#100 Celebrating 100 FiLiA Podcasts

We’ve reached a small milestone in our team: 100 episodes of the FiLiA podcast. To celebrate this very special episode, I spoke with a few of the amazing women who bring life and magic to FiLiA - Lisa-Marie, Julian, Sally, Kruti and Raquel. Their reflections, insights and discussion can be heard here, covering the three charitable aims of FiLiA: building sisterhood and solidarity, amplifying the voices of women and defending women’s human rights. The team discuss highlights and challenges of the journey this brilliant feminist charity has been on so far, the importance of organising an annual gathering for women to speak together and where FiLiA plans to go. Women joined the discussion from the Welsh Hills, London, Portsmouth and the Dominican Republic (so we hope listeners will forgive us if the audio isn’t perfect) to share FiLiA memories, feminist insights, favourite quotes, and ways to support our work (for example by signing up to the Friends of FiLiA scheme or donating a solidarity ticket to enable more women to come to the conference).

I’ve had the honour of being podcast coordinator for a little while (from when we had just over a dozen podcasts until now). Alice, one of our interviewers, suggested that I write something for the occasion as well. I don’t know if she realised that I could easily fill several pages of thoughts about the beauty of hearing women’s voices and audio podcasting as a uniquely useful medium for feminist discussions (for many reasons, e.g. no need to worry about visual appearances & busy women can listen while they’re doing other things). Brevity has never been my strong suit, sorry, but I shall share some reflections here.

My first podcast recording session was with Sheila Jeffreys and Heather Brunskell-Evans. I was stressed, trying to work out how to capture this online discussion and troubleshoot our connectivity issues. What I’ll remember is sitting in my room once recording was underway, pinching myself that these two amazing feminists were speaking to each other and I was allowed to listen to their conversation and share it with others. But also wondering, “how the hell did I get the privilege of being involved in this?”

I volunteered as podcast coordinator because two other women I respect, who share my first name, kindly nudged me toward the opportunity on the FiLiA website. I’d applied for the role rather sheepishly, with little relevant experience, but was greeted with warmth, met a wonderful team of hard-working women and am still on a crash-course in “proper” feminism I shall treasure for life. I’ve had a more valuable education in creating and listening to these podcasts than any university course in “Gender Studies” could hope to offer.

I learned that from the start, FiLiA’s ethos for these podcasts is that women themselves will have as much control over their own participation and words as possible - to try to create a woman-centred space. Our podcasts are perhaps slightly peculiar in that they don’t follow a set format, really. We have no time-limits or fixed type of discussion. Our production process embraces the do-it-yourself style, which means we’ll vary in audio quality, but the benefit of this approach is that simple, free audio recording and editing processes are an equaliser – so in theory any woman with an internet connection could get involved with podcasting if she wanted to. We all learn together, from each other.

Our guests are phenomenal women, from all over the world, involved in all sorts of work & areas of expertise, a mix of maybe more familiar and newer feminist voices. We have a roster of talented volunteer interviewers and editors, who all have their own ways of approaching the podcasts, working together. I have far too many highlights, so will share just two memories that spring immediately to mind:

One: the poignant moment listening to Nancy say: “if I can help one person by telling my story - well it’s not a story, it’s my life - then it’s all good… I’ll have done something with my life and I’ll have proved every one of them wrong. That I’m not useless. And I no longer want to be used, I just want to be me.”

Two: the creation of the podcast where Sally interviews Berivan in Rojava - an active war zone. We weren’t able to record synchronously online, so we weaved together bits of recorded audio, each voice clip exchanged, like a message in a bottle, between these two women responding to each other in very different parts of the world.

The podcasts page is a patchwork quilt – brief moments of conversations between women, gifts of time, women’s own words in their own voices, recorded, edited and collected in one place. They serve an archival function as much as anything else, a snapshot of this period in the women’s liberation movement. There’s a great deal of joy in the making, of hearing women connect with each other. Women’s laughter is one of the best sounds in the world. Sometimes, I almost view the podcasts as a beautiful excuse for feminists to just get together and talk, a sewing circle stitching audio rather than thread.

A huge cheer and giant thank you, then, to all of the incredibly generous, fabulous, so-smart-it’s-a-little-intimidating, insightful, wise, funny, brilliant women who’ve been involved in the podcasts & the team so far… of course that includes our marvellous listeners, supporters and the wonderful women who will come along with FiLiA on the adventures ahead.

-Sara (podcast coordinator)