Feminists hail explosion in new grassroots groups

Published: Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Dozens of new organisations are springing up around the UK, campaigning on issues from lads' mags to benefit cuts.

It was the lads' mags - with semi-naked women in suggestive poses on their covers - being sold at eye level at her corner shop that did it.

"I just don't think I should have to look at that - it's degrading," said 17-year-old Isabella Woolford Diaz. "If people want to buy it, fine, but I don't think 11-year-old pupils should have to look at it."

Deciding to take the matter into her own hands, the student formed a feminist group at Camden school for girls, and before long a core group of 15 teenagers - boys and girls - were attending. "I was getting so frustrated at how women were portrayed and I wondered if I was just being pernickety," she said. "But I soon realised it wasn't just me."

The group is one of dozens of new feminist organisations springing up around the UK, according to the campaign group UK Feminista. Research carried out to mark the group's second birthday has revealed that the number of active grassroots feminist organisations has doubled in the past two years.

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