Welcome to Episode 25 of the Social Justice Salon.

In this episode, we get to grips with ways to deter online child abuse. Marianne is joined by

Frances Frost, a senior leader in the Lucy Faithful Foundation who are pioneering work in on-line abuse deterrence.

The Lucy Faithful Foundation works to stop child sexual abuse before it happens. Both working with adults and young people to stop it in the first place, or if it already has, prevent it from happening again. This involves working with people who pose a risk and diverting them from causing harm as well as supporting individuals and families who have been affected by abuse. Lucy Faithful Foundation work with statutory services in social care, law enforcement, and education, as well as fellow charities to create safer environments for children.

Marianne and Frances discuss how the internet has led to an explosion in the level of child abuse images on-line and how widespread access to them is. We explore the variety of ways that the Lucy Faithful Foundation has worked with tech companies and governments in order to set up sign posts and bots to alert people to problematic images. Lucy Faithful explain how their resources such as Stop It Now and Shore are helping people recognise the seriousness and dangerousness of their own actions, and crucially change themselves, so they can be diverted away from committing online abuse.

Links and more info

Visit Lucy Faithful Foundation’s website

Access the Stop it Now resources

Access the Shore resources for teenagers

Follow Lucy Faithful Foundation on Instagram

Follow the podcast on Instagram

Follow Marianne on Instagram and TikTok

Become a member of Marianne’s Patreon

Music by Luke Fraser at The Tonic and Artwork was by Marianne

Welcome to Episode 24 of the Social Justice Salon.

In this episode, we talk to two of the amazing women behind the campaign #Sisters4Gaza who are helping women to access period products during the current genocide in Gaza. Based in Ramallah, Meg and Sara talk to Marianne about exactly what women are having to face in Palestine today.

#Sisters4Gaza is a campaign to support the women of Gaza by providing them with menstruation kits so they can have their period with dignity. It is led by six women in the US & Ramallah Palestine. So far they have provided 8000 menstruation kits to women in Gaza which consist of sanitary pads and underwear. The campaign was initially funded by themselves and now the generous supporters of their GoFundMe campaign where 100% of donations go directly to creating and providing the kits.

We discuss the context that has led up to the current situation in Gaza, the immense difficulties faced by women facing displacement and genocide, and how #Sisters4Gaza, launched from Meg’s terrace in Ramallah, has become the much needed breath of hope and support for women during their periods as they face the unimaginable.

Links and more info

Donate to the Campaign

Follow the campaign on Instagram

Follow the podcast on Instagram

Follow Marianne on Instagram and TikTok

Become a member of Marianne’s Patreon

Music by Luke Fraser at The Tonic and Artwork was by Marianne

Welcome to Episode 23 of the Social Justice Salon.

In this episode, Marianne talks about feminist economics.

When running her company Justice Studio from 2011 to 2024 Marianne began to see the links between the values that we find within business and leadership and how these are replicated on a larger scale in our economic system. Drawing on her work in business, international development and feminist theory, in this episode she sets out the full range of feminist economic thought and how it is be the framework we need for true economic and social justice.

This episode was first developed as a talk that Marianne delivered during the Covid Lockdown to the International Consulting Economists Association (UCEA) in May 2020 and then as part of a Justice Studio webinar in October 2020.

She shows us how feminist economics does three things: First, it sheds light on the male bias of the economic frame of reference and demands that women's role be visible and valued. Second, it challenges the assumptions on which economic theories are based, and within that, it challenges the methods that come up with those theories. And finally, feminist economics challenges the values of our current economic system, and it suggests a new set of values to shape economics and the entire world for the better of humanity.

Links and more info

Visit Marianne’s website

Follow the podcast on Instagram

Follow Marianne on Instagram and TikTok

Become a member of Marianne’s Patreon (the only place to access The Patriarchy Whodunnit?

Music by Luke Fraser at The Tonic and Artwork was by Marianne

Welcome to Episode 22 of the Social Justice Salon.

In this episode, we learn about the Boko Haram conflict that is ongoing in the Lake Chad Basin and how it has been affecting children, specifically those drawn into Boko Haram’s forces. Marianne is joined by the fantastic Chitra Nagarajan who gives us a rich insight into their experiences with findings from her extensive research.

Chitra is an activist, adviser, facilitator, researcher, and writer who works to analyse conflict, build peace, and promote and protect human rights, particularly those of women, girls, and other marginalised groups, predominantly in West Africa. She integrates intersectional feminist principles in her work and has written two books: The World Was In Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram conflict and She Called Me Woman: Nigeria’s queer women speak.

Marianne and Chitra discuss the different ways that children have been pulled into the conflict, through abduction and through grooming. We touch on the unintended impacts of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign following the abduction of girls from Chibok in 2014, and the different ways children have had to navigate the conflict as wives of fighters, mothers of children when they are children themselves, and as child soldiers.

Links and more info

Visit Chitra’s website

Buy her book The World was in our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict

Buy her book She Called Me Woman: Nigeria’s Queer Women Speak

Follow the podcast on Instagram

Follow Marianne on Instagram and TikTok

Become a member of Marianne’s Patreon

Music by Luke Fraser at The Tonic and Artwork was by Marianne

Welcome to Episode 21 of the Social Justice Salon.

In this fascinating and important episode, we learn about the work of Circles-UK. Circles of Support and Accountability are community initiative designed to reduce sex offending among high-risk perpetrators. The CEO of Circles UK, Riana Taylor joins Marianne to discuss their work.

Prior to joining Circles in 2016, Riana was the Director of Operations for two Community Rehabilitation Companies and the Deputy Chief/Director of Strategy for Thames Valley Probation in 2002. She has worked as a consultant in China and Vietnam for the UNDP and Rego Foundation and was formally part of Nelson Mandela’s first democratic government in South Africa as Chief Director of the Department of Safety and Security.

Marianne and Riana discuss the risks that can lead to sexual offending, how they can be prevented, and go into detail about the practicalities of Circles-UK’s work. Riana sets out the ways in which Circles-UK and their providers and volunteers prevent sexual abuse in high-risk sexual offenders through these innovative talking circles. Circles-UK’s work shows that high-risk sexual offenders can be helped to take accountability and stop offending with community support.

Links and more info

Visit the Circles UK website

Follow Circles on Instagram , Facebook , X, Bluesky and LinkedIn

Follow the podcast on Instagram

Follow Marianne on Instagram and TikTok

Become a member of Marianne’s Patreon

Music by Luke Fraser at The Tonic and Artwork was by Marianne

Welcome to Episode 20 of the Social Justice Salon.

In this episode, we learn about the amazing Women’s Revolution that emerged in Rojava in Syria during 2010s. We discuss how the Kurdish women set up an egalitarian society at the same time as fighting the forces of ISIS. Marianne is joined by Rahila Gupta who has been to Rojava and learned all about this region first hand

Rahila is an author and activist. She is a patron of Peace in Kurdistan and on the management committee of Southall Black Sisters. She has authored a huge range of books, articles, short stories, poetry, essays, screenplays and plays for theatre, for names such as The Guardian, New Internationalist, Feminist Dissent, The Independent on Sunday, Asian Times, Spare Rib, Disability Now, The Lancet, and Poetry Salzburg. Most recently, with Beatrix Campbell, she has authored the book Planet Patriarchy a continent-crossing panorama of women’s rights, women’s oppression and women’s politics in the twenty-first century.

Marianne and Rahila discuss the context that the Rojava women’s revolution emerged in, the hideous threat that ISIS posed to women in the region, and how this new society instigated new values, new institutions and a new way of life in northern Syria. It is an episode not to miss.

Links and more info

Buy Rahila’s latest book Planet Patriarchy

Visit her website

Follow the podcast on Instagram

Follow Marianne on Instagram and TikTok

Become a member of Marianne’s Patreon

Music by Luke Fraser at The Tonic and Artwork was by Marianne

Welcome to Episode 19 of the Social Justice Salon.

In this solo episode, Marianne talks about ways of knowing and how the ideology behind our knowledge systems affects our work in social justice.

Marianne discusses how the men of the Scientific Revolution in 16th & 17th century set in stone the dominant ways of knowing that still impact how research and consultancy is done today. She outlines how certain methodologies have been given more respect and status and that this has influenced the way we all see the world.

Countering the dominant narratives are feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial and queer methodologies which expose the power structures inherent in our accepted ways of knowing and propose new ways of doing things. Marianne takes us through these approaches and outlines practical ways to make sure social justice research is done in an equitable and ethical way.

Links and more info

Follow the podcast on Instagram

Follow Marianne on Instagram and TikTok

Become a member of Marianne’s Patreon

Music by Luke Fraser at The Tonic and Artwork was by Marianne

Welcome to Episode 18 of the Social Justice Salon.

In this episode, we explore how women in the Uk today have to navigate their public sexuality: as we exist in public places and online. Marianne is joined by the fantastic Fiona Vera Grey who gives us a rich insight into this with findings from her extensive research.

Fiona is a professor of sexual violence, activist and campaigner working on violence against women and girls. She comes from a practice-based background, working for over a decade in the Rape Crisis movement before moving into academia. She has authored three books including: The Right Amount of Panic: How Women Trade Freedom for Safety and Women on Porn. She is currently Co-Director of the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University

Marianne and Fiona discuss the ‘safety work’ that women do to avoid sexual harassment and harm, the different intersecting barriers that demand us to be sexual but not too sexual, and the impact of the rise of hardcore porn and how it is shaping our desires.

Links and more info

Follow Fiona on Instagram

Buy her book Women on Porn

Buy her book The Right Amount of Panic

Buy her book Men’s Intrusion, Women’s Embodiment

Follow the podcast on Instagram

Follow Marianne on Instagram and TikTok

Become a member of Marianne’s Patreon

Music by Luke Fraser at The Tonic and Artwork was by Marianne