Françoise Girard is an activist and founder of Feminism Makes Us Smarter. We discuss Francois' journey from studying law in Montreal to becoming a feminist activist in New York. Francois shares experiences from her work with the Open Society Institute and the International Women's Health Coalition, elaborating on the critical role of grassroots feminist movements in effecting societal change.
“Taking a feminist, intersectional lens helps us understand the world better. You can see trends before the regular commentators do.”
The conversation touches on misconceptions about feminism, the interconnected nature of various justice movements, and the importance of long-term, flexible support from philanthropists.
“If you want to track the health of a democracy, look at what’s happening to women’s rights. They’re the early warning system.”
Francois also highlights the power of storytelling in activism and reveals her creative process behind her writing.
“When we walk out of a play, we’re more in touch with our feelings. That’s how movements grow — through stories and emotion, not just policy.”
“Each of us won’t solve it all, but if we all do something — even something small — that’s how things move. That’s what gives me hope.”
The discussion concludes with insights into successful campaigns, including the decriminalization of abortion in Ireland, and practical advice for individual contributions to social change.
Summary contents, transcript and podcast links below. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to pods. Video above or on YouTube.
Contents
00:18 Francois' Journey to Activism
01:50 Working with International Organizations
03:39 Founding Feminism Makes Us Smarter
04:54 Understanding Modern Feminism
05:41 Intersectionality and Feminism
10:35 Theories of Change in Activism
22:54 Challenges and Learnings in Feminist Movements
31:45 The Role of Art and Opera in Life
32:17 The Power of Storytelling
36:14 Creative Processes and Writing
41:51 Successful Movements and Campaigns
49:41 Current Projects and Future Plans
54:38 Final Thoughts and Advice
Transcript (This is AI assisted, so mistakes are possible)
Ben: Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be speaking to Francois Girard. She's an author, activist, and founder of Feminism. Makes Us Smarter, Francois, welcome.
Françoise: Thank you very much, Ben. I'm really pleased to be talking to you today.
Ben: How did your journey to become an activist come about?
Françoise: Ah if you'd do me when I was 15, whether I'd be doing what I'm doing today, I would've thought it would be very cool to do what I'm doing today, but I don't think I would've imagined it. I would've said, how on earth do you become a writer, someone who works with feminist movements globally? I wouldn't have known how this happened.
So basically, I. I studied political science and then I be, I studied law, became a lawyer. I was working in a big law firm but I was always interested in human rights, women's rights, justice, fairness. And throughout my journey as you call it, I did get involved in student politics.
I was the president of the Law Students Association in law school at the University of Montreal. I was, always involved in organizing, with events and year books and plays and, I was always active but when I had the opportunity to move to New York when I was 34, I got married and decided to move to New York.
My husband was already in New York. That was the moment I left Montreal and decided that this was the time for a change. I didn't, I wasn't gonna join a big law firm in New York. I was instead gonna go into, international human rights, international affairs, New York was the place, right? So it was the opportunity.
So I did do that after a while after knocking on a lot of doors. And this was Prego, you couldn't look up people the same way. You had to knock on doors and meet people. I ended up hired by the Open Society Institute at the time the Soros Foundations and I started working on human rights.
In Eastern Europe not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall and. Gave away George source's money to human rights groups, women's rights groups independent journalists. We just did a lot of work on democracy. Promotion was very exciting and I learned a lot. And after that joined the International Women's Health Coalition.
'cause my passion was always feminism and women's rights. And I went to see my boss at Open Society and I said, I'd like to. Be on the front. I wanna go on the front lines. I, it's nice to give money to groups, but you're removed and I am gonna leave a comfortable world, leave it behind the world of philanthropy and join a frontline organization.
So I joined International Women's Health Coalition, which later on ended up leading for eight years, and got connected with feminists from all over the world. Working on sexual and reproductive health and rights, in particular, abortion rights, contraception, sexuality, education, violence against women, some of the most difficult, quote unquote issues the most culturally challenging issues in a lot of contexts.
And met all these amazing that I'm still in touch with and just had. An amazing time of it. It's hard but so rewarding and five years ago now, I left the coalition and four years and a year later, so four years ago, I started, feminism Makes us Smarter, which is a communications platform where I have a newsletter.
A podcast. So where I talk to feminists from all over the world about their work, their journey. I also review books and evidence about, what works to combat violence against women, or what works to advance abortion rights. And just putting out there, more voices and more experiences, knowledge that's not often found in the mainstream media.
There's. Not a lot written about feminism in general. Even when women march by the millions, the mainstream press writes very little about it. They just don't find it interesting, or important or I don't know. And and so I felt that it would be a contribution to, to put that additional content out there in the.
In the sphere, in the internet sphere.
Ben: That's amazing. So how do you think we should think about feminism today? What? What do you think is most misunderstood by most people when we think about it? And I think there's some talk about also the intersectionality of it. It doesn't live in isolation, but to your point, there's a lot of talk about what.
Works there are these intersections with wealth and poverty or the fact that, feminism makes us smartest. Societies which are more equal seem to be doing better and all of that. But I'd be interested in your take on what's most misunderstood.
Françoise: I think that when I chose the name, feminism makes us smarter and I like the acronym FMUS because I pronounce it famous, 'cause we're the famous feminists, of course.
So you gotta have a bit of fun. But what I wanted to say is that. If you take a feminist lens, and it has to be an inter intersectional feminist lens, so we can talk about that. But if you take a feminist lens to the world, you start to see things much more clearly, right? Things that seem perplexing or become clear.
When you take a feminist lens, you also see things coming with much more. Preview, so to speak, like for example, I think it's. In my world, it's well known. The connection between author, authoritarianism, fascism, and sexism and the repression of women is that's always gone together, right?
So if you pay attention to anti-abortion movement movements, fighting against gender equality against the whole idea of gender, even then you can see that. Fascist movements are on the rise, right? Because they're connected. And in a way, issues like abortion, control of women's bodies control of women's fertility are canaries in the coal mine of democracy and human rights.
So it does make you smarter to adopt a feminist lands to understand even politics, because you can see. Trends before, like the regular commentators will see them. That's what I've observed. Now, what's misunderstood about feminism, one is the typical trope that feminists hate men. You know that it's a man hating movement.
That we wanna abolish men and so on. And that's of course not true. Many of us have men in our lives, men we love men we spend our daily lives with. What we don't and or what we hate is patriarchy. Like the notion that there's should be a social order that elevates one. Sex, the male sex, or people who are assigned male at birth above everyone else above, above females.
People who are assigned female at birth or people who are non-binary and so on. Like the, this idea that, the male should rule is the problem. And it leads to many other problems including violence, war, domination, extractive capitalism control over nature by, by, by man. That is, there is some of the things that we wanna fight against.
And the other thing that I think is misunderstood is that if we adopt a feminist approach, I. We, everyone will benefit. Like people assume that only women will benefit, but in fact, men also are oppressed by sexism and patriarchy, right? The idea of being a man today is very narrow, right? You must be strong and domineering and you must be.
Taciturn and stoic, and you must resolve all your conflicts through violence and domination. And for a lot of men, of course, this is very oppressive, oppressive of their own nature, their own sensibilities. It's of course very destructive. Because then, anytime there's a problem, you have to punch the other guy or, lobb a missile, whatever.
It's not conductive conducive to, to, to peace to building society, harmonious society. So I do think for a lot of men becoming feminists would actually be empowering for them. So that's one thing. Then the intersectional part is that of course, because when we say patriarchy, the patriarchy as its practice now is not to elevate all men.
Although all men can, participate in the patriarchy. But the patriarchy that wants control over our society is the white patriarchy, right? The white, cisgender, straight. Patriarchy and the Christian patriarchy this is what in the US for example, we're facing, these are the people who wanna dominate and they definitely are of a certain makeup.
And so our feminism has to be able to analyze that. And it's not just okay to say, we wanna abolish patriarchy in general. We have to really analyze the relationships between. Racial justice, environmental justice gender justice, economic justice and feminism to be able to have a proper analysis of what's really going on here.
Ben: So activists often talk about a kind of theory of change, the mechanisms that they think they, the levers that they can pull in society today to impact some of these changes for the better. And like you've alluded to some things over history seems to have worked, some things have perhaps not worked as well.
We can learn things from other. Types of activists, like disability rights activists, and you've said race and all sorts of things. So I'm interested in what you think the main theories of change you have at the moment. What you think is working or maybe should work or you're interested in.
Françoise: Yeah, the one thing that's. Always been my guiding light is the notion that, the famous quote by Frederick Douglas, the 19th century African American writer and social reformer that he fought against slavery in the US in the 19th century. And was someone who worked for rebuilding, reconstructing the US on equality principles.
And he had this famous saying, power concedes nothing without a demands. It never did. And it never will, right? And so what that says is that we have to organize in movements and, in community-based groups and so on to demand. Equality and justice. It's not gonna happen without a fight, and it's not going to happen without us demanding our freedom and our and demanding justice. So for me, my theory of justice is really grounded in social movements, in community organizing. And there's. Have plenty of evidence that's what really makes a difference for change.
Certainly in feminism there's been a lot of interesting research on violence against women and what has worked in various societies to move the needle on violence against women. What has spurred governments actually act on violence against women, which is so pervasive and there's this fabulous research by a professor.
Called Laurel Weldon. She's at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and Canada. And she and a colleague Malan, Toon put out this research where they looked at data from 70 countries around the globe. And what were the critical factors that got governments to actually do something about violence against women.
And after they took away all the, left-wing governments presence of women in parliament, whatever, they controlled for all the variables. The one factor that was critical to moving the needle on violence against women was the presence of independent, organized feminist movements. Right? When you had a feminist women's rights movement that was pushing the government to act on violence against women, that's when you saw action.
Without that, it didn't matter. What philosophy the government espouse, and what you know, whether it was a developed capitalist economy or a socialist country, a richer, poorer, it didn't matter. The one thing that mattered the most was the presence of feminist movements pushing government to act.
So that's, it's not just my say so, my belief or what Frederick Douglas said, it is actually. Evidence-based that with social movements change is possible. It doesn't mean it's inevitable, but that is the critical factor that must be the secret sauce that must be there.
Ben: In an ideal world, how would you think about shaping society?
So if these movements are successful or is there any particular. Policy or idea now. 'cause our utopia might be a little bit away. But policy or ideas now you think would be, are really vital to think about enacting and how do we get, from there to our ideal world?
Françoise: Oh my goodness, there's so much that's on fire right now, literally and figuratively that.
It's hard to pick one thing I just wanted to add, because you mentioned disability rights, that I do think the disability rights movement. Has said something, one of their slogans is very profound and important, which is nothing about us without us, and that's also then been adopted by other movements including the HIV and AIDS movement.
And the feminist movement, of course, believes that deeply. You cannot. Make the change without the people most affected at the table. And bring them in and actually give them leadership. Not just bring them in as a token or listen to them on the side, or, consult with them, but the, the decisions being made over here.
It's really. Co-creating the solutions with the communities in leadership. And so if I had to change anything, it would be that, to really take that seriously, like really bring people in to co-create and imagine solutions and enact them long term and really stay the course tho that would be one of the things that I think we.
Make the biggest difference and there's so little of that being done. It's pretty shocking. But of course there's many other things. Healthcare, of course, that's been my beat. Sexual and reproductive health control of women's bodies, ensuring that half the population can control their body.
Fertility are not subject to violence can make decisions without coercion. That would be hugely important, including, girls, early marriage, forced marriage. The gamut of things that happen to girls at an early age is. It's just terrifying. So if I could change that, I'm sure we'd be in a better world, but that's the not the only thing we need to do, obviously.
Ben: Sure. And but to your point you'd need to include everyone and then downstream these things happen. If you can't get that level of inclusion with all of these groups, then you probably don't even get any of these downstream and they wouldn't be sustainable. Yeah. So we could go on and on about the things on fire, as you say, but maybe we should just flip it and.
And look at some of the silver linings. And maybe I would ask what are the things which give you hope right now? Are there things that you find inspiring or things which you think okay, here's a little spark. We should continue to work on that?
Françoise: Yeah. I'm always inspired by feminist from all over the world and their bravery and creativity.
A few years ago I was impress. Many of us were by the Argentine women's movement fighting for the decriminalization of abortion in Argentina, which was a tall order, right? Argentina was very conservative, macho, historically Catholic country that had lived under dictatorship.
All that leaves a lot of. In society if you want. That leaves a lot of things. In the political apparatus that, that make it difficult to advance women's rights and equality, gender equality in general. And they campaigned for years and we, when we were at the International Women's Health Coalition, supported them even when it looked completely farfetched that this was going to be possible.
And they came to us. Yeah. Again, like listening to people, they came to us and said, we wanna. We wanna campaign in in the Congress for decriminalization of abortion, but we are from all over the Argentina and the provinces of Argentina. And it's hard for us to come to Buenos Aires.
We need a small apartment in front of Congress that we can use as a base. But no donor wants to fund rent, because the donors have all these ridiculous rules. And they said, would you do that? Would you. Find a little apartment that we can use as a touchpoint. And we said, yeah, sure. Yeah. And this was years before the decriminalization actually happened and we said, yeah, we'll do that.
Yeah, we understand what you're talking about because we're activists ourselves. We know what it takes, what kind of sustain action and presence and lobbying and how you need. And so we did that. And in December, 2020. Congress voted to decriminalize abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, and then the president signed off on it.
Then it was after, terrific mobilization that basically took over the whole country during the pandemic no less. They were amazing. And they had the green scarves and they did all these marches and it was super creative, also very visual, very. With music and singing, and it was intergenerational.
You had older feminists, like what they call the historical feminist, less historic as the older 85-year-old feminist with the young teenagers marching together. It was beautiful and moving. So that gives me hope. The creativity and the ingenuity and the. Patience and determination and fierceness of feminists from all over the world.
And then of course, today what we're seeing rise up in the US this movement against fascism, which comes out of all, many previous and existing social movements, including Black Lives Matters and movements for environmental justice. That's all. It's all coalescing and then re reorganizing and morphing.
But that's where we saw we had the No Kings Day in mid-June. That was incredible. Impressive. Big all over the us, not just in one city, but all over the US in places where you wouldn't expect people to come out and say, no Kings here, fascism is un-American, where, it was beautiful.
So that gives me hope. Yeah.
Ben: And like you say, you started your own podcast not too long ago. How's that been going and what are some surprising things or anything that you've learned from doing your own podcast?
Françoise: Oh, I, first of all, I love it even more than I thought I would.
It's so much fun because you can talk to many people you wouldn't talk to otherwise. And a friend of mine a few years ago told me, Francois, of course, because I was surprised people would agree to talk to me. Even people I didn't know. He says, but of course they'll talk to you. You are now the media.
You're the media. When the media calls you, most people are flattered and they're like, you wanna speak with me? Oh, great. And people have. A lot to say incredibly rich experiences of activism, of, or, they know many things about what works on the ground, what change is possible what bravery there is out there to advance women's rights.
And so there they've got a lot to say that you would never read in the regular media. There's very little in fact about women's rights, even when, the women's march happened in. In 2017, there was really not that much reporting on it, considering how big and transnational it was. So it's it's important I think, to put that out there in the internet, in the conversation, more voices, more experiences, things that regular media would not pick up otherwise.
I learn and people have amazing stories to tell, and the part of it about storytelling I think is really important. They will talk about their journey, what they learned along the way. People are quite candid also what things didn't work what they wish they'd done differently. It's a real learning experience for me as well as I think for the listeners.
Ben: That's, yeah. That's a good question about what what we would've done differently or any learnings that you have. So maybe I'm gonna pass that one back to you as well, is over your feminist journey, are there any things you really wish had gone a different way or some sort of learning that you'd, you'd pass on to future generations as to how to think about this movement building?
Françoise: There's a couple of things. One, I, on the, per my personal level, I wish I had. Listen to myself a little more, like when I was getting tired as a leader, I wish I'd passed the baton sooner. That would've been smart. And I think there's, in any social movement or any, like in politics, in, in business, there is this.
Sense of, being essential, irre, irreplaceable, critical. I think we have to do away with that, the pro protagonist moa, as they say in, in Spanish, which is the idea that you're such an important figure that, if you lead, it's gonna be devastating and, maybe not right? If you pass the button in there.
In a responsible way maybe sooner would be better, and we could use, different leaders at different times. So that's the one thing person. And
Ben: the system and the organization has gotta be able to survive beyond the founder, otherwise yeah. Not there, right?
Françoise: That's right. And so of course you've gotta lay the ground for that, but don't assume that. They can't do without you. Don't assume you're so indispensable. Put the conditions in place and then pass the baton. Also because this work is very tiring and you have to realize sometimes you do get depleted and maybe you're better, your best ideas are behind you, and be honest about that.
The other thing on a totally different level for funders of feminist organizations and of any social movement is we've gotta learn to trust. The movements much more than we do. Like funders, please. We need to trust the organizations, the leaders. We've gotta give them long-term flexible funding.
Stop trying to control things that you can't control. It's the illusion of control, of course. 'cause you're not on the ground and you cannot be there to. See what's really happening and most of if you've done your due diligence and you've, the organization, they're not there for nefarious and they're there to advance a cause often that great personal cost, so trust them, right?
Don't micromanage them. Give them the five year grant. General support and just send us your annual report and we'll visit you once a year and we'll chat with you a few times a year on the phone and we'll get out of your way. And that's been one of the biggest problems. I think our side, if you want the progressive movements have had to contend with is that there.
Philanthropic sector and the government donors, the overseas development assistance is way too micromanaging, controlling, asking for interim reports all the time, et cetera. Which, with key performance indicators and log frames, whatever, that don't mean anything.
Honestly, there's such a waste of time that's not. That's not productive. When you're leading a campaign, let's say to decriminalize abortion in Argentina, you have a lot of twists and turns, you know you have a defeat in parliament. Then six months later there's an opportunity again, the road comes up again where you know, if you are having to report on very tight metrics that don't allow you flexibility, the ability to.
Once again fund, the lobbying effort, even though you've already funded it once, you know that if you don't have that kind of flexibility, you won't be able to pivot and do the things you need to do when you're really pushing for change. And if I look at the right wing in the US and globally, the same is true in Europe.
Their donors get that. Their donors give them 20 year support. Help build institutions, give them lots of money to try different things and fail. And they trust them, like they trust them, that they do wanna bring on, authoritarian and Christian role and they're all on the same page and, and give them room to experiment and try different things and it makes a difference.
That what we're seeing now in, in. The Western world is and elsewhere is the result of that trust by right wing donors. For our right donors, we need to learn those lessons. Yeah.
Ben: Yeah. I think there's a lot of. Elements of truth on that, particularly when you take a movement, which has got an end goal.
How useful are KPIs? What are you gonna do Num number of calls on politicians. That's not gonna be a useful metric for them. And I think if you have a guiding purpose, a guiding North Star, then there is and I think there is a little bit, there's two things I picked up is particularly with smaller.
Organizations or grants. And, smaller can even be few million or tens of millions, but they're not actually that large in the grand scheme of things.
Françoise: No.
Ben: We're not talking about billions that the paperwork surrounding it is just. Outta proportion to getting on the work that you have to do.
So that's a number one thing. But the number two thing that I picked up is the people who are super great on all the kind of paperwork stuff at the margin, and it's slightly less effective than the people who are just really useless at the paperwork stuff, but are going out enacting whatever it is the thing that you want to enact.
Yeah. And so by putting such high paperwork burdens on people, either you having to hire. Specific people to just do the paperwork thing, which isn't the active purpose that you want to do. Yeah. And then it slightly tilts to the less effective people, maybe even on the borderline of fraud, because you're very good at just doing the form and you end up having to spend 80% of your money on the form, which is then you go why wasn't the majority of our money spent on this other thing as well?
You asked us to do all of the Yeah. Forms and said, this is what you have. So I,
Françoise: that's right. There were grants that at the International Women's Health Coalition we were contemplating applying for, but then we found out that from other people who'd received funding from that donor that if you did take that money, you'd have to hire a full-time person just to deal with them, deal with the donor, fill out the forms, and, send them their, log frames with their.
Indicators filled out. And and when you accept that kind of funding, you also end up inevitably passing some of that onto your grantees. We were funding grassroots groups and we thought, no. Are we gonna keep calling the group in northern Cameroon that's fighting against child marriage to ask them, how many meetings have they had and how many girls were there in these meetings under the tree in that village?
And is this. Reasonable. And frankly, no. So we had the luxury of saying no to some of these donors. But it's easy to get trapped into that as a, as an activist group, and it does take you away from your core purpose.
Ben: And the last one, I would say that on the grant giving side, for philanthropists or organizations listening in, is that the decisions take too long as well.
Yeah, like a by committee, and B you had the information you needed. You probably had it over two coffee chats and a call. And then you asked them to produce this 10,000 page, 10,000 word. Probably not quite 10,000 pages. Feels like 10,000 pages, but 10,000 word. Form or whatever, and you're getting no incremental value for that.
So I gave some a micro grant program, a thousand pounds, a thousand dollars to individual activists or people trying to make a difference, and I have a call and decide within 24 hours and you give them the money and then we're like, oh my God, I just can go and do it.
And then I say. Tell me in a year whether that worked or not, and yeah. Yeah. A good half of them. It hasn't really worked, but it's fine. They tried something. Yeah. And another half actually they went in, they went and did something and they did it fast. It either works or it doesn't.
You're, a report's not gonna help us like that.
Françoise: That's so true. Yeah. No it's just mind boggling sometimes. Yeah. And then they say, okay, then we have doc dockets only twice a year. I'm like, where's the urgency? Yeah. There's no urgency. The world is literally burning in you all, are very comfy, meeting twice a year. Oh, wow. Yeah. No, yeah, exactly. There's a real disconnect.
Ben: If there's things happening, you should, you can make these decisions fast. Good people can make the decision fast. And I think we can we can and should learn from that. So we met through art and theater.
We have a, yes, we do. We have a theater company, improbable, which does operas. As well as improvisation. So we have that in common. So I'm interested in what role does art and opera play in your life? And we touched on the role of storytelling in general, in movement building and in, in convincing people.
So you could touch on that, but I'd be really interested in how art has influenced your life and opera, and how does that kind of intersect with everything you do?
Françoise: Yeah. Getting back to storytelling. Years ago I had the privilege of spending time in workshops by a man called Chris Rose, who actually lives in Britain, who used to work for Greenpeace.
And he's a campaigner and trains people in campaigning. And he's the one who made us understand those of us working in the public health program at the Open Society Foundation that. Facts don't move people or very little. And people, you can give them all the statistics in the world.
What moves them is stories stories that connect with their own values and their emotional, makeup. And that's of course, again, you know what people like Joe Rogan and all these guys on the manosphere understand. They really are very adept at telling stories that connect with the grievances that some men feel, right?
It so storytelling and narrative. Is what people remember. And then you can hook a few facts to it, to the story, but it's, the frame has to be the story and the emotion and so on. So that's how you move people on political issues, for example. And so I think that's where arts and opera and theater connect for me, because that's often how you can pass if you wanna use it for political purposes.
Of course. How important message is important. Stories are conveyed. And I don't know that's always the reason. Let's say Puccini wrote an opera but often we, when you read the story of how the opera came about, it was about, the revolution in Italy and wanting to fight authoritarian kings and wanting to support.
The movement for liberation and democracy in Italy, so there's several of it, of the operas like Tosca that are, that have the subtext of liberation. So it, it worked that people went to see the operas at the time and they understood what he was saying, even though it was a story that allegedly didn't have an immediate political purpose, but they understood.
They understood the message. And I think music, bypasses that sort of rational side of us and really reaches us in parts of our brain that are truly connected to our emotions. And so opera and I found in particular is something that really will bring out an emotional connection to the story at hand.
And often you'll find yourself. Crying, sobbing in an opera in a way that if you listen to facts about tuberculosis, you wouldn't. But when you see Mimi dying in lab, you know she's dying of tuberculosis. You do feel, my God, we can't allow people to die of tuberculosis.
This is too cruel, right? So there is lots of way in which opera like conveys messages. Very powerfully and directly to people. And it's, it brings up, I think, our humanity, our compassion, the our connection with each other. When we've been at a play, with we, we've both on the board of Improbable and we've been to the place that they put on we come out feeling like better people.
Now we're more in touch with our feelings and our. Or Yeah, or dignity or humanity or care for others. It does make you a better person, I think, to engage in the arts and to open yourself up to the range of emotions that theater and music, connect you with. I do think it's. It's a plus in the world.
So
Ben: it allows us to engage and imagine other world and other people, I think. Yeah, very much agree with that. Yeah. And you've written, I think you've written your own book or books and been involved in creative projects, so I'm interested, do you have a particular creative process or when you are creative do you ride in.
Notebooks and think over the day or your morning or evening person, or do you use post-it notes or how do you do it? I like asking people there, there seems to be 1,001 different ways of doing creativity, but I'd be interested if you have a particular process or things you like to do.
Françoise: Yeah I haven't written a book. You know me, there's a book somewhere in there, but it's not yet a reality. What I write is a newsletter which I write every month. I used to write it twice a month, but now with podcasting, I do it once a month and I. It's about different things. It's about a topic in women's rights.
Could be something very current the battle over abortion rights in the us or it can be something that's more of a feature. So I went to The Gambia last month to meet the activists against female genital mutilation, and it's a battle that's been going on for years now, and, I wanted to hear how it was going, so that's more of a feature piece. I also review books that I find inspiring writing about feminism. I. Or stories about women that I find inspiring. So sometimes I'll put out a digest where I've said, I've read this book, I just wanna share it with you on here's some of the things I'm thinking about.
And I've done a few of these on the writings of Bell Hooks. The African American queer writer professor who who died a few years ago, who wrote about feminism, about love about. Community about organizing, about what it's like to be a black woman. She had a lot of incredible writing that feminists will know, but a lot of other people will never have heard about her.
And so I wanted to put that out to, connect people to it so that, so my process is it's painful until I sit down, but once I'm at the table, it's fine. Once I start. No matter how I start, I'm good. Yeah. Then I can just write, I get in the zone and I'm writing and it takes, it takes to write one newsletter will take days.
I, I spend hours on it. It must be 20 hours, 25 hours on one piece. That's 3000 words. Because you really wanna. And there's so many things I could be saying that I've gotta take out and just keep my story, my narrative, more simple and keep out all the intriguing details I would like to bring in.
So it takes a lot of work just both to put it together in a way that makes sense narratively, but also then. Pair it down to the core and then, work on all the sentences. And English isn't my mother tongue, so I've gotta do some work, additional work to make sure it, it's okay.
And then there's, the dreaded typos that are always creeping up and so it takes a lot of work, but. Once I get going, I'm okay. What I do before that is often I've been reading something and so I just take notes and I put it in a FA folder. I write the notes or a copy, a link or a paragraph from something that I find interesting.
I put it in this folder. So I've got a few things to get started with, but after that, after I've read that, I just start, I just start writing and then,
Ben: and you go immediately. To digital, essentially you're taking digital notes and straight onto that, or do you do a little longhand piece? No
Françoise: I love longhand, but I just end up doing digital even though I'm not a good typist.
And I, I wasn't an early adopter of anything, but yes, no I do it.
Ben: And do you general, do you generally edit sentences and paragraphs as you go, or you're a little bit more we need to get the flow out and then you edit sentences and paragraphs? Once it's all written or is it a mix?
Françoise: It's a mix. Like I'll write, three, four paragraphs, then I'll stop. Then I'll go back and rewrite, reread, and then fix it a bit. And then leave it, then continue, then go back. Then I, this paragraph needs to go first and then, it's it's written. Yeah. I go back over and over to make sure it's exactly what I want.
So that it's easy. I was very impressed early on in my student life by George Orwell's essay on the politics in the English language when he said, you've gotta do all the work. Like your reader should just, read it and it's easy. You've done all the work, you've taken out all the difficult, the difficulties.
It's gotta be smooth. And your point has to just. Pop, right?
Ben: Yeah. That's the, and
Françoise: so that's what I'm trying to do.
Ben: That's the great problem with the vast majority of philosophers actually, and also economists. I think Not all economists, but most, they don't write with that clarity, so we can't really understand, what it is with their ideas even.
Yeah. If they had it.
Françoise: Yeah. Great.
Ben: I agree. Last last few questions. I wanted to go back to your thought on what makes successful movements. And I was very intrigued. You're talking about the feminist movement, particularly in Argentina, but maybe you'd wanna highlight a movement or two, or a campaign or something which you thought was really successful and what really made it successful.
And I can see probably a lot of it. Is in the context of the people in the place that might not directly read from things to things. But having looked in the inside of some of these things and I think people looking on the outside don't get to see how well A, how much effort was in there, and b, the sort of.
I guess operational groundwork about how these things come together, and I just wondered if you had any insights to offer. Having seen some of these things about you know how the movement comes together. Yes. They do seem to be points of leaders. They do seem to have these messages. A lot of it is about the storytelling and emotion.
Sometimes they have these symbols. Green scarfs, rainbow colors, I this and that interplay between the storytelling, the leaders, but the community a as well. I'm just fascinated if you have any observations on what makes successful movements or activism and and insights you might have.
Françoise: Yeah, since, I've worked a lot on abortion I'll mention another such campaign. But you know what I'm saying I think is applicable to other topics. The campaign to remove the prohibition against abortion from the Irish Constitution. That a few years ago that was an incredible.
Efforts by women in Ireland, women and men. There were men involved as well. And it really, it was sparked by the death of Savita Halvar that young dentist who went to the emergency room because she was miscarrying in Ireland and was denied, an abortion because there was still some fetal activity even though the pregnancy wasn't viable at that point.
If you're miscarrying at 18 weeks, there's nothing to save, right? But the Irish medical establishment denied her an abortion and she became septic and then she died of a massive infection completely unnecessarily with her husband by her side, pleading the doctors. And the medical personnel to do something.
And that was a very tragic story in 2012. That, was a shock, I think to, to Ireland, frankly, and to the Irish women's movement. And they, they realize this is the moment, like we need to act because this is intolerable. It's been intolerable for a long time, but this is intolerable, but this is also.
A symbol of everything that's wrong. So they, you gotta recognize the moment when there is that spark, right? You have to have preexisting organizations able to take that forward. To donors. We were speaking earlier about donors funding long-term general support. If you don't have organizations that already exist and already have been funded, who can grab the opportunity, seize the moment, it's not gonna work.
It's gonna be very difficult. Because set, setting up an organization. In the middle of a campaign is very hard. You need to have some preexisting structures, plea again for finding structural organizing. But there were some feminist groups and groups working on abortion and, in despair for a long time in Ireland.
And they saw the moment, okay, this is the moment that will, it's a story, it's a narrative that is very clear. It's outrageous, it's unacceptable, and we can use that to make change. And then what they were very clever doing is. Starting to get testimonies from people who had been forced to travel to Britain or who had been prevented from traveling to Britain to get their abortions, who had to give birth.
As teenagers people really scrambling to get, put the money together to try to figure out how they were gonna take the boat. The difficulties families face with. Children they couldn't take care of. They really managed to get all the different stories of people who had children that they couldn't take care of.
Those that were able to obtain abortions in very difficult circumstances. And then also the people who needed the kind of care the maternal care, the miscarriage care that were being denied that care because of these abortion laws that became all encompassing and. Prevented the proper practice of.
Obstetrics in the emergency room so that lots of these stories were gathered. Then they organized these actions, like for example, they started marching to through towns with suitcases, to, to demonstrate the need to take a boat to, to go to England to get an abortion because you couldn't get it in your own country as a citizen of Ireland.
And so they, these women would march through villages with their suitcases, their wheelies behind them, and. Very powerful stuff that people just, oh God, yes. We're doing this to our women. This is not, this isn't, okay. I. Then apparently they also created these knitting circles where they would knit these little flags, with, a, a ban.
The eighth Amendment was the provision of the constitution that needed to be repealed the eighth, and they were knitting and bringing people in who might not have thought they were abortion activists or that they. We're prepared to campaign on this, but they could join a knitting club and be educated, so this, they had many creative tactics that led to this campaign.
And they brought men in. They had men groups of men campaigning to repeal the eighth Amendment. One of the, 'cause they, it concerned them too. Obviously they're, they're very concerned. In fact,
Ben: one of the things I heard also around that is that they used a process of a citizen's assembly to try and draw in and say, look, if you ask.
A hundred people or a thousand people just drawn from our population, this is what we think now this, time has moved on.
Françoise: Yeah. Yeah.
Ben: I was wondering how you think about that. Did survey as well and things did.
Françoise: Yeah. They did a lot of surveying also to show the change in opinion.
They used all the tactics and when people say, what's the one tactic, I would say, you gotta use a range of things. 'cause some things will work with. In some contexts and some things will work in others, and that's why they gathered a lot of evidence because for the lawmakers they needed to put the report together.
The book report with the stories and the. The consequences. Economic, medical, psychological consequences, the cost to the system. They did all those things. But then they also were able to do the part of it that was public campaigning, which was the visuals the events, the, the gatherings, the marches, the rallies.
They did it at all, right? And and it worked. And it was an incredible event when it happened that, when people were actually going to vote, no one. Could say they didn't know what the issues were and why this mattered.
Ben: Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Moment in time. Okay. Yeah, very move. I'm very
Françoise: moving too, honestly.
Yeah.
Ben: Great. Last couple of questions. So one is are there any current projects or doings that you'd like to highlight that you're currently working on?
Françoise: Yeah, I've, I'm writing right now about. Control of women's bodies, which is one of my topics. I wrote about female genital mutilation in The Gambia.
I wrote about early enforce marriage, child marriage last year. And I'm gonna keep doing some things on violence against women. There's a couple stories I wanna put out. One about the story of gi, that French woman whose husband was drugging her to offer her to. Random men, and who was raped by at least 50 men without her knowledge in, in that small village in the south of France.
And what I'm interested in, the story is known and these men have been condemned including her husband. He's in prison for doing that to her. But what I'm interested in is the testimony of the man. 51 of them I think, testified at the trial in the, in most of them did testify in their defense.
And the reasons they gave for why they thought it was okay to rape that woman is just remarkable. I think that's a story that I was able to read in the French press, because I speak French and that I don't think people in the English press have. Know about because all those testimonies were not translated.
So I wanna write about that. It's pretty shocking, including lots, several men saying it was her husband, so I had permission.
Ben: Wow.
Françoise: yeah, you, it's okay. You can rape a woman if you're her husband. Tells you it's okay. It's just in today's world, in France,
Ben: yeah. Could definitely have a documentary piece on that.
Françoise: Yes. It really makes you think, it's hard it's not cheerful, but I think we have to look at it straight on, this is what we're talking about, what we're talking about. The need for feminism. Yeah. And then on a lighter note, I'm interested these days in the question of fashion and politics.
There's a really interesting book I'm I wanna get into about how the French Revolution fashion changed overnight because you couldn't wear. You know that the court used to wear, so that brought in the black suit for men, and the cotton clothing for women. And because you could no longer.
These expensive silks, even if you could afford them, it just wasn't done anymore because, politics had transformed what you could wear and not wear. It's really interesting. Yeah. So I wanna look into that.
Ben: Yeah. I, fashion has a, much bigger say as well, like movements and things and symbols and like you say, in the knitting.
Yeah. And the one on the politics front, which I've always noted I have no huge insight as to what it. What it means. But for instance, if you are broadly speaking a powerful male world leader today, you pretty much wear a suit and tie. There's a little exception. So in India you might have a near suit.
Yeah. But that, but like all of, so whether you are Xi Jinping or Putin or Trump or any of the European leaders, they're all in a suit And Thai, whereas. 200 years ago. Even if you think of elite males or just elite court, I mean they were all males mostly. The range of fashion was very varied.
And in this globalization effect, we now think that the pinnacle of male power is a suit and tie. Get up. Yeah.
Françoise: Yeah.
Ben: Which is extraordinary to think and, but also it's un, I find it's really interesting that both China and America and Japan will wear this as their things. There's a little bit more variety in women's dress.
But even there, it's narrowed and it's just interesting thing. Over four, 500 years that would not have been the case. The most powerful people in the world all dressed very different. The same, there was a nation state thing, but yeah, so it's, yeah, you show
Françoise: up in your national but there is an exception to that, which is the tech folks, so that's how Elon Musk can show up in a, the black T-shirt and, the tech lords can wear.
Something different. That's the new power uniform, new.
Ben: Exactly. I I guess it isn't counter-cultural, but it's counter something that, that simple and in fact those sort of statements are worth something. Anyway,
Françoise: we're thinking about yeah, exactly. We're thinking about
Ben: W with that and, how Yeah.
Those symbols that where people wear them or not, and then conform or don't and what it means. Last question. Do you have any life advice, career advice, or thoughts that you wanna share with listeners?
Françoise: I've been interested in the book by Rutger Bregman, the Dutch historian who just put out a book called Moral Ambition, which is, don't waste your talent.
He says, make something of your life. And I think that's something I really agree with. In other words, we can all make a difference, for the world, for better, and. And we shouldn't all just be bankers and consultants and, tech people, although that's, you gotta earn a living.
And that might be your calling. But think about what else you can do to make the world a better place. And we can all do something. We can do a small piece, you can do a bigger piece. It can be your life's work, it can be your side gig, but what are you doing to, improve? The conditions of the most unfortunate, what are you doing for the unhoused?
What are you doing for people who are face discrimination? Per pervasive discrimination? Are you working to, green the economy? We can all do something. And when people say to me, ah, it's overwhelming, I don't know what to do. Look at the situation of women's rights or democracy in the us.
I go, no, okay. It's all right. We. None of us will solve it completely, but each of us can do something every day. And we should. 'cause if we all do something, that's how things will move. That's what gives me hope.
Ben: That seems like a great advice that we can all do something, think about what we might want to do.
And we'll do a little something. So on that, Fran, thank you very much.
Françoise: Thank you so much, Ben. It's been a pleasure.
