It’s three weeks now since I got my hands on a copy of Rahila Gupta’s ‘British Feminism Through a FiLiA Lens.’ I’ve been reading furiously ever since, and have only just emerged. 384 closely printed pages about all that FiLiA has instigated, inspired or been a part of over the last ten years.

To say it’s awe-inspiring just doesn’t cut it. Running your eye over the headings – from violence against women and why our justice system doesn’t work to violence against the planet and why conventional ‘green’ politics doesn’t work; from the invisibility of disability to the all-too visible influence of fundamentalist religions; from the identity-politics cult to the immigration department, the contents page alone is a stark reminder of just how many fronts women need to fight on to make the world work for women and girls – and FiLiA has been there, on all those fronts, educating, encouraging, joining the dots and, wherever possible, channelling funds to women’s and girls’ projects.

It also reminded me of just how much I’ve learned by attending the conferences. In the last ten years, I’ve been to talks and workshops by artists and musicians, cooks and doulas, by refugees’ groups and trade union groups, by the Deep Green Resistance and the Rojava women, heard from United Nations workers and local history groups, from escapees of sex work, from police commissioners and direct-action environmentalists, from QCs, MPs, anarchists, radical feminist separatists and women whose lives and work defy all description – the list goes on and on.

Two hands

To say that FiLiA was conflicted this year would be the understatement of the century; you may have heard the echoes, even if you’re hundreds of miles away. We had TRAs v feminists outside and anti-genocide campaigners v er… the other lot on the inside, along with all the antagonisms of left and right that are raging across the world’s politics.

It was Rahila Gupta, author of this book, who threw down the gauntlet from the main stage during the opening plenary – I feel like using all the metaphors there are here — she didn’t so much put the cat amongst the pigeons as…what? For all its unique nature, FiLiA’s annual conference cannot help but reflect the tone of the politics around us at the time and this year, that tone is unquestionably polarisation, fury, frustration and a failure to understand. Rahila didn’t throw a dead cat, she threw a live elephant.

As one woman currently on the other side of the divide from me (but whom I have huge respect for) said, Rahila set the tone for the whole conference. She meant it as a criticism. I received it as an endorsement.

In the introduction to the annual FiLiA magazine, the authors say the stranglehold patriarchy has on women has two hands — left and right. That’s the metaphor I need…but for all the problems, FiLiA 2025 was, as ever, a weekend of essential learning, listening and doing, by women from across the world.

Books

Yes, I admit it — I’m one of those feminists who read books. One of the sessions I went to this year was asking why women’s history inevitably gets erased or distorted. The speakers discussed how women were responding to that tendency this time around by making sure their actions and experiences are well documented. Rahila Gupta’s book is FiLiA’s contribution to that effort, and is a superb piece of history, visiting the lives and works of thousands of women. If you have a feminist shelf in your personal library, this book needs to be on it. If you don’t, buy it anyway, and see why you ought to have one.

Click here to buy the book.

 If you were at FiLiA this year, you’ll probably agree with me that this, the 10th year of FiLiA’s rolling conference, really needs a book of its own — so, sisters — who’s got the guts to write it?

There’s them (check out Julia Long and Julie Bindel to get the flavour of that) and there’s us (check out Southall Black Sisters or Jewish women supporting FiLiA). How do we bridge that gap? Some are saying FiLiA won’t survive this one. I say it’s downright impossible, but also very simple. FiLiA ‘just’ needs to look again at where it draws its ‘red line against racism’ and how it applies it (clue: establishment racism, exhibited daily by the ‘respectable’ mainstream media, is every bit as bad as the other kind). If anyone can do it, FiLiA can — for a start, we’ve got untold numbers of women on the case — there were 2500 women at this year’s conference, and that’s just one yearsworth.

Oh — and don’t forget to buy the book.

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If you were one of those who asked this, please click to read Why are we ‘obsessed’ with Palestine?

Click here to read about our fringe event, Palestine Liberation is a Feminist Issue

Click here to read about Jewish not Zionist, the story of Marilyn Garson’s journey away from Zionism, and her battle with the IHRA.

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