Since creating her groundbreaking first work, The Vagina Monologues, Ensler and the performers she inspired have grown into nothing less than a global movement.
A best-selling author, award-winning playwright and anti-violence activist, Ensler has been the voice for women and girls across the globe for over a decade.
In this conversation with author Daniel Handler, she reveals the daily struggles faced by modern women around the world.
Bio
Eve Ensler
Eve Ensler is an American playwright, performer, feminist and activist, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues.
Ensler's The Vagina Monologues has been translated into over 45 languages and is running in theaters all over the world, including sold-out runs at both Off-Broadway's Westside Theater and on London's West End (2002 Olivier Award nomination, Best Entertainment).
Ensler has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive. The Vagina Monologues is based on Ensler's interviews with more than 200 women. With humor and grace, the piece celebrates women's sexuality and strength.
Ensler's play Necessary Targets, set in a Bosnian refugee camp, opened Off-Broadway at the Variety Arts Theater in February 2002, after a hit run at Hartford Stage. Other plays include Conviction, Lemonade, The Depot, Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man, and Extraordinary Measures. The Good Body, The Vagina Monologues and Necessary Targets have been published by Villard/Random House. Vagina Warriors, words by Eve Ensler and photos by Joyce Tenneson, was published by Bulfinch Press for V-Day 2005.
Her first book Insecure At Last: A Political Memoir was published by Random House in 2007. Her most recent book, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, was published in January 2011.
Ensler is the recipient of many awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Playwriting, the Berrilla-Kerr Award for Playwriting, the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, and the Jury Award for Theater at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, as well as the 2002 Amnesty International Media Spotlight Award for Leadership and The Matrix Award (2002).
She has received numerous Honorary degrees, including Doctor of Letters from her alma mater, Middlebury College.
Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler is an author, screenwriter, and accordionist whose novels include Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and Adverbs.
Under the alias "Lemony Snicket," he is the author of the internationally-acclaimed thirteen volumes of A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Diverse social movement, largely based in the U.S., seeking equal rights and opportunities for women in their economic activities, personal lives, and politics. It is recognized as the “second wave” of the larger feminist movement. While first-wave feminism of the 19th and early 20th centuries focused on women's legal rights, such as the right to vote, the second-wave feminism of the “women's movement” peaked in the 1960s and '70s and touched on every area of women's experience—including family, sexuality, and work. A variety of U.S. women's groups, including the National Organization for Women, sought to overturn laws that enforced discrimination in matters such as contract and property rights and employment and pay. The movement also sought to broaden women's self-awareness and challenge traditional stereotypes of women as passive, dependent, or irrational. An effort in the 1970s to pass the Equal Rights Amendment failed, but its aims had been largely achieved by other means by the end of the 20th century.
OMG, what a strange video.... I never compared myself to my sock monkey! We had "Barbie Town" in our basement (and these two weirdoes are NOT invited), God only knows what they would do in my Barbie pool!
Why is this woman so obsessed with "Barbie"? I hear what she is saying...... but I bet there are slaves making my sock monkey too! FREE THE SOCK MONKEY!
I like Barbie, I like Barbie a lot, I like those old time Barbie's that were the "soda fountain" Barbie. My daughter was thrilled when she got the big beautiful wanna be Barbie from the drug store, all dressed in her long gown. She never really liked the doctor Barbie (I think they were pushing it there), but the girls all loved that new age Barbie's.
Long live Barbie, and guess what? SHE WILL OUT LIVE THESE TWO (Barbie has the last laugh..... every 3 seconds).
I just sent my daughter and daughter-in-law/son the web site to listen to you. Now I will call some of my friends and tell them about your book, I Am an Emotional Creature, and your talk on Fora.tv Thank you for what you have been doing, and helping the world to become a better place and caring so for others...making a bridge towards a healthier and happier world.
Really brilliant and insightful. Thanks for posting this, I'm passing it along to others. Very good technical quality, too -- good picture and good sound, even on the questions... Great job by the whole team.
haha WOW this barbie metaphor is brilliant- "If you look at the fact that we are having essentially child laborers making barbies in Taiwan and Japan and China who are starving to MAKE Barbie, and then export Barbie to the West where girls starve themselves to BE like barbie, you kind of understand the story of the world right now..."
member. 
