The GoWoman Podcast: Recent Episodes
Vickie Remoe
Yasmin Jusu-Sheriff is a human rights lawyer and women's rights advocate that has been at the forefront of Sierra Leone's women's movement for three decades.
Dr. Aisha Fofana-Ibrahim is a feminist and Sierra Leone's foremost scholar on gender, and women's empowerment. She leads the Institute for Gender Research and Documentation (INGRADOC) at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone.
Dr. Majeks-Walker is a 72-year-old pioneer and leader of Sierra Leone's women's movement. She has dedicated her life to the fight for women's inclusion and representation across all aspects of public life especially in local, regional, and national government.
This is a conversation with a young Sierra Leonean woman who fought off her attacker. Promising to pay her school fees, a family friend lured Jeneba to his house. Upon arrival, he asked that in exchange for her fees, Jeneba should become his girlfriend. When she refused his advances he tried to rape her. Jeneba is one of the lucky ones. She fought back and got away, but the encounter still left her wishing for death. Without money to pay her fees, Jeneba followed her passion for crafts and started a jewelry business with just $1.10 (10,000SLL). Today that business has grown and she earns $177 (1,600,000SLL)a month, enough to pay her college fees. Jeneba is a GoWoman.
This is one woman's story about surviving child abuse, rape, and intimate partner violence. After years of suffering in silence, 25-year-old Jane has found the courage to tell her story as a survivor of repeated cases of gender-based violence in Sierra Leone. Tune in to bear witness to her courage. This is the GoWoman Podcast with host Vickie Remoe. The Unspeakable Series.
At the age of 12, Bakie joined the all-female Bondo Secret Society where she was circumcised. At 13 she was sent away to live in the US as a means of protecting her from child sexual abuse. When she joined Sierra Leone's foreign service in 1978 she was told that she would quit when she got married. During her time as a career civil servant, she was propositioned for sex on countless occasions. A man once told her he wanted to put his head on her buttocks at a high-level general assembly meeting at the AU. When she got married she almost left her husband when he told her she could take a work opportunity that would offer her a chance at professional development. When she had her first child, she decided if nothing else her daughter should be able to stand on her own two feet, and she must be an independent thinking woman. This is Bakie's story but it is also my story because Bakie is my mother.
The GoWoman Podcast is a series exploring the issues and topics important to the 21st Century African Woman. The GoWoman is a free thinker.