Ellen Woodsworth

Ellen Woodsworth is a social activist and politician based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She is the founder and chair of Women Transforming Cities International Society.
Woodsworth sat on the Vancouver city council for six years, co-founding initiatives such as the World Peace Summit and Women Transforming Cities Society. She has championed issues such as affordable housing and homelessness, electoral reform, environmental sustainability, women's rights, seniors' rights, LGTTBQ rights, racism, free trade, and economic equality.

Born in Toronto, Ontario, to Jean and Ken Woodsworth, Woodsworth went to the Canadian Academy for high school in Japan, 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, 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 a women's newspaper titled The Other Woman in Toronto and created CORA the Women's Liberation Bookmobile with Judity 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. She was 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 protests against the Kinder Morgan Pipeline and Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline.

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 Vancouver City Council joined the Canadian Coalition of Municipalities Against Racism and Discrimination and set up women's, multicultural and LGTTBQ Council Advisory Committees. Woodsworth was part of the Vancouver Council that created the Greenest City by 2020 environmental strategy.

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 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 a 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, at 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. See Queer Declaration on Change.org.