GOOD GRIEF

10th December 2020

Author and Co-Founder of the Women's Equality Party

Captured: the moment Catherine proposed the Women's Equality Party.

Catherine Mayer is a writer, activist, speaker and the co-founder and President of the Women's Equality Party. She co-founded the Primadonna Festival, which had its debut in 2019. She was the founding Executive Director of the think tank Datum Future and writes and consults on the impact of data-driven technologies. She has written four books: Amortality: The Pleasures and Perils of Living Agelessly (2011), Charles: The Heart of a King (hardback 2015, paperback 2016), Attack of the Fifty Foot Women : How Gender Equality Can Save the World! (March 2017, paperback Feb 2018) and, with her mother Anne Mayer Bird, Good Grief: Embracing Life at a Time of Death (Dec 2020).

She started her career in journalism at The Economist, went on to hold deputy editorships at Business Traveller and International Management magazines and contributed regularly to the German edition of Forbes. For 11 years she worked as a London-based correspondent for the German news weekly, FOCUS. In 2004, she joined TIME as a senior editor, and later became London Bureau Chief, Europe Editor and, finally, Editor at Large. 

Her political biography of Prince Charles, a Sunday Times top 10 bestseller, made headlines across the world when it was published in February 2015.

The following month she proposed the idea of the Women’s Equality Party at the Southbank Centre, during the WOW-Women of the World-Festival, and agreed with Sandi Toksvig to co-found the party.  

In July 2017 she launched a lawsuit against TIME for sex and age discrimination. In 2018 she confirmed its "amicable resolution".

Catherine frequently appears on broadcast media and at live events. She performs one-woman shows and with Grayson Perry staged "Hello Boys" at the Bridge Theatre in 2018. Her show Catherine Mayer:FFS toured in 2019. She was the lead candidate in London for the Women's Equality Party in the European elections. She served as the elected President of the Foreign Press Association in London from 2003-2005. She is on the founding committee of WOW. She served as a trustee of the National Migraine Centre. She was a judge for the 2018 Women's Prize for Fiction.

She was married to the musician Andy Gill until his death in February 2020.

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