Women from the South West and guests from around the world joined us for Occupy the Airwaves on International Women’s Day, Tuesday 8 March. We were on air from 8am to midnight on Phonic FM 106.8FM and online at phonic.fm.
Click to listen to them all here
This year’s provocation was ‘Freedom’. The idea was taken from a recent book On Freedom by Maggie Nelson, in which she suggests that freedom is not a one-off event, but a lifelong practice.
The idea for the theme followed our experience of working to collect stories by women activists in the South West and our work on suffrage history, which suggests clearly that women understand the ‘long haul’ of any activism. We may hope that our actions will eventually change the ideas that conflict with our own, and yes women did eventually, win the right to vote. However, it has not put an end to child poverty, to inequalities in the work place and at home, and to the fundamental rights of all human beings – for example, to protest these inequalities.
International Women’s Day is such an important annual event for us, and we were so happy to be broadcasting programmes for Occupy the Airwaves for the seventh year. Occupying the airwaves gives us an opportunity to share and introduce listeners to women with fascinating stories to tell – women from Exeter, the South West, and around the world.