Emma Ritch

Emma Ritch (8 December 1976 – 9 July 2021 ) was a Scottish women's rights campaigner who was the executive director of Engender, a feminist policy organisation working on women’s social, economic, and political equality in Scotland. She had been working there for 13 years when she died on 9 July 2021.

Career Ritch was a graduate of English Language and Literature at Glasgow University and an activist, campaigner and author. She had a masters degree in IT and management. She was a member of the Scottish Government's First Minister's Advisory Council on Women & Girls. She was on the joint strategic board of Equally Safe, and the advisory group of the Scottish Women’s Rights Centre. Ritch became Chair of Rape Crisis Scotland board in 2016 and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the board of the Human Rights Consortium Scotland in 2020. She had a particular interest in the relation between equality policies and human rights; under her leadership Engender became "the authoritative voice on women’s unpaid care work, the devastating effect of austerity and the need for a social security system that meets the needs of women’s lives, hate crime, equal representation in politics, and access to safe, legal abortion healthcare."

In December 2021, the Scottish Government published its "Response to the First Minister's National Advisory Council on Women and Girls (NACWG) 2020 Repert" and it the foreword Nicola Sturgeon again remembers Ritch as a "passionate advocate for equality".

In March 2023, the University of Glasgow opened a law clinic to conduct research and to help people who were victims of a sexual assault. It was named the Emma Ritch Law Clinic after Ritch who was a Glasgow University alumna.