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Elizabeth Sidney obituary

By: Annette Lawson
The Guardian 22 May 2011 –
The advancement of women was at the absolute core of Elizabeth Sidney`s work. She promoted the cause through Mantra, the management consultancy she established in 1979, and for which she travelled extensively.
She also made a huge contribution to the Liberal party, and later the Liberal Democratic party. Elizabeth led policy committees, including one on the Liberal merger with the SDP in 1988 to form the Lib Dems, and another on how to open up parliamentary candidate selection procedures. She became president of both national and international Women Liberal Democrats.
Elizabeth, who has died aged 86, sought to fight against the arms trade; promoted the cause of a green and sustainable environment; and struggled against all kinds of fundamentalism.
She became especially incensed in the 1980s by the treatment of women under Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and worked in support of the Iranian resistance.
In 2009, Elizabeth decided to develop her own wider understanding of the role of fundamentalism in women`s oppression.
She founded WWAFE – Women Worldwide Advancing Freedom and Equality – and chaired it until illness forced her resignation last December, but she remained a trustee of the National Alliance of Women`s Organisations and missed only the last of our meetings two weeks ago.
Elizabeth was witty, pretty, elegant, brilliant and highly educated – by a governess ,then at Sherborne school, followed by a scholarship to Oxford aged 16,two master`s degrees, and qualification as an occupational psychologist.
Her answer just a few weeks ago to the question as to what still stands in the way of gender equality was: ’Capitalism, religion and pheromones.’
As a colleague and friend, I knew that within minutes of meeting, however grave the problem, and in however august a place we might be – the United Nations, the House of Lords, or an organisation`s board table – she would have us laughing. Elizabeth wove fun into every serious commitment.
Her marriage to Derek Sidney ended in divorce.
She is survived by three children, Francesca, David and Madeleine, and six grandchildren.

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