Five NOW talks & discussions
Five NOW talks & discussions consider women’s relationship with power in contemporary society, the role of media today, and a possible way forward in a world beset by crises and threats.
No. 1: In Women & Leadership, First Minister Michelle O’Neill + deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengellydiscuss the qualities that women bring to leadership in the contemporary world.
No. 2: In Women & Power, Baroness Shami Chakrabarti and Caoilfhionn Gallagher discuss with chairperson Susan McKay women’s relationship to power in the contemporary world and what needs to change to give voice to those who currently feel voiceless?
No. 3: In Women & Climate Justice, Mary Robinson talks with Louise Cullen of her deep involvement for years in the struggle to secure global justice for those people vulnerable to the impacts of climate change who are usually forgotten.
No. 4: In Women & Resistance, Bernadette McAliskey, Dr Ailbne Smyth, Flor MacCarthy discuss with Aoife Moore how women utilise activism and soft power in the fight for justice and human rights.
No. 5: In Women & Media, reporters Orla Guerin, Marion McKeone, Jude Webber and Miriam O’Callaghan consider the particular challenges they face in covering global news stories.
No Ordinary Women is curated by Martina Devlin.
Dr Martina Devlin is an Omagh-born, Dublin-based author and newspaper columnist. She has written nine novels, two non-fiction books and a collection of short stories. Her novels include Edith about the Irish R.M. co-author Edith Somerville; and The House Where It Happened about a 1711 witchcraft trial in Antrim, which led to a plaque erected in 2023 to commemorate those wrongly convicted, following a campaign she initiated.
Her latest book, Charlotte: A Novel focuses on Charlotte Brontë’s Irish connections, and is due out in September 2024.
She has also had two plays performed: Call Me Madame about Countess Marcievicz and Curves of Emotion about Nora Barnacle’s influence on James Joyce. Prizes include the Royal Society of Literature’s V.S. Pritchett Prize and a Hennessy Literary Award, and she has been shortlisted three times for the Irish Book Awards.
Martina programmes literary and public discussion events, and writes a weekly current affairs column for the Irish Independent for which she has been named National Newspapers of Ireland commentator of the year, among other prizes for her journalism. She holds a PhD in literary practice from Trinity College Dublin, where she serves as a member of the Rooney Prize judging panel. Martina has lectured there and in other universities on Irish literature.
Dr Martina Devlin
Women & Leadership
First Minister Michelle O’Neill + Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly open YES Festival as Ireland’s first all women multi-arts festival and in conversation with author and columnist Martina Devlin explore a female vision for our political and social future as the first of five No Ordinary Women discussions.
Chaired by Martina Devlin
Women & Power
Shami Chakrabarti and Caoilfhionn Gallagher | Chaired by Susan McKay
Shami Chakrabarti
Caoilfhionn Gallagher
Susan McKay
What is women’s relationship to power in the contemporary world and what needs to change to give voice to those who currently feel voiceless? Does our notion of power need to be redefined? And how could women utilise power to respond to the range of crises that threaten our lives and our planet? Baroness Shami Chakrabarti and Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC discuss with chair Susan McKay the way forward.
The Rt Hon Shami Chakrabarti CBE PC is a barrister, human rights campaigner and Labour Peer who has written and broadcast widely over recent decades. She was Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales from 2016 to 2020 and Director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties) from 2003 to 2016. Prior to that she was Liberty’s In-House Counsel and a Home Office lawyer.
She is a Visiting Professor of Practise at the LSE and has been Chancellor of Oxford Brookes and Essex Universities. In 2012 she carried the Olympic Flag at the London Games and served as a panelist on the Leveson Inquiry into the ethics and practice of the media.
She is the author of On Liberty (2014), Of Women (2017) and Human Rights -The Case for the Defence (May, 2024).
Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC is a human rights lawyer, a Commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and Ireland’s Special Rapporteur on Child Protection. She has acted in many landmark human rights cases in the UK, before the European Court of Human Rights, United Nations and international tribunals.
Her wide-ranging practice has included acting for bereaved families and survivors of the Hillsborough Disaster and 7/7 London Bombings; in a series of test cases challenging welfare cuts (the ‘bedroom tax’ and the ‘benefit cap’) and their impacts upon disabled children, victims and survivors of domestic violence, and carers; and advising the United Nations on issues concerning child soldiers kidnapped by Boko Haram.
Susan McKay became Ireland’s Press Ombudsman on October 3, 2022. From Derry, she is a writer and has worked for many years as a journalist. Her books include Northern Protestants – On Shifting Ground (Blackstaff, 2021), Bear In Mind These Dead (Faber, 2007) and Sophia’s Story (Blackstaff,1998). She was Northern Editor of the Sunday Tribune until 2004. She is one of the judges for the Ewart Biggs Award.
She has been a senior figure in the NGO sector – from 2009 to 2012 she was CEO of the National Women’s Council of Ireland, and she was a founder of the Belfast Rape Crisis Centre in the 1980s.
Women & Climate Justice
Mary Robinson | Chaired by Louise Cullen
UPDATE
The interview with Mary Robinson will be carried out remotely because circumstances have unfortunately prevented the former President of Ireland from travelling to Derry. However she remains keen to support the YES festival and discuss the important subject of climate justice.
Mrs Robinson will join via a live link with interviewer Louise Cullen, BBC NI agriculture and environment correspondent, who will be in Derry at the venue, YES Hub, St Columb’s Hall.
Should any current Women & Climate Justice ticket buyer wish to no longer attend this event, due to its change of circumstances, a full refund will be available via Eventbrite before the event commences.
Mary Robinson has been deeply involved for years in the struggle to secure global justice for those people vulnerable to the impacts of climate change who are usually forgotten – the poor, the disempowered and the marginalised across the world. Her mission has led her all over the world, from Malawi to Mongolia, and to a heartening revelation: that an irrepressible driving force in the battle for climate justice could be found at the grassroots level, mainly among women, many of them mothers and grandmothers like herself.
Mary Robinson is Adjunct Professor for Climate Justice in Trinity College Dublin and Chair of The Elders. She served as President of Ireland from 1990-1997 and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997-2002. She is the recipient of numerous honours and awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the President of the United States, Barack Obama. Mary’s memoir, Everybody Matters, was published in September 2012 and her book, Climate Justice – Hope, Resilience and the Fight for a Sustainable Future was published in September 2018. She is also co-host of a podcast on the climate crisis called Mothers of Invention.
As an advocate for the hungry and the hunted, the forgotten and the ignored, Mary Robinson has not only shone a light on human suffering, but illuminated a better future for our world. — President Barack Obama
Louise Cullen has worked in journalism for more than 20 years, starting her career with Reuters two weeks after graduating from Queen’s University Belfast.
Along the way, she became the District Journalist for County Tyrone from 2010-13, stepping back into her district shoes to cover Fermanagh in 2017-18. In between, she was based in Belfast and working across BBC tv, radio and digital outlets, eventually taking the role of health reporter during the Covid pandemic.
She became the BBCNI Agriculture & Environment Correspondent in 2021 just a month before COP26 began in Glasgow.
Since then, she has immersed herself in a world of climate challenges and solutions.
Louise Cullen
Women & Resistance
Bernadette McAliskey, Dr Ailbne Smyth and Flor MacCarthy | Chaired by Aoife Moore
Bernadette McAliskey
Dr Ailbhe Smyth
Flor MacCarthy
Aoife Moore
Women globally have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to work together to effect change for the better and to promote positivity in the face of enormous challenges, utilising activism and soft power as they strive for justice and human rights within communities, nations and the international stage.
Bernadette McAliskey has been a campaigner for social justice and human rights all of her adult life. She grew up in Cookstown, Co Tyrone and in 1968 she joined the Civil Rights Movement and was a member of People’s Democracy. She was elected as the Mid Ulster MP to Westminster Parliament in 1969 at the age of 21. In 1970 she was convicted and served six months in Armagh prison for her role in the defence of the Bogside in Derry. She was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in her home in 1981 but continued her activities on release from hospital. Having earlier co-founded STEP (South Tyrone Empowerment Programme), she was subsequently employed within the organisation after the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and she continues to work there.
Dr Ailbhe Smyth is an Irish academic, feminist and LGBTQ activist. She was a co-director of the Together for Yes referendum campaign on abortion reform in Ireland, for which she was named one of the Time 100 most influential people in 2019. She is a founding member of Marriage Equality, chaired the National LGBT Federation for more than 10 years and has received the Lifetime Achievement award at the GALAS, Ireland’s LGBTQ Awards Ceremony. In 2022, she was awarded the freedom of Dublin city.
Flor MacCarthy is a journalist, broadcaster, and campaigner for greater representation of women in politics. She is Training and Development Coordinator with Women for Election, which inspires, equips and supports women to succeed in politics. Flor also presents current affairs programmes on Oireachtas TV (Irish Parliament TV) from Dublin and the European Parliament, and has edited a bestselling book The Presidents’ Letters about correspondence to Irish presidents.
Aoife Moore is a reporter with the BBC, based in Dublin. Born and raised in Derry, she has worked as a political journalist at the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Times. In 2021 she and her colleague Paul Hosford shared the Journalist of the Year award for breaking the Golfgate story. She is a Sunday Times Number One best selling author for her debut book The Long Game – Inside Sinn Fein.
Women & Media
Orla Guerin, Marion McKeone and Jude Webber | Chaired by Miriam O’Callaghan
Orla Guerin
Marion McKeone
Jude Webber
Miriam O’Callaghan
How have women’s role and influence in the media changed over the years and what challenges do they face in covering global news stories. Award-winning journalists Orla Guerin, Marion McKeone and Jude Webber discuss with Miriam O’Callaghan.
Orla Guerin is the BBC’s Senior International Correspondent, based in Istanbul. She is a multi-award-winning veteran foreign correspondent with BBC News, who has held a succession of high-profile postings. In recent times Orla has played a prominent role in the BBC’s coverage of the war in Ukraine. She has reported from across the Middle East, South America, South Asia, and the Caucasus, including assignments in Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Brazil, India, Algeria, Israel, Azerbaijan, and Yemen, and her work has been recognised internationally with awards in the UK, USA, France, Italy and Ireland.
She is an Honorary Professor of International Journalism at the National University of Ireland in Galway (NUIG).
Marion McKeone is an award-winning journalist, who has also worked as a barrister, broadcaster, writer, documentary maker and advocacy consultant for NGOs working in rapid onset disaster and conflict zones. Currently employed as the Sunday Business Post’s US Correspondent, she’s a regular contributor to RTE 1 and RTE 2 Radio, BBC Radio and Virgin Media TV. She and Cal Thomas feature on the popular US Round Up slot on Today FM with Matt Cooper each week and she and comedian Jarlath Regan are in their fourth year of their Irishman Abroad podcast.
She has covered the US for more than fifteen years and has written for a number of international publications and been a contributor for National Public Radio (NPR) and MSNBC and received the NewsBrands Best Foreign Reporting award in 2020 and 2021 for her coverage of the US 2020 election, the coronavirus pandemic, the racial justice protests of 2020 and the January 6th attacks. She is a former director of media, advocacy and communications for Save the Children and consultant on humanitarian projects with the UNHCR and UNICEF.
Jude Webber has been the FT’s Ireland correspondent since 2021, after moving back to Europe from 21 years in Latin America. She studied French and Spanish at Oxford before joining Reuters as a graduate trainee. She was posted to Spain, covering Middle East peace talks and the Barcelona Olympics, Ireland at the time of the Downing St Declaration, Italy as it tried to tame its unruly finances to join the euro and Peru where the president fled to Japan and quit by fax amid a huge corruption scandal a couple of weeks after she arrived. She moved to Argentina and joined the FT there, covering the turbulent Kirchner presidencies as well as Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay, before moving to Mexico for more populist politics. Her new role involves covering the whole island of Ireland.
Broadcaster Miriam O’Callaghan was born and raised in Dublin. She qualified as a solicitor before beginning her broadcasting career on ITV’s This is your Life. She joined the BBC as a producer in 1987, and went on to become a reporter on BBC2’s Newsnight. In the early ‘90s Miriam returned to Ireland to present RTÉ’s current affairs flagship programme Prime Time, while continuing to cover the Northern Irish peace process for Newsnight. She presents RTE’s Prime Time and Sundays with Miriam on RTE Radio 1.