My mother, Lois Hainsworth, who has died aged 89, was a lifelong campaigner for women’s causes.
She was a member of the International Council of Women (ICW) and for more than 45 years, from 1958, she held senior posts in that organisation; she was also a member of the European Centre for ICW. In 1983 she joined Unifem UK and was elected president in 2001. Fired by her passion and desire for positive change, she helped the former Labour MP Tony Colman to campaign for a change in trafficking legislation.
Born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, Lois lived through the blitz during the second world war in London. Her father, Lord Houchin (whose father gave all his children titles as first names), was a linguist and civil servant; her mother, Ann (nee Clark), ran a corner shop. After leaving Thames Valley grammar school, Lois took a secretarial course in Chiswick but showed talent as a singer. She went to Vienna at 19 to study opera.
In her early 20s Lois joined the Royal Opera but needed another, part-time, job. She worked as a PA to a director at the Rank film group. While living this life of expense accounts, haute couture and talent-spotting trips for Max Factor, for which Rank was making advertisements, she investigated the Baha’i faith. Seeking a lifestyle that encouraged individual development twinned with service to humanity, she became a Baha’i in 1956.
She met Philip Hainsworth, a government entomologist working in Uganda, while he was in London for a month-long break. After a week they decided to marry, and within the month Lois was living in Uganda in a newly built village hut. She set up an opera company touring Mozart to schools across Uganda, coordinated the building of the Baha’i temple for Africa and joined the ICW.
Lois returned to Britain in 1968, continuing voluntary activities with women’s organisations and the Baha’i faith. In 1981 she joined the National Council of Women, on which she held a variety of senior posts until 2013. She also signed up for the Chartered Institute of Journalists after taking a press office job at the Royal Academy of Dance, and served as its president for two years from 1996.
Lois travelled to more than 50 countries between 1970 and 2010. A regular attendee at the UN Commission on the Status of Women, she believed in the value of the UN and took part in the World Conferences for Women in Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995). She was appointed MBE in 2003 for her service to women’s support organisations.
Lois stayed active, taking a parachute jump for her 80th birthday, and declaring: “Very refreshing, I think I will do another one for my 90th.”
She is survived by me, her two sons, Richard and Michael, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
