Endeavour signs human rights lawyers’ ‘blazing riposte’ to oppression of women’s voices

Endeavour has signed How Many More Women?: The silencing of women by the law and how to stop it from human rights barristers Jennifer Robinson and Keina Yoshida.

Editor Evie Dunne acquired UK and Commonwealth plus Europe rights from Jane Finigan at Lutyens & Rubinstein Literary Agency on behalf of Jane Novak at the Jane Novak Literary Agency for publication in February 2023. 

In How Many More Women? Robinson and Yoshida expose the way in which the law is being used to silence and disadvantage women and show how we can fight back, the publisher’s synopsis outlines.

“We are in a crucial moment: women are breaking through the cultural reticence around gender-based violence. But just as survivors have begun to feel empowered to speak out, a new form of systematic silencing has made itself more evident: rich and powerful men are using teams of lawyers to suppress allegations and prevent newspaper stories from running. Individual women, advocacy groups and journalists find themselves fighting against censorship,” it continues.

“The law is being wielded to reinforce the status quo of silence that existed before #MeToo. If women cannot speak about their abuse – and journalists are fearful of telling their stories – then how can we understand the problem of gender-based violence in our society? And how can we even begin to end it? How Many More Women? will show readers just how difficult the law makes it for women to report their abuse, and explore the changes needed in order to ensure that women’s freedom, including their freedom of speech, is no longer threatened by the laws that are supposed to protect them.”

Robinson is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London. She has acted in key human rights and media freedom cases in domestic and international courts, and advised survivors, journalists, media organisations, advocacy and frontline services organisations on free speech and media law issues. She serves on the boards of the Bonavero Human Rights Institute, the Bureau for Investigative Journalism and the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights. She has contributed to academic texts and journals and has written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian, Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, Sydney Morning Herald and Vogue.

Yoshida is a human rights barrister at the Center for Reproductive Rights, an associate tenant of Doughty Street Chambers and a visiting fellow at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics. She has represented and advised victims and survivors of abuse, and has acted in important women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights cases. Her publications include Feminist Conversations on Peace (Bristol University Press, 2022) as well as academic journal articles in the European Human Rights Law Review, Human Rights Quarterly and International Affairs. 

Dunne said: “Jennifer and Keina are incredibly inspiring and formidable barristers who have devoted their careers to representing victims and survivors of abuse and championing free speech. With How Many More Women? they have written a blazing riposte to our current legal systems’ oppression of women’s voices, drawing upon the many high-profile cases they have worked on as well as devastating interviews with survivors of abuse around the world to compile a compelling and powerful case for change.

“How Many More Women? is a brave and vital book for our times and one I am thrilled we are publishing.” 

Yoshida and Robinson commented: “We wrote this book because we were frustrated with what we were seeing in our own cases and in cases around the world. We want women and girls to be better informed about the legal risks they will come up against and for lawyers and policy makers to understand how the law can silence women – and work to change it.

“We hope this book contributes to that conversation. We are grateful to the many brilliant women who so generously told us their stories and who are working on the frontlines to create change – and we hope the book provides each of them a platform to further their important work. We are grateful to Endeavour for backing this book and our mission.”