Marion Bethel

Gender-Based Violence International Human Rights Artist/Writer BIPOC Art and Activism Education Filmmaking

About this Speaker

Bahamian Attorney, Social Activist & Writer

Marion Bethel’s decades-long advocacy for the rights of Bahamian women and girls spans the areas of human rights law, education, creative writing and film.

Marion Bethel’s decades-long advocacy for the rights of Bahamian women and girls spans the areas of human rights law, education, creative writing and film. Born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas, Marion is currently a Partner and an Attorney-at-law with her husband at their law firm, Sears & Co., in The Bahamas Marion was awarded a Bachelor and Masters of Arts in Law from Cambridge University, and has been a practicing attorney since 1986.

In 2013, Ms. Bethel produced and directed a documentary entitled Womanish Ways: Freedom, Human Rights & Democracy, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in the Bahamas – 1948-1962, which examines the struggle for Bahamian women’s suffrage. Marion has also published two collections of poetry, and is currently working on a third manuscript of poetry and a memoir.

In 2016, Marion was nominated by The Bahamas and elected by the United Nations States Parties to serve as an international expert on the UN Committee of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

She is a 1997 Alice Proskauer Poetry Fellow at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College at Harvard University. Her work has been featured at the 3rd Congress of Caribbean Writers, Cave Canem, and international poetry festivals throughout the Caribbean and the Americas. Her debut film, Womanish Ways, has also been widely screened throughout the Caribbean and across the United States at documentary film festivals, cultural centers, and universities.