Michelle Walmsley
interviewed by Rachel Roantree
and transcribed by Sarah Orr
Michelle Warmsley became involved in feminist in the 1970’s when
working in adventure playgrounds in quite an ethnically black part of
Hackney and noticed how male dominated it was and was puzzled by it.
Michelle wanted to learn more about how to bring girls and young
women into her work and about that time set in the way that feminists
were meeting in little cafes above pokey little book shops in Soho and
talked about these mind blowing things that she had never considered
or thought about before. Michelle thinks that she must have seen
advertised through the adventure playground newsletter there was
somebody involved from Goldsmiths College which have youth and
community work course involving community development and they
must have sent information through newsletter. Michelle thought that
she would turn up and see what feminism was about and it blew her
mind, it was like a rollercoaster. That was Michelle’s very first
introduction to what feminism was about.
Feminism to Michelle means being proud to be a woman, and striving
through political, social and individual means to be all you can be to be
a human being and finds it a struggle but it’s fantastic.
Michelle’s worst reaction from other people through being a feminist
are:
 Attacked
 Demoted
 Sacked
 Put down
 Sexually assaulted
 Humiliated
All sorts of different affects through men and occasionally women.
Michelle has had a very wide range of issues through feminism.
Michelle believes that feminism touches every part of her life as women.
The feminists used to say that it is about personal issue and
professional issues. The way that you live your life can’t be separated
out from you values, attitudes and core beliefs. Michelle says that being
a women means that you have an obligation towards other people as
well as yourself, other women, young women, girl’s and often men and
young men to go on a bit of a journey to understand what it means and
thinks that it is very difficult politically to think about feminist ideas and
they are very central because it is an expression of who you are.
Michelle became a feminist when she was just 18 but didn’t understand
what feminism was until she became working with the youth service.
That’s when she attended MMU to study being a youth and community
worker and it was in the second year that she woke up to politics of
feminism and found it really amazing. The second year when Michelle
began to work She put her studies to practise. Michelle was about 1920 years old when she fully understood what feminism was about.
Michelle has been involved with many campaigns. The first one was a
women’s right which was a petitioning changes to the abortion laws.
The next campaigns were reclaiming the night which was trying to say
to the society that women would be pushed out behind closed doors
and take the blame for men’s violence against them saying that the
streets are ours and shouldn’t feel fearful about going in public. Michelle
took place in many campaigns about women’s right’s national and
regional trying to import options for leisure for girls and young women.
Michelle has taken part with many group and services around young
people/youth working. Then realised that she would like to specialise
with girls groups and was lucky because it was the rise of girls work at
that time and girls didn’t have equal rights or power. Helping others to
build girls and young women rights. So she has been involved with
young people since she was about 19 years of age.
Michelle says that mainstream youth work doesn’t see itself in a feminist
way and youth officers would say that they don’t need to work on girl’s
work much because of equal opportunities necessary and Michelle
doesn’t agree. But feminist workers are very imported because they
help you young women think about issues Para control, and not all
mainstream youth workers understand that but feminist workers do
whether it is looking at rape, sexual assault, discrimination, social
exclusion, health issues, what ever it is Michelle doesn’t feel that they
cant be tackled by mainstream youth workers.
Michelle would try and get young women involved in a feminism course
by try to get them to go out and look at the history and learn from it.
There are waves of feminists through the ages that we need to reclaim
and use on a spring board. Young women should pick and choose what
is relevant to them because feminist workers shouldn’t lay down the
agenda, young girls should choose what is important to them.
Michelle’s favourite moments in feminist history were seeing a young
woman on a motorbike for the first time feeling free and starting to open
up about how the relationship with her boyfriend was controlling her.
Another is residential work is very important in youth work and some of
her more positive interaction with young people was when they took
them away from there community and gave them that space to just
dream, think and talk about themselves and there lives. One time when
telling ghost stories a young women started talking about the deep
wound she still had emotionally about seeing her brother killed in front
of her in an accident and she had never spoken about it since it had
happened about three years before and she was able to talk about it
and get lots of emotional support from other young people and workers
around her and that lead to her being able to talk about how she was
sexually abused by a member of her family and a lot of healing took
place because she was able to reach out and get help, so there are a
number of those moments really cherished in her mind of real
empowerment through youth and community work. Bumping into young
women in supermarket Michelle used to be there youth worker and they
said that “did you know when we did that young women’s work you,
changed my life!”
Michelle thinks that there is a mixture of different way of getting the
word Feminism across to young people especially through the internet.
It is quite a challenge for young women to spread the messages. It is
about offering young women the chance to get together through
friendships and activity if you can offer young women the space to do
things that they wouldn’t normally get the chance to do particularly
young women with out the adult support, good parents and maybe
financial resources these are young women who are less able to move
outside of there immediate community. Mobility, Activity, opportunity,
giving them time to explore themselves.
Feminism has given girls and young women dreams and to do more
socially and educationally.