City Year UK’s Feminist Committee: 6 Feminists we recommend you read
The City Year UK Feminist Committee is an educational workshop recently launched by City Year UK alumni Iona, Chloe, and Livia, alongside our Impact Officer Hope. The workshop was designed to provide City Year UK staff and mentors with informational sessions to learn and discuss different feminist theories, gender equality, and how this can apply to their working experiences.
To promote the fantastic work the committee by providing educational opportunities for CYUK staff and mentors, committee member and former City Year Mentor Iona has written a detailed piece for our blog, recommending 6 of her favourite feminists by exploring their theories.
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is an American scholar, activist, and author whose work has been influential in Black feminism, prison abolition, and social justice movements since the late 20th century. Her entry into activism was deeply connected to her academic studies and political engagement. Davis studied philosophy at Brandeis University and later at the University of Frankfurt before returning to the United States to pursue a graduate degree at the University of California, San Diego. Her activism became widely recognised in the 1970s due to her involvement with the Black Panther Party and her support for the Soledad Brothers, which led to her temporary imprisonment and subsequent trial.
Davis is most known for her critique of the prison-industrial complex, particularly in her book Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), where she argues that prisons perpetuate racial and economic inequalities rather than rehabilitate individuals. She advocates for the abolition of prisons, suggesting that alternative methods of justice such as restorative justice should be implemented instead. In a 2020 interview for The New York Times, Davis stated:
“Prisons do not disappear social problems; they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.”
Beyond prison abolition, Davis has been a leading voice in intersectional feminism, arguing that race, gender, and class must be considered together when discussing oppression. Her book Women, Race, & Class (1981) examines how mainstream feminism has historically marginalised Black and working-class women and calls for a more inclusive feminist movement.
Her most recent book, Abolition. Feminism. Now. (2022), co-written with Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie, continues her argument that feminism and prison abolition must go hand in hand. She critiques carceral feminism, the reliance on policing and incarceration to address gender-based violence—and instead promotes community-led solutions. Overall, Angela Davis has been a crucial figure in feminist thought, advocating for radical change and challenging oppressive systems.
bell hooks
bell hooks was an American author, feminist, and social activist whose writings have been foundational in the development of intersectional feminism. Born as Gloria Jean Watkins, she adopted the pen name “bell hooks” in honor of her great-grandmother and chose to write it in lowercase to emphasise the importance of ideas over individual identity. Her academic journey led her to Stanford University, where she earned her undergraduate degree, followed by a doctorate in literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
hooks is most known for her exploration of race, gender, and class, particularly in her groundbreaking book Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism (1981). In this work, she critiques how mainstream feminism has historically ignored the struggles of Black women and emphasises how racism and sexism must be tackled together. She argues that feminism must be an inclusive movement, stating:
“Feminism is for everybody: a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.”
In her book Teaching to Transgress (1994), hooks explores education as a practice of freedom, advocating for an engaged pedagogy that empowers students to think critically about social structures. She believed that education should not only transmit knowledge but also encourage activism and personal transformation.
Her later works, such as The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004), examine toxic masculinity and the emotional suppression of men, arguing that feminism should also seek to liberate men from patriarchal constraints. Her final book, Belonging: A Culture of Place (2009), reflects on the intersections of identity, home, and social justice.
Overall, bell hooks’ work remains influential in feminist thought, particularly for its emphasis on love, healing, and the necessity of intersectionality in dismantling oppression. Her contributions continue to inspire scholars, activists, and readers worldwide.
Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American academic and activist whose writings have been influential in both philosophy and feminism since the late 20th century. Their entry into activism is largely tied to their scholarly work, which they studied at Yale University. Their first book, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (1987), consists of a revised version of their doctoral dissertation and connects 18th-century philosophy to the modern day by exploring how those ideas are reflected in social systems such as gender roles. However, Butler is most known for their theory on gender performativity which is greatly explored in their book Gender Trouble (1990). They argue that gender is not innate but created through repeated social behaviors and this therefore challenges fixed notions of identity. When asked about the concept of gender performativity in a 2021 interview for the Guardian, Butler explains:
“people are, consciously or not, citing conventions of gender when they claim to be expressing their own interior reality or even when they say they are creating themselves anew … When we are “girled”, we are entered into a realm of girldom that has been built up over a long time – a series of conventions, sometimes conflicting, that establish girlness within society. We don’t just choose it. And it is not just imposed on us. But that social reality can, and does, change.”
Butler goes on to explain that the ability to rethink the category of “woman” as we progress as a society is crucial to securing more freedoms for women and suggests that we should not be surprised or opposed to the expanding of this category to include trans women. In their most recent work, Who’s Afraid of Gender?, which was published in 2024, Butler confronts the attacks on gender that have become central to modern right-wing movements. Furthermore, they analyse how the anti-gender movement has demonised struggles for equality and instead aims to strip trans and queer people of their rights. Overall, since the late 20th century, Judith Butler has been a leading voice in pushing for intersectionality within feminism.
Catherine Hall
Catherine Hall is a British academic and Emerita Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University College London. Despite an initial love for medieval history and involvement in student politics, it was the birth of her first child that propelled Hall into becoming a feminist historian. In a 2021 interview for UCL, following her win of that year’s Leverhulme Medal, Hall explained this shift in her focus:
“what I was really struggling with was what it meant to be a wife and mother. That led into my first big piece of work with Leonore Davidoff, Family Fortunes, in 1987.”
The work Hall mentions in this quote, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850, examines how ideas about family, gender, and class were shaped during this period, particularly focusing on the roles of men and women in the middle class.
However, Hall’s academic focus shifted again in the 1980s towards colonialism and the empire, as it was a period when postcolonial questions and postcolonialism were starting to arise. As a result, Hall is most known for her theory on gender and national identity in colonial contexts. This theory argues how imperialism shaped cultural and gendered identities in Britain and its colonies. This is because gender was used as a tool to reinforce power structures in colonial contexts, influencing both how colonizers saw themselves and how they treated the people they colonized.
A key piece of work by Hall is her 2002 book Civilising Subjects in which she examines how the English saw themselves as “civilised” and used this view to justify their control over colonized countries. The book looks at how these ideas were reflected in British culture, particularly through literature, art, and everyday life, and how this helped to reinforce the power dynamics between the “metropole” (Britain) and its colonies.
Overall, Catherine Hall has consistently examined the intersection of gender, race, and empire, showing how colonialism shaped ideas about gender and national identity. Her work challenges traditional feminist frameworks and highlights the importance of understanding colonial histories in discussions of gender and power.
References:
Davis, A. (1981). Women, race, & class. Random House.
Davis, A. (2003). Are prisons obsolete?. Seven Stories Press.
Davis, A., Dent, G., Meiners, E., & Richie, B. (2022). Abolition. Feminism. Now. Haymarket Books.
Harris, M. (2020). Angela Davis still believes America can change. The New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/books/review/angela-davis.html
hooks, b. (1981). Ain’t I a woman? Black women and feminism. South End Press.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge. hooks, b. (2004). The will to change: Men, masculinity, and love. Atria Books.
hooks, b. (2009). Belonging: A culture of place. Routledge.https://www.britannica.com/biography/bell-hook
Butler, J. (2002). Gender trouble. routledge.
Butler, J. (2012). Subjects of desire: Hegelian reflections in twentieth-century France. Columbia University Press.
Butler, J. (2024). Who’s afraid of gender?. Knopf Canada.
Duignan, B. (2025). Judith Butler. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Judith-Butler
Gleeson, J. (2021). Judith Butler: ‘We need to rethink the category of woman’. The Guardian.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/452776/whos-afraid-of-gender-by-butler-judith/9781802061062
Davidoff, L., & Hall, C. (2018). Family fortunes: Men and women of the English middle class 1780–1850. Routledge.
Hall, C. (2002). Civilising subjects: Metropole and colony in the English imagination 1830-1867. University of Chicago Press.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/project/catherine/
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/sep/profile-interview-professor-catherine-hall
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