Donald Trump’s election has ignited a powder keg under the global women’s rights movement that will have far-reaching ramifications, according to organisers of a global women’s march due to take place on Saturday.

As many as 500,000 people are expected to descend on the US capital for the Women’s March on Washington the day after Trump’s inauguration, joined by as many as 1.5m more marching in support in 161 cities across all seven continents.



With marches being held in 61 countries from Germany to East Timor, organisers from Women’s March Global, the international arm of the Washington march, are determined to capitalise on the wave of activism that has attracted hundreds of thousands of first-time campaigners as well as seasoned activists.

“The women of the world were sitting on a powder keg and Donald Trump just lit the match,” said Evvie Harmon, a Women’s March co-founder and global coordinator.

Set up after Trump’s election victory, the global movement is being hailed as an unprecedented grassroots movement and organisers say it will have an immediate and concrete impact. Many international coordinators say they are marching in solidarity with US women, but that human rights and not Donald Trump are the focus.

Cells set up throughout the US and hundreds of other places are plotting local campaigns, from preventing the construction of oil pipelines to outlawing female genital mutilation. They will be based around the “guiding vision” of the Women’s March on issues such as the rights of immigrant, disabled and LGBTQIA women and female workers. Individual groups will decide which targeted actions to take, Harmon said.

“I don’t know any grassroots organisation that has grown to this size in only two months. There are now about 1,000 coordinators around the world. It’s too big and it’s growing too fast to control,” she said. “And we wouldn’t want to. We just want to support and help it to flourish.”

Marches are due to take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Erbil, Iraq where an organiser from Alliance for Peace and Human Rights (APHRO) said holding the march was a challenge because of tribalism, corruption and the difficulty of getting approval from the government “who deny that women have challenges in this Iraqi society”.

“With solidarity we women are daring to stand up to the challenge of lack of salaries, terror, hate, exploitation, and trafficking,” she said.

In the UK 25,000 people are expected to join the Women’s March on London, with another 14 marches in towns and cities across Britain including Cardiff, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Leeds and Belfast.

Women's marches across the UK: what you need to know Read more

On Friday the campaign group Bridges not Walls unfurled banners with anti-Trump messages across bridges in British cities, and protesters on Tower Bridge in London held up pink letters reading “Act now!” Thousands of people were expected to gather outside the US embassy in the early evening for a rally organised by the Stand Up To Racism campaign.

As many as 500 marchers could turn up in the small town of Shipley in West Yorkshire, in the constituency of the Conservative MP and vocal Trump supporter Philip Davies. “If we don’t raise our views, it’s like people with the Trump and Philip Davies view of the world have won … there is a good half of the population who don’t want that kind of world, and we have to speak up,” said Sue Easterbrook, one of the organisers.

The global Women’s March, which also includes a Penguins for Peace protest on an expedition ship in Antarctica and a small gathering in East Timor, marked a dramatic renewal of feminist politics, said Sophie Walker, the leader of the UK’s Women’s Equality party. “People are realising that the time to act is now, they don’t have to wait for permission to tell the world what they want and believe in,” she said.

Populist rhetoric had created a sense of urgency and desire for action, said Amnesty’s UK director, Kate Allen. “Human rights and women’s rights are hard won and at this critical time it is vital to stand together to celebrate our gains and against discrimination and division,” she said. “The politics of fear have no place in 2017.”

Karen Olson, a global coordinator of the Women’s March based in Geneva, said the movement had “mind-boggling potential”. Technology such as the messaging service Slack, which enables global campaigners to connect in real time, and the reach of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter was “incredibly powerful”, she said: “We are building a global movement, not focused on a negative catalyst but on everything we hold dear.”

Harmon, a yoga teacher before joining the movement as a coordinator, said she and many others were not prepared to stand down after Saturday’s protests. “If this doesn’t continue to grow it would be an awful waste of what we have accomplished,” she said.

“I am going to be marching until we achieve equality. I’ll stop then, or when I die.”

Why I’m marching



Maria Kostaki author, 43, Athens

While not a citizen of the US, I am organising this march in Athens because I believe the issues it represents are global. It’s about humanity. It’s about women’s rights, racism, equality, LGBT rights. I have a four-year-old son and I do not want him to grow up in a world where everything we have fought for is taken away. We can’t allow anyone to reverse what we have built.

Lotje Horvers tour manager, 34, Amsterdam

I want to be part of the message to the world that there are more people who love than people who hate, and I will not stand by silently while a lying bully is given one of the most responsible positions in the world. I cannot be at peace with the fact he uses his voice to set an example that it is acceptable to be demeaning to women and minorities.

Rachel Druck rabbinical student, 31, Tel Aviv

I am studying to be a rabbi and one of the major values of Judaism is accepting the other, making a place for the stranger and remembering once a year that once we were slaves in Egypt. Those values are propelling me. I’m marching because Trump ran a campaign of Islamophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, and racism: to stand up and say he does not speak for me.

Natalino Soares Ornai Guterres consultant, 27, Dili, East Timor

I have been displaced from my home and have travelled to other countries (including the US) in search of better opportunities. Being a member of the LGBT community, I am involved because I understand the struggle that our mothers, sisters and people with non-binary gender identities have to go through in a patriarchal society.

Aisha Ali-Khan part-time teacher and carer, 36, Shipley

I wanted to show solidarity with the rest of the women all over the world. Women are not being heard by those in power anywhere in the world – if they were we wouldn’t be marching today. I’m a Muslim, of Pakistani heritage – this is not just a white women’s march, it’s all women, all over the world. It’s a really inclusive movement and it’s amazing to be a part of that.

Shoomi Chowdhury Amnesty International, London

We have so much left to do with regards to rights for ethnic minorities, particularly women from ethnic minorities, and not only is the potential for progress going to be lost, we’ve taken a massive step back. In 20 years, I want to be able to tell my children “I went out and marched the day after Donald Trump became president”.

Nazila Kivi feminist magazine editor, Copenhagen

I’m marching in solidarity with people gendered as women all around the world, especially indigenous, queer and migrant women, who are under a double burden of oppression. Women and our bodies very often become battle grounds for conservative and backwards ideas of nations, borders and racist ideologies. Solidarity and activism is all we have.

Ritah Mutheu Muia entrepreneur, 37, Nairobi

We march as the Her Voice society in Kenya because we stand in solidarity with our sisters from the US. We want to send a message that any act or policies that violate human rights or women’s rights will not be tolerated. In Kenya the fight against gender-based violence is far from over. As Kenyan women we have decided to break the silence.