Shereen Essof

Shereen Essof is a Zimbabwean feminist, activist, popular educator, and academic. Her academic work is grounded in her engagement with women in trade unions, social movements, and community-based organisations. She strives to understand the roots and the gendered nature of neo-liberal, patriarchal systems, and from that understanding to imagine and organise towards alternatives. She worked at the Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre and Network in Harare for six years, and then with the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town. At the same time, she has shared her time and capacities with other social justice organisations, not only to strategise, mobilise, and take action but also to create accessible information through oral histories, documentary, creative writing, and art. Shereen has published widely on feminism, women’s movements, and social movement organising in both online and hard copy journals in South Africa and internationally. Currently Shereen leads JASS Southern Africa’s programmes on women’s rights, empowerment, and movement-building in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, and at the regional level. She is known and appreciated for her huge energy and infectious, warm laugh, and for living her feminist principles in everyday life in unpretentious ways.