In this London photography studio, a window is opened on to the sprawling cemetery below. Seven women sip their tea, leaning out to look at the graves. "Now do you see why they call us witches?" cackles Stella Creasy.
One hundred years since women were first granted the right to vote, a new kind of suffragist is rising. There are the politicians, like Labour's Creasy and Sophie Walker, leader of the Women's Equality Party. There's Paris Lees, the campaigner raising awareness for trans people. There's the artist Gillian Wearing, whose statue of suffragist Millicent Fawcett is being unveiled in Parliament Square next month. Dina Torkia is a hijab-wearing blogger with more than 1.3 million followers, Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote the book that's changing how we talk about race, and Liv Little founded gal-dem, a collective representing young women of colour. Though they joke about witchcraft, this combination of women, here, now — it does feel powerful.
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In 1918 Fawcett, Emmeline Pankhurst and their fellow suffragists and suffragettes won a 50-year campaign for (some) women to be given the same political rights as men. Today, the battle lines are different, but the wars rage on. Vogue has gathered these seven women together because they are the ones effecting change, whether in creating opportunities for society's hidden women or demanding that the British government agree to fund abortions for people from Northern Ireland. Or simply by snorting at the abuse they receive on social media. Most of these women are meeting for the first time. There's the usual cautious tiptoeing at first — the complimenting of jackets, the making of tea and space — but it doesn't take long for the studio to be filled with laughter.
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Liv Little thrives in this kind of room, where voices overlap. "I find it enriching, inspiring, even when it's challenging." Little grew up with ideas of "girl power", but as she went deeper she found the politics lacking — she noticed how often issues facing black women were bypassed by the mainstream feminist movement. At university in 2015, she founded gal-dem, a magazine and creative collective comprised of more than 70 women and non-binary people of colour. A clutch of awards later, they're working on a manifesto which will reinforce Little's reasons for launching the magazine, "a place where we can work out of isolation". It's not enough for women of colour to be listened to only when talking about race, she points out. "It's about subtle, everyday representation. We need to be in control of our own narratives, and to do that we need more women of colour in high-up places."
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Stella Creasy groans to think of the panicked calls she'll get before Conference when somebody realises they've forgotten to put a woman on the panel. "Tokenism is tiresome. For me it's not just about opening doors to other women, it's about taking a screwdriver and removing the door entirely." She grew up believing that progress was inevitable. At some point during her seven years as a woman in politics, that changed. "I'm a mid-generation feminist, the people who believed Loaded was ironic. The bitter lesson I've learned over the last 10 years is that we took for granted the gains we made, like anonymity for rape victims, which is still being debated."
The day we meet, yet more women are coming forward with stories of abuse by powerful men. "There's definitely a Mean Girls-style Burn Book in politics — patriarchy isn't gendered — but the way we talk about other women is important. Women should be believed, because coming forward about harassment is hard. I see the pressure to close down the debates, to say systems are in place, but if so, they're not working." Her fury is evident in her fast-tapping foot. "I'm the anti-Sheryl Sandberg. For me, it's not about leaning in, it's about building an army. Progress can happen. My mistake was thinking that it would be easy." Is Creasy optimistic about the future? "Women are set up to fail. We can never be thin, curvy, clever, kind enough. But I'm impatient to change the world," she says. She grins then, and it's an invitation to join her.
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When the feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez launched a petition to "put a statue of a suffragette in Parliament Square to mark 100 years of female suffrage", it was signed by 84,734 people. In February, Gillian Wearing's statue of suffragist Millicent Fawcett will be revealed — the first woman to stand on a pedestal there, and Wearing the first woman to create one. "Fawcett was all about dialogue. And it worked — she spent six decades getting women the vote," says the Turner Prize-winner and one-time Young British Artist. One thing she's seen change over her career is an increase in the number of woman artists collected in museums. "But it took a lot of work! The Guerrilla Girls campaigned, and people kept counting, compiling statistics over 10 years. Now Maria Balshaw is running the Tate, things should change further. The hard thing today is overcoming the psychology — this prejudice goes deep." Which is why she's steeling herself for the next fight. "We need to change people's inner stereotypes of women. And," she breathes, "that's harder than fighting for the vote."
Where Wearing is softly spoken and cautious, Dina Torkia (who blogs under the name Dina Tokio) is sweary and brisk — in part because she is expected to be the opposite. "Everybody loves that 'oppressed' look," she giggles. "No, I've been wearing a scarf since I was 12, and the reason I blog is to represent the thousands of stylish Muslim women like me. Now the industry has clocked that there's a huge market in 'modest fashion', I hope we'll see more hijab bloggers, more models." And less abuse? In one of her most popular posts, Torkia read out a series of Islamophobic comments, dissecting each one with a pointed joke. "I laugh at it online, but in the park, when it's directed at my daughter? Yeah, I'm not laughing then."
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Since graduating, in her own words, from "university, depression and prostitution all at the same time", Paris Lees has worked to educate the world about the lived experience of trans people, including how it feels to be the subject of debates on what it means to "be a woman". Recent research by the Fawcett Society reveals that almost half of Britons now believe that gender is fluid. "Having been told I can't be in the 'woman club' all my life, I finally feel welcomed," she smiles. "Now the people telling me I don't belong are actually the older feminists, the people meant to be advocates of inclusion." She takes a breath; she wants to be generous. "I understand older feminists' wariness of men — I know what it's like not to feel safe in a patriarchal society — but it's been misdirected on trans women." While campaigning, she's regularly surprised by how few of the people debating her identity "have actually sat down and met us. Prejudice stems from ignorance. All we need to do is talk."
Sitting opposite Lees is Reni Eddo-Lodge, whose new book offers a kind of counterpoint. In 2014, then 24, she wrote a blog entitled "Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race". It focused on her frustration with the way that discussions of racism in Britain are being led by those benefiting from it. In the critically acclaimed book that followed, she offered a framework for how to see, and then counter, racism. "So now, what do I do with the attention?" she wonders. "The model we have for discussing political ideas is broken. It's all punditry, soundbites..." She is sick of talking. And yet, having steeled herself for confrontation, the reception has been so positive she feels some responsibility to respond to the thousands of people, mainly women, who want to continue the discussion. "You know who turns up at signings? Mummy bloggers! It's women taking up the mantle, engaging in the politics of care." Women are leading the conversations. "Look at Black Lives Matter, started by three women. The rise in feminism has led to a rise in liberation politics — the aim is to prevent this becoming just a fad, we need to put politics into action. We can start small, with the power dynamics in our immediate surroundings. And then we'll see where that takes us." A shrug.
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When the Women's Equality Party presented its manifesto to hundreds of politicians, it urged them to steal the ideas in it. In the two years since Sophie Walker left her job to set up the first feminist political party, she's seen Trump find power, Brexit divide the country and "legislation on women's rights go up for negotiation with no women in the room." But, she adds, "I've also seen women organise, and seen them march. And that is thrilling. If you're wondering, 'What can I do?', well, that's the first step towards activism." Her move into politics, into campaigns for universal free childcare and to fix the gender pay gap came from the realisation that, "Nobody's coming to rescue us — we have to do it ourselves."
That's what links all these women: a bravery and strength that almost vibrates the windows. It's not the jolly strength of Instagram aphorisms; it's gritty, it requires hard work and banding together, and an acknowledgement that there's another hundred years of struggle ahead. "As we're marking the centenary of women getting the vote, there's a different kind of disenfranchisement," adds Walker as dusk settles. "Today women have the vote — the fight is to empower them to use it."
This article originally appeared in Vogue's February 2018 issue. Buy or subscribe here.
