abortion was still illegal in Germany? Or
Sanam When you look at, you know, when women got their rights to have a bank account in Switzerland, which is it's an issue.
Kavita Ramdas Exactly. Exactly. Or or the fact that women still can't get enough childcare in Germany and that Germany has the lowest rate of labor force participation of women anywhere in the EU.
Sanam I I wonder whether this moment where we're seeing so much of the ecosystem and the architecture of rights and peace and security and multilateralism in a way being destroyed by the very forces that create helped create it, the United States and the the UK and others. But I've been looking back at at the history of women's roles in multilateralism and where we situate ourselves, you know, what's the sort of trajectory of history between The work that we've done on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda globally, the history of ICAN, which is 20 years this year, this organization that I found from an armchair in my living room in Washington, and where we fit in that historic spectrum. And I was reading about the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And, you know, the headline news was always, Eleanor Roosevelt led this effort and it's all about her. But you read below the headlines and you realize that on questions of women's rights, it was Latin American women, Pakistani, Indian, Arab women who were the ones that were saying you have to have the word women and men. You have to talk about women's rights and and so forth. And not only this is not in 1945, but then you go back to the League of Nations, and again it's Latin Americans and others. So this idea of feminism being foreign foreign yes, foreign to the Anglo Saxon world somehow, but not to the rest of us, ironically.
Kavita Ramdas I think the framing I for this course again, of course I've been doing my readings and reading the Combahee collective statement, which was this group of black feminists in the early seventies saying why they felt that white feminism was not really reflective of third world aspirations and the Conscious identification of black women inside the United States with third world struggles, quote unquote third world struggles. And I think that that understanding of how a decolonial liberatory framework for feminism was not yet there and in many ways is still not here in the West, where even after 9-11, for example, we talked about the security moms who were willing to let go. All levels of democratic freedoms, democratic rights, the freedom from surveillance, so that they could be protected by the state against those foreigners. And so I think the issues of feminism and being foreign are also deeply connected to all the issues you work on, whether it's migration, whether it's militarism, it's the other. And for those others, then feminism becomes a kind of either a benevolent act, like, we're gonna go save those women, right?
Sanam We're gonna and a we're we're going to go and empower them. I'll never forget Hillary Clinton standing on stage at Georgetown University with a group of Afghan women who had been politicians and activists, literally risking their lives, you know, to build their country. But this is before the Americans sold them in at the negotiation tables in Qatar. But standing on stage and talking about how we have empowered them. And I was sitting there thinking, my God.
Kavita Ramdas We're going to empower them.
Sanam If this was about Iranian women and I was sitting there and she kept talking about how we've empowered Iranian women, I'd I would probably either throw a chair or walk out or it but but these Afghan women were so gracious and so d dignified and they they they just let her speak like that. And I was thinking, you have no idea what these people go through every day to fight for basic things. And so yeah, so there is that question of that benevolent and being matronized the number of times. Sat in meetings with Yes. I think it was Samantha Power at one point when she became she was US ambassador and she was lecturing us on you know what the role of women is and I was thinking, We got the agenda that enables you to be in the job that you're in. So and you're now matronizing us and telling us, you know, you shouldn't say this, that and the other. So yes, it's an interesting tension.
Kavita Ramdas Well, I think the the failure to recognize that patterns of racism and white supremacy and colonial legacies overlay this notion that sisterhood is global. I think that's one of the things that I struggle with the most and that I hope I can share with my students because I think even in the space that I have worked in in philanthropy, and I just talked about the Ms. Foundation for Women having become the first women's fund. With Gloria as one of the founding mothers, but I think, Sanam, think about it. If a group of us had created a foundation that was women of wealth from China and Iran and India, and and if we came to try and help the poor, oppressed women in the United States who currently don't have abortion as a legal right at the federal level, to women who don't make equal pay for equal wages. And if we were supporting social movements, feminist movements. to empower American women. Can you imagine how topsy turvy that would seem, both in terms of which way philanthropy may flow and who is empowering whom? And I think that that's that is something that it is important for us to take a second and step back and think about what that might actually look like.
Sanam So so that's one side. So there are a couple of thoughts that that I that I have on that. So one is that sadly and ironically, because of the dominance of the white Western, often American figures in these spaces, so much of what we have done internationally gets kind of tarred with the brush of, this is a Western feminist agenda, right? Yes. And so literally I'm like We're talking about, you know, women's involvement and mediating the release of hostages in Yemen. They're using their tribal connections and their identity and their, you know, and and cultural norms. And yet it's somehow negotiated to negotiate in traditional ways. In Pakistan, they're they're using verses of the Quran to talk to the extremists about how Islam teaches about diversity and and
Kavita Ramdas Go sh.
Sanam And being peaceful and be and and and it's so easily kind of pushed aside or undermined by being s sort of framed as these are Western feminists. This isn't our culture. One of the issues that I remember encountering was I was in a meeting with again an older generation of of women, and they were all lawyers. And they were saying, It's the law, you know, culture is is against us, and it's the law that enables us to have these rights.
Kavita Ramdas Exactly.
Sanam As an anthropologist, I was thinking, but if we cede the cultural space and if we say that all of our cultures are backwards, which is a f again, a very Western framing, correct. Then and we say the law is the only place that gives us rights, we're gonna make the same mistake that actually the abortion laws in the US made. Yeah, we you we have to reoccupy culture and reclaim.
Kavita Ramdas Sanam, you know, my the only TED talk I've ever given is called Radical Women Embracing Tradition. And it was about exactly this. And I tell the story of Sakena Yacoobi who was running these underground schools in Afghanistan the first time around, in the nineties, when, you know, people weren't paying any heed until nine eleven happened. And Sakina had done this extraordinary thing in which she had reached out to an imam in her local community when the Taliban had stopped allowing girls to come to school. And she invited his wife and daughter to come to this small school that they were running. And she said, Well, why don't you come and teach what the Quran has to say about women's equality and women's dignity? And when other people in the community saw that the Imam's wife and the Imam's daughter were coming to study at the school, of course that gave legitimacy and power and and a sense of safety also for people to be able to come. So I think I also, as someone who grew up in India, often chafing against things that I saw as being traditionally limiting, have By the time I was running the Global Fund for Women and meeting all these extraordinary women who were using traditions deep inside their own culture, including Leymah Gbowee in Liberia, who, you know, had had that wonderful story before she got the Nobel Women Prize for Peace. There's a tradition in Liberia of if an older woman takes off her clothes, you will be cursed, right? And so these police came to move all these women away who had surrounded the peace talks in Ghana. And she begins to untie her turban and then they're so embarrassed that they all back away and I thought to myself, not understanding the power of tradition that can be harnessed for liberation.
Sanam before Leymah did that in Liberia, 'cause it's it's a West African tradition. Yeah. And in Sierra Leone, again in the nineties, there was a peace agreement. Fourteen peace agreements had failed. And finally they they cobbled together, you know, the the the latest version of it. And the RUF, the Revolutionary United Front, was being really horrific and not maintaining the the their end of the bargain. And then a group of elderly women from the church were going to visit them. To ask for them to stop the violence. And the men insulted them. And these women lifted up their skirts and bared their bottoms to these fighters. And it literally sparked a whole cycle of changes because doing that meant they were cursing them. Then it meant that the elder representatives of the church had to come and defend. The honor of the women and stand with the women. And it just completely changed what happened in in West Africa. In Cameroon, same thing. We have partners in in the ICAN network and they they have these secret women's societies. But the British looked at it through the lens of men's networks, like men's clubs, and they they destroyed the men's versions, but they never looked at the women's because they were coming from Victorian England and they they didn't care about women.
Kavita Ramdas Important
Sanam But those those networks still exist and and they trigger them when they see injustice in society. So at one point my partners had five thousand women blocking the street in front of the presidential palace, weeping. So again, using the idea of women crying as so many stories and and so many ways in which women are incredibly clever at
Kavita Ramdas The social.
Sanam taking what is perceived weakness and turning it into a strength, including in Iran, which you know, the women life freedom that was that's been happening. Yeah.
Kavita Ramdas I do think that slowly, I mean certainly I think for Gloria towards the end of her life, I think she was much more exposed to tr both traditions within the United States, although it was striking to me that there were very few black women who were writing paeans of praise to Gloria and showing pictures of themselves with her. And in part that I think also reflects history. The most recent President of the Ms. Foundation, but also the very first president of the Ms. Foundation to be an African American woman was Teresa Younger, who's just finishing her fifth her twelve year term. And the new president of the Ms. Foundation for women is also a black woman, Tracy Sturdivant, both quite extraordinary people. But I do recall that at the beginning of Teresa's stint. antenna when she said, you know, I really want to focus our work on the people who are most in need, and they are disproportionately women of color and their children, and that has not really been a focus of the Ms. Foundation for many years. There were people on her board who literally said, Well, but we don't see ourselves in this mission. And so to say that you were focusing on people of color, on women of color, was still something challenging. e just even ten years ago. And so I think that that is also something for us to recall is that there are struggles both with inside empire. So if we want to think of the United States and the Western world as empire, and we saw that you and I living in Germany in terms of how migrants in Germany are treated or Muslims in Germany are treated. But then there are also struggles about the invisibility of feminist led movements or even what is considered feminist In the rest of the world. I think both things are happening.
Sanam You realize that, you know, you can talk in terms of movements and collective work, but actually so often this is about again how Gloria herself talked about, you know, sharing the light within each. You know, it's not just passing the torch from one grandee to another. It
Kavita Ramdas Right. That there are many that there are many people carrying the torches.
Sanam Many, it's many candles, right. And and I was exchanging with with some of my cousins and and one of my cousins who'd been at at Smith said, I remember Gloria Steinem coming to give us a talk when I was twenty years old and her advice made me feel good about the choices that I was making in my my instinct. So this this question of how many lives you end up touching and and how many lives you end up inspiring without even knowing. Like sometimes we just don't know. And so, you know, to be a voice out there, whoever, especially in these times, is is so is so important. And important. And and and is I see it's like a it's a it's a constant back and forth. It's like synapses that that because for me I when I think about it, I'm like the South African that I met 25 years ago. And the you know it it's constantly. And then I, you know, and I come across people who've who like what I've said or who when I say I'm working with you, they they're like, you know, I remember Kavita from Where whatever it is, and you just you have no idea. So so yeah, it's really nice and it's and it's I'm glad you're teaching. I'm gonna be back at Columbia as well, and I'm looking forward to it. It's so it's you know.
Kavita Ramdas The ability to be surrounded by a group of young people also encourages us to learn and encourages us to think differently and also helps us see what is and isn't. I mean, I think there were certainly areas in which I disagreed with Gloria quite profoundly. One of them was on the question of trafficking and prostitution, for example. She was never really able to come around to the notion of sex work as work. Having grown up in a country where women were Often reduced to being able to only have their bodies to sell, and who were pointing out to us that whether they were working as housemaids or whether they were working in factories, they were often sexually abused anyway. And at least within the context of sex work, they perhaps had more control. But conflating the two issues became, you know, and and I think that is also related to this issue of the saving of women. I think in the in the Western Framing of sexuality, somehow sex and your body is something very precious and has to be preserved and, you know, protected very much in that sort of virgin whore continuum. And I think for many women who are trying to put food on the table for their children, they're like, we are selling our bodies in a hundred different ways. And our bodies are all we have because you haven't got schools for us, you haven't educated us, you haven't been able to give us access to capital, you know. And also the question is framing it as a choice I don't think is the right framing at all. which is the same issue I have about the question of abortion. I don't think I know anybody who wakes up in the morning and says, Wait, let me and certainly none of the amazing sex workers I've worked with all across India and all across many other parts of the world. Nobody wakes up and says, Wait, shall I be a secretary, a you know, Air Force pilot or shall I be a sex worker? That's not the context within which we're talking. We're talking about people who often have very limited sets of choices and who have had a series of experiences that have made them feel like this is something that they can actually manage and this is something that actually gives them some power and some control. May not be something we always can understand. It may not be something that we are saying is. an ideal situation. And frankly, most often it's not something they're saying is an ideal situation either. But then to be penalized for it and to be criminalized and then made victims both of police harassment as well as not being able to make a living. But again, I think what what gives me hope, Sanam, is that in our multiple feminisms, which I think we've just talked about, the range, the scale, the scope, I think women have contested a primary Very often white upper middle class dominated version of one form of feminism and said, look, we are global. If sisterhood is global, then our feminisms and our movements are also global. And they're going to be different in different realities. And don't judge us based on your narrow interpretation of morality or safety or security.
Sanam You know, the the poignancy of somebody like Gloria Steinem passing away with Roe v. Hyde gone, Roe v. Wade gone.
Kavita Ramdas I the Hyde Amendment is also a horrible thing, but yes.
Sanam And the rise of Christian nationalism and trad wife kind of versions of woman.
Kavita Ramdas All of whom are probably listening to Dolly Parton.
Sanam And and what's interesting is is the way in which so many of their icons seem to be willing to be co-opted and used by corporate forces. So there's this one woman called Savanna Stone, who's now become like the you know big icon of of the conservative movement, and she goes on stage talking about how she listens to her husband and how she thinks she shouldn't have a right to vote, and he sh he's the you know he's the man of the household. And then there was a documentary just made about about her. And the husband is sitting around like a little puppy dog being told what to do. She earns all the money, she does all the work, right? But it's the forces behind her that are just using her. And this is an America in 2026. And and so I I look at that and I'm like, look at this trend, then look at the trend in Iran and where where women are, you know, because you know, back back in the 70s, they thought the people we we thought that women in Iran were doing so well. So It's the ebb and flow and the forces, the negative forces and and and and the cultural sort of air that we breathe that is fascinating around around the control of women's bodies that that keeps coming and going. But there's if it's three steps forward, it it's not three steps back. It's it's maybe one and a half steps back. We're you know, it is a forward movement, I think.
Kavita Ramdas I think the the question about it being forward or backward, I'm not sure. I think what it does reflect, and this is something I've always believed and I think it is still true, is that in some ways this the feminist movement, the struggle for a genuine and full fledged right to be fully, equally human. is fully and equally human. And I say that because when people ask me, somebody was I had had me on a podcast at DevX the other week and said to me, Well what's the area you work on and why does it have to be called women's rights or feminism? Wha what would you call it? And I said, Well really if I was to answer that question I'd say I work in the area of human rights. But you know, we had to fight to have women be even acknowledged as being human. Because the kinds of violence that were being done unto us didn't even show up as violence that was recognized by human rights statutes. We had to fight for domestic violence to be recognized as violence, as a crime. We had to fight for violence in times of war or rape in the context of war to be recognized as a crime. So so I think that to me, Sanam remains the That that's the through line, is that we're still not there. We yes, we've made progress, but
Sanam We're we're and and and actually on that point, if you look back at the first conversations that were happening, and this is amongst internet, so you have the Chinese, the Arab, the Muslim, the Americans, the British, the French, the Jewish. It's like there's a representation from different constellations and and and civilizations sitting around the table determining the y what became the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And the first question they all butt up against. Is what is the definition of who is a human being. Because of course, the Americans had Jim Crow laws, and so, you know, were blacks considered. Exactly. The British had the Empire, was you know, were Indians considered? And and and now we, you know, I'm like, yes, it's we're still fighting for the rights, but and of course there are forces that are trying to sort of have dehumanize and put certain people as supreme over others, but Overall
Kavita Ramdas You know,
Sanam I think anywhere you go, people will there is a recognition that they are humans human beings and they have they should have equal rights to others. Like there is no dis distinction between, I don't know, rural, you know, Kenya and and rural America really. There shouldn't be. But it's it's it's an interesting kind of
Kavita Ramdas Well, let me let me read you this lovely quote from a group of three extraordinary Native American feminists who it's one of the readings that I've shared for my for my class, for my opening class, and it says, they're talking about how this notion of whiteness pervades the spaces of what is considered to be feminist. And sh and they say We have to understand that feminisms, when allied with other causes, anti-racist causes, indigenous peoples' rights causes, anti-colonial causes, hold the unique potential to decolonize the ascendancy of whiteness in many global contexts. And I love that. And they the other person who they quote is a native writer called Andrea Smith. And I I was thinking about how you and I have been talking about even when you're struggling. For liberation, whether it's Palestinian liberation or whether it's liberation in the context of apartheid South Africa. She says, I hope that we will have new models of sovereignty that are not based on a narrow definition of nation-state. Because nation-states are based on control over territory. But my vision of indigenous nationhood would be based on care and responsibility. For land that all can share. And I thought, that to me is feminism.
Sanam You know. It doesn't belong to us. It's it's our generation cares for it and takes it forward, yeah.
Kavita Ramdas Yes, yes. And it's a it's a great gift, I think, in a way, Sanam, to say that we've had and we still have multiple forms of feminist thought and theory and practice. You've seen the practice, I've seen the practice. And because we have that, maybe in some ways now when women's rights are so under attack, especially in the West, the places that they thought they had already arrived at liberation for women. You know, the example you gave of the trad wife, maybe now they will turn to places like Iran and India and Liberia and Cameroon and Nicaragua and and and Chile and and say, What can we learn from you? Then you as an anthropologist will think that you've done your job.
Sanam Let's hope. But We are we are in the process of publishing a book with all of our strategies and giving them authorship for that. So so I hope that it will be something that's available for for for people to yeah, to learn from and and be inspired by. But but yeah, an interesting
Kavita Ramdas Do you think Dolly and Gloria sitting and having a chat like this? I hope
Sanam So you know, I so wish that I had met both of them and and I so wish that they that somehow we had been able to bring them in into our spaces and with the women that we work with. Dolly especially, I think I think she would have just ex just loved the colour and the joy and the music that comes when you bring women from around the world together because the dancing and and the singing is is pervasive as as we know, despite all the sadnesses and everything else that they go through. It's always
Kavita Ramdas And I think her joy in her sexuality, I think that's the other part, you know, when we were talking about sort of this I mean, that isn't something I I met Gloria many, many times and of course she was supposed to have had multiple lovers and was, you know, never married, was, you know, free to have made the choices that she made. Whereas Dolly actually was married to the same man for her whole life. I mean, you know, a deeply loving, single partnership. And yet in many ways the two of them, even physically, I was just thinking, so different from one another, d so buxom and so fully in her body as Dolly was. And Gloria was just reading a piece from her saying that, you know, she always felt like she was too she she ate like a she ate like a sparrow. I I've been with her at many meals and she said she always felt like an overweight, too tall girl from the Midwest. And I think again, we haven't talked about bodies, but I think women carry so much of shame and and responsibility and a sense that we have to somehow hide our bodies or protect our bodies and I think one of the great gifts Dolly gave us was celebrating her body. Enjoy flaunting, celebrating, enjoying her body and and doing it in a way that I think made all of us just sort of relax a little bit and be like, Okay, you know, this can be fun. This is this is something that that this is something that is i is is a gift for us. So
Sanam Lovely, lovely to be back. And
Kavita Ramdas And I'm raising a toast to both Gloria and Dolly. May they have may they be stars amongst the stars. Exactly. Exactly. And I think it also reminds us, Sanam, that our lives and the issues that we care passionately about are worth those issues are worth fighting for. And I think when I look at the lives of these two people, I just think, you know, both the things that gave me joy, give me joy.
Sanam Amongst the stars is how I feel.
Kavita Ramdas And the things that do make me angry. both of those are worth both of those are worth celebrating.
Sanam And we are s you know, I keep thinking about it both from my Iranian trajectory and from the global trajectory. I feel as if we're standing on the shoulders of giants. Often they're invisible giants, and we are building from what they created for us to move it forward. So so yes, we have a responsibility. And this moment of inflection is a big moment. We can't step back. So, you know, we carry on and and do what we can. So for our kids.
Kavita Ramdas And grandfather.
Sanam For grandchildren. Yeah, we will talk about that. all right. I just wanted to I wanted to just share also the summer. This was a great book that I just finished reading. The true true story of Raja the Gullible and his mother by it's a he's a Lebanese gay Lebanese writer. And it's both poignant and incredibly heartbreaking and incredibly funny. And and yeah, we shall be back here soon as well. We're lining up the speakers. I'm really excited that we have Muna Luqman, who's one of our partners, coming on to speak about Yemen and the Houthis and all these things. Albania and the I the Albania story and and how Albanians have risen up against Ivanka Trump and that is is I think a great one and and again women are at the forefront of that. So I hope that we will see we'll be hearing about those and then and some other exciting ones. So fingers crossed and happy to be back.
Kavita Ramdas Here's to feminists.
Sanam Big big hug to you. Lots of love. Bye.