When Emma Watson says she’ll be taking a year off acting, you’d better believe she’s not going to spend it lying in bed. Well, not unless she’s furiously power-reading Gloria Steinem, bell hooks, and Caitlin Moran. After announcing that she’d be putting her big screen career on hold to focus on feminist activism three months ago, the equality icon and green carpet trailblazer has been one busy woman. Her latest project? Petitioning London Mayor Sadiq Khan for a suffragette statue to be erected in Parliament Square.
Watson is one of 70,000+ people currently rallying behind an important petition started by activist Caroline Criado-Perez. Criado-Perez launched her appeal on Change.org after noticing that all of the eleven statues in London’s Parliament Square are of men. Very great men — including Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi — but where are the women who fought equally hard for their democratic rights? “In two years’ time it will be 100 years since those women won their fight and women were first granted the right to vote,” Criado-Perez writes. “They deserve to be remembered. They deserve to be commemorated at the heart of our democracy.”
J.K. Rowling, author of Harry Potter and many badass feminist tweets, has also added her name to the list of signatures. You can join the campaign here.
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Text Hannah Ongley
Image via Instagram