Stuck to the back of a door the women’s toilet of a Cambridge pub was a small sticker advertising ‘Cambridge’s feminist publication’, Gender Agenda. The zine had ceased publication for almost five years; Covid had got in the way, as it did for many student-led initiatives, and there had been no new editions of Gender Agenda since 2019. As freshers, Maddie Baber and Elise Batchelor found the sticker and with their team reignited the magazine. Gender Agenda is now back in publication: its launch event was attended by over 200 people, it hosts artistic evenings, debates, speaker events and it’s won an award for Best Newcomer Publication. I sat down with the women who made Gender Agenda happen to find out how exactly they went about creating a feminist space in Cambridge.

“The value of Gender Agenda for us is because we wanted a better feminist space in Cambridge”

“We knew when we started this was what we wanted.” Maddie tells me, “We were frustrated that we were in this University that’s supposed to be this hub of intellectualism, yet everywhere we looked we just couldn’t find the sort of feminism we wanted to be involved in.” “I remember the experience of being at the freshers’ fair, excited to join a fem-soc and only finding a few.” At Maddie’s own college, St. Johns, the fem-soc has died out: “There are a lot of fem-socs but the engagement is spread too thin because it’s all in college. These events can’t get the right engagement and it’s so demoralising.” Elise and Maddie cite the compartmentalised structure as the reason so many fem-socs are inactive: “A lot of the time it’s just one poor girl trying to run something and do their degree, of course they won’t get the engagement they need.”

The pair are keen to highlight the ways women have historically fought to build solidarity in Cambridge. “Every woman, every year, would get a Women’s handbook”, Maddie tells me. The Women’s Handbook was a 100 page document the SU printed for all female students. It told you where you could get an abortion, where you could go and get tested, which clubs were safe and which weren’t. “It was women in Cambridge helping out other women in Cambridge and it wasn’t just the student body but the wider Cambridge community.” The girls note that the “death of The Women’s Handbook really does represent the death of this sort of feminism in Cambridge” – a death we see in the decrease in engagement with SU campaigns like Womcam. “They hold forums twice a term and these used to have 60+ women who showed up to talk about legislation in Cambridge surrounding women,” Elise tells me, “There was this huge engagement from so many people. Where did that go?”

“Even if you went to everything that the union or CULC has to do with feminism, there’s still this massive lack of this sort of discourse”

Whatever the answer to Elise’s question, the girls are dedicated to bringing this culture back. “The value of Gender Agenda for us is because we wanted a better feminist space in Cambridge,” Elise tells me. Importantly, their feminism is defined by its grass-roots beginnings. “So many of the societies – from the SU, to the Union, to women in business and beyond feel very top down.” For Maddie and Elise, this top-down nature is indicated by the presentation styles of certain societies, “there’s nothing wrong with infographics but it presents your society a certain way” – the presentation ends up “corporate”. “A really important part of this is that you are a student, and so you engage with things as a student, and therefore you should apply that to your society’s presentation of itself.”

To get the sort of “organic” presentation they wanted, Gender Agenda started holding weekly artistic events including collabs with Queens artfest. Once established as an artistic space, they began hosting talks and events. Their first, a debate on the notion “this house believes to be a feminist is to be a socialist”. Elise describes this as their “big break event”, and tells me of the compliments the committee received for opening up a new political space. “Even if you went to everything that the Union or CULC has to do with feminism, there’s still this massive lack of this sort of discourse,” Elise says. Maddie continues her thought, explaining that “feminism is such a big part of social discourse nowadays so it doesn’t make sense why there is this lack. Misogyny online is so big; it feels like everywhere you look, people are talking about gender, even if it’s sometimes for the worst; but, there’s this sense in Cambridge that people here really believe we’ve achieved equality so we need to shut the fuck up.”

Thankfully, the girls don’t seem to be shutting up anytime soon, with big plans for the coming years and hopes to bring back connected feminist groups in Cambridge long-term. “We end every post with ‘Love and Solidarity’, but how can we have solidarity if we allow colleges to close their gates? We can’t ask people to join together as feminists if we’re all hiding in closed doors of our own, small fem-socs.” Maddie rather humbly suggested that “it’s taken on a life of its own”, but from what I can see, Gender Agenda got back into publication through dedication, hard-work and the power of solidarity. The zine has not taken on a life of its own, but has had life breathed into it by a handful of students, dedicated to creating a space to explore feminism.