Calling for Change: Constructing an Inclusive Form of Feminism With Rafia Zakaria

Feminism is supposed to be the fight for the freedom and equality of women. And in the past 200 years it has made incredible gains: paving the way for women to advance economically, handing them back control of their own bodies, and advocating for their needs and their experiences. But not for all women.In her book Against White Feminism author Rafia Zakaria tells the story of how white supremacy and “whiteness” as a source of privilege have tainted the feminist movement and turned into a grab-and-go branding exercise. The book details how colonialist and white supremacist patterns from the past continue to be replicated in the present. But it is also a call to use the transformative potential of the present to reconstruct feminism without centering whiteness.

In a joint event of the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, the U.S. Consulate General Munich, Hanser Verlag and the Bavarian American Academy we will talk to the attorney and human rights activist Rafia Zakaria about her book and the repeated exclusions, obstacles, and condescension she has experienced as a woman of color and a Muslim from the Global South.

Rafia Zakaria is an author, attorney, and human rights activist who has worked on behalf of victims of domestic violence around the world. She is a columnist for Al Jazeera America, Ms., Dissent, and DAWN, Pakistan’s largest English-language newspaper. Zakaria was born and raised in Karachi and now lives in Pakistan and the United States, where she served on the board of directors of Amnesty International USA.