“Women are each other’s Wonderbras: uplifting, supportive and making each other look bigger and better”. Voiced by the author Kathy Lette, those buoyant words were definitely a crowd-pleaser at last week's Women In The World (WITW) summit, held for the first time in its six-year run in London. With a stellar line-up that comprised activists, artists, peacemakers, politicians, entrepreneurs and firebrand dissidents, the two-day event of panel discussions presented a far-reaching spectrum of women’s, or, more to the point, people’s issues. Because, as Meryl Streep pronounced, “women’s issues are men’s problems too”. And, of course, what she really meant was something beyond any gender binary: that the summit was essentially about humanity; it’s pivotal point equality.

Since its inception in 2010 by the media powerhouse Tina Brown, WITW has welcomed onto its stage the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Tawakkoi Karmen, Hillary Clinton, Pussy Riot, Diane Von Furstenberg and Angelina Jolie. This year, in collaboration with The New York Times, the festival drew together speakers including: Mhairi Black, the youngest MP in Britain since the 17th century, whose sexist-thrashing wit cued well-deserved applauds; Malala Yousafzai’s parents who underscored the values with which they raised their education-championing daughter; Nicole Kidman who spoke on the importance of female narratives in film; Yeonmi Park, the young North Korean defector, who recounted her flee from “the darkest place on earth”; Cara Delevingne who offered a poem she penned through depression; and 40-odd more spokeswomen whose personal stories, testimony and debate went behind the headlines to tell “herstory”, not only history.

While there was a marked absence of transgender voices, WITW made headway in proffering a space for a number of marginal voices. The summit honoured the campaigning of war-zone heroines, refugees, and victims of child marriage, domestic violence, sex abuse and misogyny in the work place. On that latter issue, one panel member recalled a Supreme Court judge’s bewildering remark only last month, that a push for more gender balance in senior judicial positions would have “appalling consequences” for the British judiciary system. Clearly, we know we’ve got a long way to go. Yet, as Catherine Meyer of the Women’s Equality Party wrly reminded us, at least the capital city’s phallic symbol of patriarchal power – Mr. Big Ben – has been re-named The Elizabeth Tower.

Here are some of the most memorable words from a handful of the participants:

SONITA ALIZADEH: AFGHAN TEEN RAPPER

At 16-years-old the Afghan rapper Sonita Alizadeh narrowly escaped a forced marriage by making the video “Brides For Sale”, which went viral within weeks. She discussed the silence and suffering that drove her to speak out:

“(In my culture) a good girl should be silenced; a good girl should not talk about her future; a good girl should listen to her family even if they say you have to marry with him, him or him. A good girl means you should be like a doll who everyone can play with (…) When my mother told me they have to sell me, I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t speak. It was too hard to understand marrying someone I didn’t know. When you don’t like someone, if he touches you it’s harder than anything. (…) But I choose my future, I’m talking, and for (my parents) its hard to understand this. (…) One of my friends had bruises on her face and when I looked at her I imagined my music video in my mind – I wanted to tell our story and many millions of girls in the world.”

MHAIRI BLACK: YOUNGEST MP SINCE 1667

Her story goes “from chip shop to Westminster” – the Glasgow University student elected into Parliament earlier this year, aged 20. Standing for the Scottish National Party, her gutsy maiden’s speech in the House of Commons blew fresh air into an antiquated room full largely of men. In her own words:

“Every time we go in the Chamber, and David Cameron puts something forward, it always just serves as a reminder of why I’m there. Everything that’s being said – whether it’s policy, or sometimes even his sense of humour – I just don’t like it. (…) A parliament should represent society; it should reflect the people in that society; it should be made up of people of different classes, different ages, different genders, different religions, and different sexualities. Otherwise, how are we ever going to get a real varied debate? Otherwise it becomes a stale, middle class, middle-income boys club – that’s what Westminster is effectively, it’s still got that boys club attitude about it. (…) For the first couple of weeks (in Chamber) a number of (male MPs) were calling me ‘honey’, ‘sweetheart’, to which I would call them ‘darling’. Sexism is alive and well in Westminster. (…) But one thing that really irritates me is actually journalists - there’s a huge number of journalists who ask me about the clothes I wear, where I buy it, what style its from, still, and I think you would never ask a guy that. What relevance is it what I’m wearing? What relevance is it where I bought it? Are you not more interested in talking politics?”

LEYMAH GBOWEE: LIBERIAN NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE

She's the fearless woman who spearheaded a peace movement that brought 14 years of Liberian civil war to an end. Here's Gbowee speaking on the day in 2003 when she and an army of women threatened to strip naked – considered a powerful curse in West Africa – outside the room in which Charles Taylor and the warlords were congregating, in order to force them into peace negotiations:

“When we stepped out we decided we were going to lock arms and lock the warlords in the room. When the security came they said they ‘we're going to arrest you’, so I said ‘I’m going to strip naked’, and they ran. Then someone said, ‘you need to send more women to the window because the men are jumping out of it’. (…) One of the warlords was asked later on, ‘What were you all afraid of, when you had all raped women indiscriminately? Why would one woman threatening to strip naked do something to all of you? He said, ‘at that moment we all asked ourselves 'what have we done to bring our women to this place?'’. (…) When we have a world where women have to threaten to strip (to get political issues noticed) it means there’s something wrong with the world, and the men in power need to ask themselves how can we change this?”

See more of Gbowee's talk here

YEONMI PARK: NORTH KOREAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST

Aged 13, Yeonmi Park and her mother fled North Korea to China. The harrowing journey that saw Park sell herself for $260, traverse the Gobi desert and “follow the northern stars to freedom” is revealed in her book “In Order to Live”. Here she tells of the disturbing ways in which life back home was severed from reality:

“I remember when I was young I saw illegal TV; I saw such a different thing (to what I was used to). It was an advertisement about milk, and we don’t have advertisements in North Korea. I never even knew milk came out of cows. (…) And when I watched the movie Titanic I remember (thinking) what are these people really doing? Because nothing is a love story in North Korea, nothing is about us, about human beings; it’s all about the leader, we have to die for the regime, I couldn’t imagine somebody dying for love. That movie showed me a taste of freedom, of humanity. But the next morning I was waking up and saying ‘our country is the best country, let’s kill American bastards!’ And that’s what I did; I believed it. I believed that my dear leader could read my mind. I thought that if I say bad things he could punish me. (…) To me he’s not a joke. It’s not funny his haircut, I don’t know why he's so funny to you here, I don’t know why it matters that he’s fat or not. (The west) is a paradise; it is a heaven. I want people to know that he is a criminal, he is killing millions there, I hope we see him as not a joke.”

SASHA HAVLICEK: DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC DIALOGUE

Leading the fight against the radicalisation of youth in Britain and the world over, Havlicek drew attention to the counteractive form of female empowerment promoted by ISIS propaganda:

“What’s been really interesting with the girls (…) is counter-intuitively they see (radicalisation) as empowerment, they’re rejecting the western model of Sex in the City emancipation and they’re saying ‘look, this doesn’t work for me, it doesn’t work for many of us’, and what you’re seeing is a kind of Jihadi girl power subculture emerge. It’s very violent and it’s a palpably power hungry, and they talk about wanting and wishing to have the opportunity to take real violence into their own hands. There’s an amazing meme – one of the pieces of propaganda of ISIS – it’s a fully covered young woman and it says ‘covered girl, because I’m worth it”. These notions come out of a Western culture, and they’re subverting it in really interesting ways, and those are young women who feel engaged with it because they’re politically conscious.”

See more of Havlick's talk below

CARA DELEVINGNE: SUPERMODEL-TURNED-ACTRESS

Advising girls to “dream bigger”, the model-turned-actress opened up about the failures of the modelling industry, suffering from depression and psoriasis, and how Kate Moss and writing saved her life:

“In our culture we’re told that if we’re beautiful, if we’re skinny, if we’re successful, famous, if we fit in, if everyone loves us we’ll be happy, but that’s not entirely true (…) I couldn’t be luckier and more blessed but [there were] internal battles going on. I also felt like I never deserved any of it, that I was living someone else’s dream. (…) At the time I was doing shows – I had giant welts all over my body including my head, it would bleed – it was horrible. I felt more disconnected from myself then than I think I ever had, which I was for a long time. (…) My agency shoved me straight into a doctor who injected cortisone into each spot which hides them. All those problems I had I masked with medicine instead of taking time to really solve them. (...) What happened is I eventually said no, and I took a break – to the advice of Kate Moss who kind of picked me up off the floor (…) I started writing, writing was something that really saved my life (…) I have so many girls coming up to me and telling me they want to be models, which is fine, it’s not a bad thing, but I just think there’s so much to do (…) I always say to girls just dream, just dream bigger, go for president, just keep going up, astronauts, I don’t know.”

See more of the WITW talks here