Ellen Woodsworth


Ellen Woodsworth is a social activist, international speaker and politician based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She is the founder and external chair of Women Transforming Cities International Society and approaches urban issues from a gendered intersectional lens.
Woodsworth was a Vancouver City Councillor for six years, where she co-founded initiatives such as Women Transforming Cities International Society and the World Peace Forum. She champions issues and fights for affordable housing, electoral reform, environmental sustainability, women, seniors, LGTBQI2S and indigenous rights and against racism and economic inequalities created by the neoliberal agenda.

Early life and education

Born was born in Toronto, Ontario, to Jean and Ken Woodsworth, Woodsworth went to the Canadian Academy in Japan for high school, where her father was born and raised, before returning to Canada to complete her BA at the University of British Columbia.
Woodsworth is the great-niece of J. S. Woodsworth MP, founder and first leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and cousin of former New Democratic Party MP Grace MacInnis.

Early activism

After earning her degree she co-founded and edited the newspaper titled The Other Woman in Toronto and created CORA the Women's Liberation Bookmobile with Judith Quinlan. In 1974, Woodsworth helped found the Toronto Wages for Housework Campaign. She moved to London, England to work with the International Wages for Housework Campaign in 1975.

Activism achievements in Vancouver

In 1979, Woodsworth was part of a national group that forced Canada to include unpaid work in the 1996 census. Woodsworth also chaired the BC Action Canada Network, which opposed the free trade agreements. She was hired as a social planner by the District of North Vancouver to document the child care needs of the district. Woodsworth was elected chair of Britannia Community Services Centre and on the Board of REACH Community Health Clinic coming up with the logo "community health in community hands" to support neighbourhood health services.
She served as chair of the Bridge Housing Society. Woodsworth also sat on the inaugural board of the LGBTTQ Generations Project. Woodsworth has been active in speaking out about the importance of addressing climate change.

Vancouver City Councillor

In 2002, Woodsworth was elected a Vancouver City Councillor. She was immediately appointed the Vancouver representative to the Executive of the Union of BC Municipalities, and the Executive of the Lower Mainland Treaty Advisory Council. She was the first openly lesbian city councillor in Canada.
Woodsworth sat on the Vancouver City Council for six years. During this time the she was able to get Vancouver City Council to join the Canadian Coalition of Municipalities Against Racism and Discrimination and set up women's, multicultural and LGTBQI Council Advisory Committees and Co Chaired the Womens Task Force which wrote the first Canadian "Gender Equity Strategy". Woodsworth was part of the Vancouver Council that created the Greenest City by 2020 environmental strategy. On May 29, 2019, she was able to get the City of Vancouver to unanimously pass a motion to put a gendered intersectional lens measurable and supported on all departments for six years.

Call for campaign finance changes

After Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson received campaign donations from at least two American supporters, Woodsworth called for a ban on foreign campaign donations such as those received by Robertson.

World Peace Summit

Woodsworth co-founded the World Peace Summit, a week-long conference bringing more than 35,000 participants to Vancouver from around the world.

Women Transforming Cities International Society

Before leaving the Vancouver City Council, Woodsworth and the chair of the city's Women's Advisory Committee founded Women Transforming Cities. This organization conducts multi-lingual dialogues in the World Cafe format, to bring out women's suggestions for how their city could become safer and more suited to their needs. Women Transforming Cities organized a sold-out National Conference with Councillors, academics, urbanists, women's organizations, and unions; a sold-out Pecha Kucha at the 1,200 seat Vogue Theatre and a very successful "Hot Pink Paper" 2014 municipal election campaign to get all Vancouver parties to support 11 key issues to make cities work for women and girls.
Ellen was invited by the UN to speak at their "Women Friendly Cities International Conference" in Turkey. WTC is part of a five-city coalition that produced "Advancing Equity and Inclusion a Guide for Municipalities' which was launched at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities AGM in Edmonton in 2015. WTC was part of the national alliance Up for Debate 2015 calling for Federal leaders debate on women's issues and is part of the UN-Habitat 3 Urban Thinkers Campuses.
In 2016 Ellen was invited to speak in Prague at the EU/North American UN-Habitat 3 Regional meeting, in New York to participate in the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, UN-Habitat 3 meeting of human rights experts speaking on housing and cities, on the opening panel of the Montevideo 6th Annual Smart Sustainable Cities Conference about how to put an intersectional lens with disaggregated data on climate change policies and she spoke at the UN-Habitat 3 conference in Quito in 2016 to launch the global Women Friendly Cities Challenge and to speak about inclusion of LGTBQI2S issues in the implementation of the New Urban Agenda.
She was part of the WTC panel at the Canadian Planners Institute AGM, a keynote speaker at the SFU conference on women and the environment, and with the co-chair she has spoken to the heads of all the Engineering Departments at the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Planning Commission. She was chosen as one of the 30 female top politicians in the City of Vancouver's History.
At the World Urban Forum 9 in Kuala Lumpur she chaired the Women Transforming Cities panel which launched the website womenfriendlycitieschallenge.org, an online platform of international wise practices. She was awarded the 2018 Rosemary Brown Award for "her exemplary work to bring equality and justice for girls and women locally and globally". She chaired the Sep 11 launch of the Women Friendly Cities 2018 Hot Pink Paper Municipal Campaign in Vancouver which was endorsed by the incoming Mayor and Council.
Ellen was invited to join 28 people to the Global Table on Female Leadership in Resilient Societies in Udaipur India in 2018. On May 1, 2019 she was awarded the B.C. Achievement Award and the Mitchell Award which "recognizes leadership that empowers others to engage". On May 29, 2019 she was able to get the City of Vancouver to unanimously pass an amendment to put a gendered intersectional lens on all departments, measured and supported for six years. She was a consultant and speaker at the NDI Her Story women and governance project in Iraq 2019. Recently she has been speaking about why climate change is not gender neutral and why this matters. She is speaking on the Women's roundtable at the World Urban Forum in Abu Dhabi.