The big movie release this week is Suffragette, but 100 years before the Pankhurst-led push for suffrage, a Hackney-based hero was scandalising the establishment by suggesting a woman could be a man’s equal. She is the star of our polemical walk ‘Feminist (Or Is It?) Stoke Newington’.

Often referred to as the ‘founder of modern feminism’, Mary Wollstonecraft was truly a woman/person/human being ahead of her time. To some extent she still is; there is no monument to her in the place where she formed many of her views on the education of women and their place in society – Newington Green.

It’s an incredible story tied to a powerful narrative of Hackney social changemakers. Mary hung out with – and was one of – the leading socially progressive minds of the late 1700s. She was a writer, editor, campaigner, adventurer, mother and much more. So why haven’t you heard more of her? Why was her reputation left in tatters until very recently?

Sign up to the newsletter and on the next edition of this walk, you can find out. Or hire us for a private walk to hear an inspiring story of can-do that transcends Gender.

In the meantime, have a look at the Mary on the Green website or this short campaign video for a memorial for an inspiring character who took on the status quo and some of the biggest opinion-formers of the time to put the campaign for equal rights – for half the planet – well and truly on the debating table. #whereswolly