Episode 3: Giving women a seat at the table — with Ellen Woodsworth

About Our Guest

Ellen Woodsworth

Ellen Woodsworth is the founder of Women Transforming Cities International Society and Co-Chairperson. She works to make cities work for self identified women and girls all over the world from local neighbourhoods to global gatherings like UN Habitat 3. She thinks that women and girls work for cities but cities don’t work for women and girls. She believes cities must put a gendered intersectional lens and use disaggregated data on policies, programmes, budgets, funding, staffing and governance in order to create women-friendly cities.

Ellen is an international speaker and urban consultant on gender and intersectional planning. She is a former Vancouver City Councillor and was their representative on the Executive of Union of B.C. Municipalities and the Lower Mainland Treaty Advisory Committee. Ellen provides workshops for cities and NGO’s using “Advancing Equity and Inclusion a Guide for Municipalities”. She spoke at the UN Habitat 3 conferences in Prague and in Quito and at the Smart Sustainable Cities conference in Montevideo, Uruguay as well as participating in the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights meeting about the “Right to the City” and housing. She also spoke at WUF 9 in Kuala Lumpur and moderated the Women Transforming Cities launch of the Women Friendly Cities Challenge an online library of wise practices tied to the SDG’s, CEDAW and NUA. She spoke at WUF 10 on LGTBQI2S issues in Abu Dhabi and been a consultant to UN Habitat on LGTBQi2S issues. She is coordinating the Hot Pink Municipal Campaign, which focuses on 11 issues that could make cities women-friendly. She gives talks on how to put a gendered intersectional lens on everything from climate change, housing, transit, electoral reform and COVID 19.