Shaista Gohir OBE, CEO of the Muslim Women’s Network UK was appointed Baroness to the House of Lords through her nomination as a non-affiliate peer at the House of Lords. ‘OBE’ [Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire] next to her name refers to the title used for the second highest ranking officer in the order of the British Empire.
Gohir has been a trailblazing women’s rights campaigner, especially as an ambitions Muslim woman striving to achieve progressive attitudes amidst Islamophobia and the response of active gendered Islamisation. She joined the Muslim Women’s Network UK (MWNUK) in 2005 and spent almost 17 years developing the organisation from a handful of volunteers to a nationally acknowledged charity, becoming Executive Director, then Chair and eventually Co-Chair so she can diversify her efforts.
In a report for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Gohir writes, “More Muslim women need to be empowered with information to be able to challenge religious extremist rhetoric… More resources need to be created to highlight role models and relevant role models need to be included in the education curriculum.” Shaista Gohir has done extensive work on building the epistemic necessity of female Muslim role models in society.
On January 15, 2015, Gohir launched a national helpline for Muslim women to help those who are stuck in situations of domestic violence or sexual abuse from family members. Born to parents who hailed from Daultalla, Tehsil Gujarkhan in Rawalpindi, they moved to England in the 1960s, where she was raised by a single mother who worked long hours in a clothing factory. Growing up, even as a child, she had to take care of her siblings and feed them as her mother continued to labor to financially sustain the family. On this subject she tells The Guardian, “Even in a single-parent family, I saw how women would take responsibility for men’s bad behaviour.”
Her organisation MWNUK has researched extensively the sexual exploitation of Asian girls and their ability to report and on child sexual exploitation and how it can be reported by the members of the service industry. She has also written for The Guardian, advocating Muslim women’s rights, where she talks about a comprehensive report compiled in 2015 by her organisation on the subject of shariah councils and Muslim divorce for women, titled “Information and Guidance on Muslim Marriage and Divorce in Britain”.
Shaista Gohir has extensively advocated for the rights of Muslim women and given a way of articulation to the problems they face in the West. And so naturally, in light of her relentless efforts, she was appointed as a Baroness to the House of Lords earlier today. Talking to The News and GEO, she emphasised that through her organisation Nisa Global Foundation in Pakistan she wants to expand her mission of supporting and empowering women.
“A lot of these women are suffering in silence, and they aren’t strong enough to vocalise that they want help,” Gohir says in an interview with The Guardian, “I don’t mind taking the flak.”
