FiLiA’s Parliamentary Event – The Speeches
The FiLiA Campaigns and Policy team are pleased to have formally launched the FiLiA Women's Assembly (FWA) and our new report, Making Policy Work for Women, with an event in Parliament on Wednesday 19th November 2025. We are very grateful to Tonia Antoniazzi MP for being our Parliamentary sponsor for this event. She, Fran, a member of the FiLiA Women’s Assembly, and Kruti, FiLiA’s Director of Policy, all gave short speeches at the event and we are proud to share them here.
Photos were taken by the FiLiA team on the day, so credit goes to them!
Tonia’s remarks
Welcome everyone!
I hope you’re all enjoying the snacks / afternoon tea. I’m afraid I’m here to interrupt them briefly.
It’s International Men’s Day today – so naturally, we’re here to talk about and amplify the voices of women. Because if history has taught us anything, men do seem to take centre stage the other 364 days of the year.
I am absolutely delighted to be sponsoring this FiLiA Parliamentary Reception, which I believe is the organisation’s first on the Parliamentary Estate. About time too – because the world really needs organisations like FiLiA, the Westminster world in particular.
FiLiA is a charity that is rooted in the experiences and voices of women. The work that they do is extensive, multifaceted, important – and unique given their connections to grassroots women’s groups, unions and movements across the world.
Since 2013, they have hosted the largest feminist conference in Europe, bringing together activists, campaigners, academics and survivors to discuss everything and anything that affects women, to strategise and to build global solidarity. With that comes a wealth of invaluable knowledge, reflective of women’s real experiences, that policymakers should absolutely be utilising.
FiLiA initiatives have grown from these connections, and their work goes beyond conversations. Women First, a coalition of survivors of the sex trade and professionals in the VAWG sector, actively challenges the harms of prostitution and works on the ground, as well as with local councils, in pushing for women to have real pathways out of exploitation.
The Hague Mothers campaign fights for justice for mothers and children trapped by the Hague Convention, which too often forces them back into abusive environments. Work has also been underway this year on looking at Local Government Performance on Women’s Equality. There are representatives from all of these initiatives in the room, as well as relevant briefing papers, and I’d encourage members and peers in the room to meet them all and have a chat to learn more.
We’re also here today to formally launch FiLiA’s latest initiative – the Women’s Assembly – which is reflective of the charity’s broader approach. That is, women-led and women-centred. It is incredibly welcome that we have a Labour Government that has made the commitment to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, and I know firsthand that Ministers are working extraordinarily hard to achieve it.
If we are to be successful though, alongside having a broader approach to policy making that is equitable for half of the UK’s population, women’s voices must form a fundamental part of policy making. I cannot overstate the importance of lawmakers hearing directly from women to shape policy that reflects women’s realities.
The reception today is intended as an introduction to an innovative approach to help make this happen, through the work of the FiLiA Women’s Assembly and Campaigns and Policy Team. The FiLiA Women’s Assembly, 1000 women strong and growing – has the potential to be an incredibly useful resource for politicians and policy makers – whether that’s to give feedback on policy informed by women’s realities, run focus groups and consultations, or be a platform for MPs to meet their constituents and hear what they have to say.
Today is an opportunity for MPs and Peers to meet FiLiA and learn all about the work that they do. As I said earlier, there are representatives from most of the FiLiA initiatives mentioned, as well as the entire campaigns and policy team. Have a chat, get to know more about their work, their relationship with your constituents, and make connections. Strength lies in our community.
That’s me done for my remarks, but I am going to hand over to Fran Platt – a woman from the FiLiA Women’s Assembly based in Manchester. Fran is an anti-poverty campaigner community worker who is going to say a few words about her experiences and the FiLiA Women’s Assembly. She became involved in 2025 in planning the FWA with other women in Manchester, attending the FWA Powerful Women training – practical and strategic skills for campaigners to support women to become leaders in their own communities.
Over to you Fran.
Fran’s remarks
I’m speaking today on behalf of the many women FiLiA has engaged during the opening months of the Women's Assembly project. We come from different parts of the UK and have very different backgrounds, ages and abilities. FiLiA has done a remarkable thing in bringing us together and that is down to the hard work of its staff and volunteers.
FiLiA's strength lies in its huge grassroots network of women, across the country, working and volunteering in a number of spheres, including rape crisis, trade unions, community work, academia and health. The fact those staff and volunteers are embedded within those important networks, both nationally and locally, means they know who to talk to to find those groups of women who might want to be involved in policy creation, but don’t know where to start, those women who have no previous involvement in anything like this and those women who have much to say but are never asked and never expect to be asked. Their ability to reach the women who are out of sight of policy makers, except as abstract figures, and invite them to the table and support them in finding the confidence to speak up, is huge.
FiLiA actually value women and understand the varying circumstances they live in, and the barriers they may face in speaking up, and they actively seek to address these. As well as engaging a wide range of women, the Women's Assembly project empowers us. The training FiLiA provides, which is led by what women have said they need, and may vary from area to area, is quality and provided both online and in person to ensure all women interested can access it. Equality Impact Assessment, training led by the Women's Budget Group, delivered free to all who want it, campaigning tools, fundraising workshops all directly meet the gaps our women say they have found in rising to the challenges of their communities, in understanding how we can hold policy makers accountable and ensure women and girls specific needs are considered and met. These training sessions increase our skills and confidence and bring women together with each other to build networks and support systems. These training sessions have been accessed by women of varying ethnicities, refugee women, and those supporting women with gambling addictions, as well as those in domestic abuse services.
I have been involved in the Greater Manchester Women's Assembly, along with some other local women, after FiLiA contacted us through one of their volunteers to see if we were interested. We were a loose collab of women from different parts of Greater Manchester who had found each other and met to talk about issues affecting our communities and ourselves. We were tasked with using our networks to engage as many women as possible, particularly those who have never engaged with this kind of project before. I am a community worker in Bolton and have been running a social enterprise from the estate I live on for the last 16 years. One of the projects I run is for women with anxiety and poor mental health. The majority of the women in my group have traumatic pasts and struggle with a variety of issues from finances, health and caring responsibilities, to poor literacy and unemployment. FiLiA were keen to support my women in getting involved as theirs are voices very often missing from conversations and too often classed as 'hard to engage'. A number of my group were curious if a little dubious about what I was dragging them into, but signed up to the Assembly database. We held our first meeting, a disability benefits consultation, in May in the centre of Manchester and had a wide range of women attending with physical and mental health conditions, and those with caring responsibilities for others, and the consultation work done that day, along with the work produced in the other legacy cities and online helped produce FiLiA’s report. Three of the women I work with came along that day, all nearly bottled it but didn’t, all were very nervous but all ended up getting so much out of the day.
I’d like to tell you a little about these women because, while FiLiA brings all women together, these women are so far removed from the kind of women that are usually found at gatherings organised by more mainstream organisations or council events. P has a very traumatic past, she has been in prison, she has been the victim of child sexual abuse and multiple incidents of sexual violence as an adult. She has very low self esteem and finds it very hard to trust people. The way Julie, Kat and Ali from FiLiA facilitated the session made P feel at ease and valued. Feeling valued meant the world to her. The feeling that she had the time and space to share her experiences of the disability benefit system with other women and that they weren’t judging her was so precious and has led to her getting involved in more FiLiA related activity, ‘I’m so glad I went, nobody spoke down to me and I felt like what I had to say mattered. Thank you it’s opened up my world’.
The impact this had for her was extraordinary. Her support worker is amazed, and we are all so proud of her, and it was the women involved in FiLiA that helped make that happen. Another woman S has been diagnosed a few years ago with a variety of health conditions and had become very isolated. She previously wouldn’t go into Manchester as it was too busy for her anxiety but challenged herself and ended up broadening her world. She said, ‘It's made me realise I have more to say and that I can do this, as a disabled woman people talk about us but rarely listen to us, it was brilliant to be heard’.
FiLiA engages women of all ages, the daughter of one of the Women's Assembly members had this to say:
‘As a young woman, it was so inspiring to hear of the strength and power of others both individually and collectively, it made me feel understood and heard as a modern day woman’.
Other members have shared:
‘I really appreciate how welcome the women of FiLiA made me feel. As a working class woman, despite always being a feminist, I have felt excluded from the movement, I have struggled to make connections and found it hard to fit in. I felt respected and included by FiLiA’.
When FiLiA develop policy positions they are shaped by the voices, feelings and experiences of a wide range of women, and are valuable resources for any decision makers who want to ensure that policy is as informed as possible and its impact on women and girls is considered and mitigated.
I would ask you all to support the FiLiA Women’s Assembly, along with their other projects, and help us ensure all women and girls voices are heard, acknowledged and valued.
I'd like to hand you over now to Kruti Walsh, Director of Policy at FiLiA. No stranger to Westminster, Kruti’s previous roles included 13 years as a civil servant in the central government departments.
Kruti’s remarks
Thank you so much, Fran. That was so moving and powerful and perfectly shows the strength and impact of FiLiA and the FiLiA Women’s Assembly.
We are so glad that you were able to join us today so that MPs and Peers in the room could hear directly from one of the women in the FiLiA Women’s Assembly.
And I also want to say a huge thank you to Tonia Antoniazzi for being our Parliamentary sponsor for this event – and for being such a consistent and dynamic friend of FiLiA. We are so grateful for your support and the kind words in your speech.
As Fran mentioned, I lead FiLiA's new Campaigns and Policy team and I am so pleased that we are celebrating our first year of existence here, in Parliament. It is fitting, and we are thrilled that you are here to help us celebrate.
Today also marks the formal launch of the FiLiA Women’s Assembly – which you’ve heard about from Fran – and the launch of our report – Making Policy Work for Women.
The report is the result of a huge research effort, to understand British women’s concerns and priorities for policy. I’m glad that some of our researchers – Rosie, Laura and Kiri – have been able to join us today. The report sets out a number of recommendations for policymakers. I won’t go through all of these as you can read them in the report, or the short briefing we’ve produced for attendees today, but I would like to highlight one:
That all new or updated policies, legislation and guidance evidence that they have met the Public Sector Equality Duty with a thorough and robust Equality Impact Assessment. This can't be a tickbox exercise, done at the end of the policy making process with sex-equality completely sidelined or ignored. We need meaningful analyses of sex-based inequality, using sex-disaggregated data, to really understand and meet the needs of women and recognise women’s lives as distinct from men's.
The report also sets out how FiLiA can help, to make women's voices part of the evidence base for policy makers.
FiLiA is an incredible organisation with a wide remit – our work and activities cover the spectrum of women's lives, both here and abroad. Tonia already mentioned the brilliant work we cover but I am going to re-emphasise that. In the room today we have representatives from some of our current projects:
Hannah from Women First – a coalition of survivors of the sex trade and professionals working in the violence against women and girls sector;
Ruth from Hague Mothers – a global campaign to end the injustices created by The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction;
Sally, who is FiLiA’s lead for ‘ending male violence against women’ projects and also for Kakuma – a campaign to support lesbian refugees in Kenya's Kakuma camp;
and Kiri from the FiLiA Trade Union Women’s Network – supporting women into and within trade unions across the UK.
Please do drop by the project stand, meet some of the volunteers involved, pick up a few materials and hear more about their work.
We also have our CEO, co-founder, and conference organiser, Lisa-Marie, who you can’t miss. She'll be very happy to share with you the impact FiLiA has had, especially through our conferences.
And FiLiA is perhaps best known for our conferences, which we host in a different UK city each year. We work closely with local women in the city for the whole year leading up to the conference, understanding how we can best support women and girls in that location throughout the year, through the conference and beyond. We have been doing this for 13 years now and this has given us an unparalleled and special insight into the lives of – and the challenges faced by – women.
Our significant volunteer team puts in a lot of effort to bring together a wide range of work, led by women at local, national and international levels. The FiLiA conference creates a genuinely constructive space for discussion, collaboration and development. At our tenth conference in Brighton last month, there were a record 2,500 attendees. We are so proud to see our reach and relevance continuing to grow.
Which makes this an ideal time to start building strong relationships with you all and others in Westminster.
We hope that you will be as keen as the women of our Assembly are, to work together to ensure women are a meaningful part of the policy making process, and that together we make the change that women need.
Thank you so much for joining us today. We are so pleased to be meeting you and we are really looking forward to collaborating with politicians and policy makers to build women’s power, to help shape domestic legislation to improve women’s lives – in short, to make policy work for women.
Thank you.
