Rahila Gupta
Rahila Gupta
Rahila Gupta is a freelance journalist, writer, activist and longstanding member of Southall Black Sisters, founded in 1979 to highlight and challenge all forms of violence against minority women.
She is currently chair of the Nihal Armstrong Trust, a charity which she founded to provide grants to families of children with cerebral palsy. This charity enables them to purchase cutting edge therapies and equipment.
She is one of the judges on the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize, which is given annually to individual women and organisations who have made an extraordinary contribution to the fight against violence against women. She was given the Flame Award 2018 for championing women's rights.
Her books include: a collection of essays she edited, From Homebreakers to Jailbreakers: Southall Black Sisters in 2003; Provoked, the story of a battered woman who killed her violent husband, she co-wrote the screenplay of the film which was released in 2007; Enslaved, on immigration controls, was published in 2007. Her play, a monologue in verse, Don’t Wake Me: The Ballad of Nihal Armstrong, ran in London, Edinburgh, New York, and four cities in India between 2012-14 and was nominated for a number of awards.
Her articles are published in the Guardian, New Humanist, New Internationalist and openDemocracy among other magazines, journals and websites. She and Beatrix Campbell are collaborating on a book, Why Doesn't Patriarchy Die? which will investigate how patriarchy fits with diverse political systems.
'Feminist awakening rarely happens in a single moment. It's a process that begins at birth when the weight of preconceptions about what it is to be a woman bear down on you and you struggle to break free.'
