11th April 2018

Empower Her Voice: Mothers in the Arts

It’s a fun experience interviewing a friend and colleague, but given Zetteler’s India Ayles is such a powerhouse, this is sure to be the first of many. The latest project that India and friends Amy Murgatroyd and Olivia Fletcher have masterminded is Empower Her Voice: Mothers in the Arts, a panel discussion all set for 26 April at the Royal College of Art, that will bring together an esteemed group of women to discuss the challenges and joys of balancing a career in the arts with the decision to have kids or not.

The Empower Her Voice movement first began at Oxford University as a way of encouraging more women there to speak publicly about their academic work, while simultaneously raising money to educate women worldwide. The idea was that by sharing their research, women could educated themselves and others in a welcoming and collaborative environment. Since then it has expanded to other universities and become a platform for women to speak about all sorts of issues that concern them, rather than just academic topics.

Empower Her Voice: Mothers in the Arts will be the first event of its kind in London. Lucky attendees will hear the sage wisdom of star author Elif Shafak; journalist and novelist Alexandra Shulman, Fiammetta Rocco, The Economist’s arts and books editor; film and television director Margy Kinmonth; artist Joanna Kirk; fashion designer Martine Rose and historian Alice Murphy, and chaired by curator Cairo Clarke.

Given the speaker list alone has got our hearts racing, we wanted to quiz India on putting together such a stellar line-up, the taboo around motherhood and the charity this event will be supporting.

Artwork by Joey Yu.

Hi India! Why is the topic of motherhood important to you?

I feel strongly that it’s important, especially in the workplace, to demystify, breakdown and open up the topic of motherhood for my generation. Regardless of whether I or the audience at the talk actually want to be mothers, it is a universal choice that most women at some point have to address. Therefore, as a young female starting out my career in the creative industry and having this choice ahead, I thought why not bring people together through the broad theme and share perspectives, words of wisdom and potentially make a positive change in this grey area/taboo in the working world.

Do you think society has progressed to a point where women feel that they can return to work without judgement, or is there still a pressure to be a stay at home mother?

I think that in many cases the pressure on women has morphed into something different. While there is less expectation that a woman will be a stay-at-home mother, there is more expectation that she will instead do everything exceptionally well: be a high-flying career woman who is also present in every moment of her child’s life, and doing all this without help, and without concessions or acknowledgement that it’s really difficult.

EHV panelist Joanna Kirk's pastel landscapes, revolving around themes of motherhood, intimacy and isolation, feature her children, if you look closely enough...

The event will raise money to fund scholarships for girls to attend Sanjan Nagar school in Pakistan – tell me a little about this school and your involvement in it?

Sanjan Nagar was set up in 1995 in Kot Lakhpat, an industrial area of Lahore, Pakistan. The school works to provide a high quality primary and secondary education to children who live in a particularly underprivileged area. Upon the school’s inception, fees for all students were fully funded by donations but in recent years, it has become increasingly difficult to sustain this model. Despite this, Sanjan Nagar is committed to supporting families who cannot otherwise access a good quality education, and continues to fund scholarships for a significant proportion of students.

The school has a close connection with our event because one of the founders of EHV, Zainab Majiid’s family is involved with the school. Being something very close to Zainab’s heart, we decided to choose the first EHV event in London to support the Sanjan Nagar. Our ticket price of £3.73 goes directly towards 10 scholarships for 10 Pakistani girls. It funded the entirety of their school career – 12 years – at the school.

The focus of the event is very much on women – working mothers and raising money to send girls to school. Why is this important?

The discrepancy between the number of boys and girls attending school in Pakistan is still huge and this is the case in many countries around the world. Educating girls is one of the best ways to help tackle general gender inequality. If we can make a small difference to this problem in Pakistan, it’s a change that could have wider consequences than is immediately apparent. In the UK, a higher percentage of girls than boys now attend university, but it is still difficult for women to reach the same level in a company as a man, in part because of the demands of having children. Empower Her Voice is dedicated to empowering young women, and these are just two ways in which, in different locations and cultures, we can come a step closer to equality.

Empower Her Voice Founders: Zainab Majiid and Amira Fateh.

Was there a certain logic to your curation of the line-up? For example, was it important to feature women working in different industries/of different ages/with different experiences?

We were keen to have a variety of speakers on the panel, in order to represent different opinions and experiences. We have a broad age range of women in a variety of occupations, so that in the discussion we can get a good idea of the different challenges of or benefits to having children. We wanted to represent a variety of ways in which women have dealt with the challenges too, whether it meant working freelance in order to have more flexible hours, getting help from partners or parents, or paying for childcare. We also wanted to understand the attitudes towards motherhood in different sectors of the arts, whether some industries were more understanding of, or indeed more hostile to, working mothers.

What do you hope that audience members will take away from the event?

Hopefully people will be surprised by something they hear at the event, perhaps a more frank discussion of the topic than they’ve heard before. It might equip them with a way of dealing with the situation of having a heavy workload and a child to bring up that they hadn’t previously thought of or, by hearing someone else’s difficult experiences, galvanise them to fight more vehemently for their own equality in the workplace…

Hopefully young people attending the event and wanting to work in the arts will take away some valuable careers advice, as well as meeting some like-minded people. We hope they can listen to an interesting discussion and have a great time chatting afterwards. We also have the Beavertown Brewery sponsoring our event so there will be drinks for all!

The lookbook for panelist Martine Rose's spring 2017 collection. Rose's menswear often subverts ideals of masculinity, as in this SS17 collection, full of heeled boots and silky shorts.

This is the first ever Empower Her Voice in London. Will there be more events in the future and if so, how would you like for the event to evolve?

We would love to put on more Empower Her Voice events in London. We’d love the events to evolve into a community of people in London (which can be a pretty alienating, lonely place sometimes) and that people will want to connect and discuss issues important to them. There has been talk of moving exploring other fields including law and tech, so keep your eyes peeled for more…

EHV hosted its first ever Role Models session via Skype with the girls at Santa Maria Foundation in Chia, Colombia, and a group of female student scientists from Oxford university in a joint effort to promote and empower women in science.

Follow Empower Her Voice London on Instagram, listen to our podcast on Oxford University radio, and buy your ticket here!