Two weeks into my time at the UN, the biggest event of the calendar year began at UNHQ in New York. No pressure! The opening session of the UN’s General Assembly, held in September of every year, is a chance for all member states to gather and begin their work for the new session. This year was the 77th, and was the first “back to normal” GA after the earlier years of the COVID pandemic. You don’t have to be on the grounds of UN headquarters to feel the energy around the General Assembly. Starting from the police checkpoints several blocks away, the bustling of security personnel, diplomats, advocates, protestors, diplomats, and heads of state immediately swept me up in the excitement and nonstop bustle of the general assembly. The UNited Nations is caught in a constant struggle between idealism and pragmatism, but sitting in the hall of UNHQ on day two of the high level debates during GA, it was easy to see what the UN can be at its best, most idealized version: leaders, civil society, and the private sector coming together to pool resources, experiences, and ideas to find answers to the most pressing issues of the time. I had the privilege of being in attendance during President Biden’s speech, and feeling the swell of anticipation and attention as time grew nearer for the US to speak really hit home for me the immense privilege and responsibility our country has as a global leader and model. In subsequent speeches following Biden’s, many countries specifically referenced his support for various policy issues. It also prompted me to reflect on the privilege our church has to have a voice in such an elevated environment. Our witness and advocacy work plays a crucial role in finding multilateral solutions to conflict, connecting everyday people with policymakers and lawmakers at the highest level, and seeing Jesus’s teachings to care for the last, the least, and the left out realized. Another powerful aspect of GA that really struck me was how much it balanced the playing field between traditional superpowers and smaller or developing countries. In the General Assembly, every country, no matter how large or small, gets one vote. Every country had their turn to speak on the topics they chose to prioritize. Often, it was the smaller, often overlooked countries that demonstrated the strongest commitment to the UN’s sustainable development goals and offered concrete solutions to issues such as climate change. Micronesia, Gabon, and Suriname highlighted the carbon sinks and almost nonexistent deforestation levels in their countries. Guyana pointed out the opportunity we have to utilize women and youth in confronting climate change and encourage their participation in green agricultural business and technology. Barbados and Papua New Guinea both pointed out that smaller island nations such as themselves are on the forefront of the climate battle but they also have an abundance of solutions to offer, they just need buy-in from the larger countries creating the climate crisis in the first place. Grateful doesn’t feel even close to what I feel to have had the opportunity to attend GA, and at the end of the high level discussions, I left under no illusions about the severity and breadth of the crises we face as a world right now. But I also left with no shortage of hope for our future and enthusiasm for the advocacy work that really begins once GA ends. After all, with so many folks of all ages and from all over our planet committed to finding solutions, we are far from alone in this work. This applies to not just the UN, but also our church. Our office here in New York works hand in hand with the PCUSA office in Washington, the Office of Public Witness. Together we’re able to pool our efforts and work collaboratively to uplift and advocate for those who often go overlooked, both within our country and around the world. In the month and a half after GA, long after all the flashy names leave town and the traffic around First Avenue clears, the work continues more intensely than ever. Work toward the protection of human rights, climate, gender equity, economic justice, and beyond. One of my most frequent questions for those who have been in advocacy work a long time is this: How do you continue? How do you draw up the patience and the energy day in and day out, when we work in a field where it might take years of negotiations to finally see policy realized? Almost unanimously, everyone I’ve asked has replied that it is the folks around them that keep them going. Colleagues in the office, ecumenical partners, other NGOs. As one said, when you share with others, you realize you’re not carrying all the world’s problems on your own. Day in and day out at PMUN and within PCUSA, I see this in action. Even on the really hard days, when it seems like headline after headline is filled with despair or discouragement, I just have to look around the office, or look out the window on UNHQ, and know that there are thousands of people all over the world who are working to make sure those headlines don’t happen again.
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Just two Victorias hanging out! Before I arrived in Dundee, there were approximately three facts I knew about the city:
This week, we had the privilege of going on a tour led by the pastor at one of our placements to historical sites around Dundee, where I learned so much more about the city I call home this year. The first thing anyone here will reference when you ask about Dundee’s history are the three J’s: jute, jam, and journalism. The jute mills allowed some in the area to become quite well-off in the 1800’s, and employed tens of thousands of Dundonians, the majority women. On the surface, this seems progressive, but the reality is that the jute barons could get away with paying women less than the men for working in their factories. Soft berries, such as raspberries and strawberries, are plentiful around Dundee, and I can share from experience that the homemade jam here is incredible. The collapse of the jute industry plunged a lot of the city into poverty in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it has only been in the past thirty years that the city has really started to recover. The third J is of course near and dear to me as my parents were both journalists for the bulk of my childhood. DC Thompson, which has published magazines and newspapers including the Dundee Courier, the Evening Telegraph, and the Sunday Post. DC Thompson is also home to notable comics, including the world’s longest-running weekly comic, the Beano. Iconic comic characters Desperate Dan and Dennis the Menace were even invented in Dundee! The DC Thompson building in Dundee's city center. Dundee was also heavily involved in the whaling industry in the late 19th century because of the city’s ability to build ships that could function in extreme weather conditions (those Scottish winters are good for some things!). This shipbuilding prowess is exhibited in one of the centerpieces of the city, next to the V&A. The Royal Research Ship Discovery, a research ship commissioned by the National Antarctic Expedition Committee is still intact, one hundred and twenty years after Captain Robert Falcon Scott took the ship to Antarctica and back. RRS Discovery in the foreground and the V&A in the background, with a guest appearance by blue skies! We also stopped at the Wishart Arch, the last remaining part of the medieval wall built around Dundee. In 1544, George Wishart, a Scottish Protestant Reformer, allegedly hauled himself up to the top of the wall and gave a rousing speech during a plague to both the healthy people inside the wall and the sick audience banished outside the wall, a moving gesture especially in a time when most of the population was illiterate and priests used their literacy to control the narrative around the church and mediate the relationship between the common people and God. He was later burned at the stake by Cardinal Beaton. The Wishart Arch, what remains of Dundee's medieval wall. The modern apartment building was built around it. The most fascinating part of the tour for me was learning about Dundee’s long, proud history of advocacy for women’s rights and workers’ rights. In fact, in the 1800s it was referred to as ‘The Radical Toun’, and pre-World War II was referred to as a ‘she town’, a nod to the number of women employed in Dundee’s jute mills, an unusual phenomenon pre-War. As I mentioned earlier, this was not a coincidence - the jute barons knew they could pay women less. In response, Dundee saw some of the earliest women-organized demonstrations for gender equality, and Dundee had large groups of suffragists and suffragettes during the fight for women’s suffrage. The jute workers also organized for workers’ rights and Dundee was home to many demonstrations. Many Dundonians were sentenced to transport during the fight for popular suffrage, forced to board ships to Australia or other far-flung destinations, never to return home. Dundonians found a common cause with French revolutionaries in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and sent support to those revolutionaries at the same time the British government was supplying aid to the French monarchy.
In the nineteenth century, while the battle for universal suffrage was gaining steam, one-third of Dundee’s population at the time attended a mass meeting in support. Dundee’s middle class led the charge for the right to vote, due to the unusually high number of literate artisans in the city, who wrote powerful protests in support of voting rights, some in the form of poems. In the twentieth century, Dundee’s reputation as the ‘Radical Toun’ again reared its head. Winston Churchill served as the Liberal Party’s member of parliament (MP) for Dundee since 1908. But the rise of the Labour Party in Dundee, bolstered by the 1918 Representation of the People Act that gave many of the working-class women gained the right to vote, meant that Dundee’s electorate had changed. Churchill only visited Dundee once a year despite being its MP, and when he finally came to visit in 1921, he was confronted by the extreme poverty that had flourished in the city, aided by the UK government’s weak unemployment policies. He became so unpopular in Dundee that he was defeated in the 1922 elections by a Prohibitionist, Edwin Scrymgeour, and formally joined the Conservative Party in 1924. Think about how unpopular you have to be for the Scots to elect a Prohibitionist! The other YAVs and myself will be in Glasgow this Saturday, for the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties (COP26), the UN’s climate change conference, joining the hundreds of thousands in the city converging to address the serious threat of climate change. Scotland is far ahead of the US with respect to environmental care in many ways. Even day to day here, recycling is much more advanced and efficient. Each house has separate recycling cans for paper, plastic and metal, and compost. Everyone brings reusable bags to the grocery store, none of the single-use plastic bags we find in abundance in the States, drifting through parking lots. It’s much more common here to use drying racks for laundry instead of dryers, to conserve energy use. Of course, individuals can each do our own part to address climate change, but we need systemic change and specific policies to shape our response. I’m hopeful that the leaders in Glasgow will be able to create concrete policy during these two weeks. Learning about Dundee’s history as a ‘Radical Toun’, and a ‘she town’ just as COP26 begins in Glasgow felt especially apt. Climate change is a complex issue that needs radical ideas and solutions in order to confront it. And much of the face of the climate justice movement is female - Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement has spread across the world, and Indigenous women are leading by example with their stewardship of the land. Several of the panels I attended at the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women back in March talked about the inextricable link between climate justice and gender justice. Dundee’s history fosters a sense of responsiveness and innovation in the city even today, and it is with that feeling that we head to Glasgow. I feel like I blinked and suddenly I’ve been in Scotland for a month - it’s amazing how quickly everyone here has made me feel so welcomed and eased my transition! We hit the ground running at my placement, and I plan to discuss different initiatives in depth in upcoming blog posts, but this week I want to focus on Fintry’s food larder, both because it is what we spend the most time prepping for each week but also because of the connection it has to Greensboro. Fintry established their food larder during the summer of 2020 in response to the need they saw in their community. Originally, a food delivery service started to help families during lockdown. As restrictions in Scotland eased the church moved the larder to in-person in order to serve a larger number of people and to maximize the options people have when selecting food they need or want. At Fintry, we spend a solid amount of time each week collecting food from different groups around Dundee. One of our partners is FareShare, which collects surplus food from retailers and redistributes it to larders and programs like ours, simultaneously reducing food waste and working to address food poverty in Dundee. This allows not only a greater quantity of food to be available for the larder but also the inclusion of fresh fruits and vegetables, as opposed to solely canned goods and nonperishables which, while useful, don’t always make the healthiest meals. Another partner we work with is Roundhouse Community Kitchen, which also receives deliveries of surplus food from retailers and suppliers. The community kitchen takes the raw ingredients and makes healthy meals in order to reduce the labor required for meals while also ensuring healthier options. We then pick up these meals and have them in a refrigerator at the larder for guests to choose from. Each Roundhouse meal comes with heating instructions and an ingredient list. An additional partner that surprised me as I learned how the larder is made possible is a charity program set up by John Alexander, owner of Alexander Decorators in Dundee. He originally set up Alexander Community Development to teach young people trades. During the pandemic, when many were out of work during lockdown, Alexander made use of their trucks normally used for home renovations to provide transportation of food from suppliers to local food banks, a practice they have continued even as lockdown has eased and work has returned. This dedication on an individual level, to reflect on what resources we each have and how we can make use of our unique skills and experience to meet the needs of our community really embodies the spirit so many have here in Dundee, both at Fintry and in the programs we partner with. (And I’ve always said Alexanders are good people!)
I’ve really been struck by the cooperation of so many different groups and individuals in order to keep the larder robust and the emphasis on providing not just food but healthy, fresh meals. Our larder is far from the only one in Dundee and I got to meet several other leaders at a meeting of the Dundee Food Insecurity Network, headed by Faith in Community’s Jacky Close. Jacky gave an interview here discussing her work in her own words, but I’ll try to describe some of the work the network does too. The Food Insecurity Network is a partnership of Dundee’s council (local government), faith communities, food banks, and other local groups that work to address food poverty and minimize food waste. While the group meets via Zoom biweekly, this meeting was in person and it was so filling to feel the energy in the room as leaders from different sectors tossed around ideas to address food insecurity, particularly during the weekends when children aren’t receiving meals at school and food larders aren’t usually open. The group was filled with people of all ages and backgrounds, all working together to improve their immediate community. The challenges the network faces are daunting. The UK government instituted a Universal Credit program for families in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but have chosen to end that program this week, a six-billion pound budget cut to a program designed to provide food and heating to low-income families who have been hardest hit by the economic and social impacts of the pandemic. The decision to revoke the Universal Credit means that just as it gets colder, families will have to choose between feeding their children or heating their home, or in some cases, won’t be able to do either. For single people, the end of the program will mean a 25% drop in benefits (BBC). The direct hit to families varies depending on the number of people in the household. The UK government has chosen to end the Universal Credit program against the advice of charities, think tanks, and the First Ministers of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, with the reasoning that getting people back to work is the best way to address poverty, despite the fact that 40% of those eligible for the Universal Credit program are employed, likely in frontline jobs that put them at increased risk of exposure to COVID-19. The Food Insecurity Network acknowledged this challenge during the meeting but did not dwell on it, choosing instead to focus on the actions each group could take separately and together to continue to feed those who need it in the community. The people I spoke to from food programs across the city mentioned concerns voiced directly by the visitors to their programs, in order to best problem-solve. Another thing that struck me during the meeting and during my time working at Fintry’s larder is how efficiently addressing the problem of food insecurity addresses the problem of food waste. In some cases of food poverty, the problem is not that there is simply no food; the problem is that the food that exists is not accessible, affordable, or nourishing. Globally, one third of the food we produce gets lost or wasted, nearly half of all fruits and vegetables are wasted, and in the UK, 6.7 million tons of food are wasted a year. The work the Food Insecurity Network does here in Dundee to rescue food that would normally be wasted while simultaneously addressing food poverty is a model that should be replicated everywhere - it’s amazing how much food there is and how many options people have at the Fintry food larder. I can’t help but to think of Greensboro in this work, as we have 17 of the 24 food deserts in Guilford County. Programs like Backpack Beginnings and Hot Dish and Hope address the symptoms of food poverty, but just as in Dundee, the pandemic has worsened economic and social indicators for those who were already struggling pre-pandemic. I’ve traveled 3,716 miles for my YAV year but the obstacle of food poverty has remained in my community. Although it can feel discouraging at times that so many people are struggling to put food on the table, I take solace in the fact that so many people - in Dundee, in Greensboro, and all over the world - are working to eliminate food poverty in all sorts of creative and collaborative ways. The energy I felt at the Food Insecurity Network meeting was full of possibility and passion and most of all, resolve, and the dedication to consistent service and supply at Fintry’s food larder give me faith that if we all work with that same enthusiasm and determination, we’ll be able to make systemic change. I will be chronicling my YAV year on this blog and welcome your support - be it prayers, letters (message me to be pen pals!), and you can donate to support the YAV program and our site in Dundee at https://www.presbyterianmission.org/donate/e210102/. Week one of my YAV year in Scotland is complete! Three out of four of us Scotland YAVs are now here, two of us out of isolation and the third waiting on her negative test to come back. The jet lag is still hitting (or maybe my sleep schedule is really random anyway), but we’ve packed a ton into just seven days. We arrived in Dundee last Friday after a twenty-eight-hour travel journey which included three flights, a tram, a run through Edinburgh city center on foot, and a train ride. I went from Greensboro to Atlanta to Amsterdam to Edinburgh to Dundee, so it’s safe to say I was feeling a bit discombobulated when we finally arrived. We were met at the Edinburgh airport by Pam and John from the Church of Scotland Priority Areas team, who then took us and our bags the hour and a half journey to the YAV flat (or house, name to be determined!). Right after we landed in Edinburgh, just before we ran through Edinburgh city center to catch the train to Dundee. Throughout the up and downs of the past sixteen months, the Priority Areas team have been incredibly supportive and thoughtful in everything they do, and that’s been no different since our arrival. We arrived to a fully stocked fridge, a cozy and warm home, and the welcoming party of another member of the Priority Areas team, Naomi, and her wife Georgina. Of course, my first meal in Scotland had to be fish and chips! Jordan and I still had to isolate from the team due to Scotland’s COVID protocols for international travelers but it was just nice to see everyone in person, even from a distance. To help break up the monotony of quarantine, we were blessed with a huge baking delivery Sunday from my placement Fintry Parish, courtesy of congregation members and dropped off by the pastor, Colin. There were enough baked goods to last us a month, and it really helped boost our spirits right when the realities of living life in isolation were setting in. Luckily, our COVID tests came back negative Tuesday evening. Enough baked goods to feed an army, and some flowers to brighten our day, courtesy of the Fintry Parish congregation. Wednesday morning our site coordinator, Pam, drove up for our first full day of freedom and took us on a short trip to St. Andrews, so that we could explore some of the sites and learn more about the area. If you know me, you know I’m not a huge golf person, so the old course was pretty enough to look at but I much more enjoyed the walk on the beach and learning about the university. We got to see the cathedral, which took various groups about 150 years to build, and was finally finished around 1310, making it at the time the largest building in the whole country. We got back to Dundee in time to pick up Teressa from the train station and bring her back to the YAV house/flat/home to begin her isolation. Even before the cathedral was finished in the fourteenth century, the grounds have been a pilgrimage site since the sixth century. Thursday morning, Pam took Jordan and me to finally see our placements in person, get acquainted with the surrounding areas, and meet the people we’ve seen over Zoom for the past several months. We arrived at Fintry just as the food larder (food pantry for us Americans) was starting. It was amazing to me to see not just the variety of food but the quality that was available, as well as lovely touches like bunches of flowers that visitors could take with them. I finally got to meet most of the Fintry staff in person, and Colin the pastor gave us a tour of the church and the local neighborhood. One thing I’ve noticed that’s really different here is the relationships between the local churches and the neighborhoods. There seem to be many more churches with smaller congregations made up of mainly people from the neighborhoods around the church. For many, they’ve grown up in the same pews they sit in now. For me, coming from a large church that’s about a fifteen-minute drive from my house back in Greensboro, it was fascinating to see the differences. Additionally, because the churches are so integrated into their local communities, the outreach programs they run specifically address the unique challenges of their area.
For example, at Fintry, I’ll be working in a local primary (elementary) school as a learning coach, along with Ross and other Fintry members. The church is just a few blocks away from the school. Even looking at the local geography, Fintry is situated in a really prominent land area that was sectioned after the second world war. It’s got plenty of lawn and really sits at the center of the neighborhood, across the street from the grocer, butcher, and pharmacy. It was so fascinating to reflect on the cultural centrality the church has in addition to the physical centrality within the neighborhood. The other Scotland YAVs and I will be in different roles at each of our churches, but the idea is the same: the church has developed programs in direct response to the needs of their immediately local community. Each of our churches has been granted a ‘Priority Area’ status by the Church of Scotland, which means that the community ranks in the bottom 5% across all social and economic indicators. However, the challenges within each community vary between sites, and that’s one way our churches are able to step in to a civil society role and be a go-between for the government and the people actually living in the communities. This morning (Friday), we joined a Zoom call the Church of Scotland Priority Areas hosts every Friday morning called The Wee Conversation, during which pastors and community support workers from all of the different priority areas are able to share what’s going on in their specific church, the programs they’re working on, and have a place of support during the pandemic they could turn to while being that support for their congregations. It was really impactful to me to reflect on the ways in which each person and congregation was so devoted to and passionate about the specific people and causes in their community, and the ways they were able to share in each other’s joys and successes and provide support and encouragement for the setbacks. It really hit home how different each church’s situation can be, even if their geographical locations are very similar. It was also a novel experience to me to hear about the direct ways these churches enter what seems to be the ‘political’ sphere – I think there is a lot of reflection and hesitation in the United States and within PC(USA) congregations on how far to take our outreach and ministry in the community, for fear of seeming too political. But in Scotland, it’s almost a given that the churches are a part of the polis and as such have a responsibility to operate in conjunction with the political sphere, whether that be funding for programs or directly challenging local councils to provide addiction and recovery support, better housing, or advocating for the members of their community. The level of community organizing here is also something that surprised me, in the most pleasant way. When people in these churches see the needs of their local community, such as providing groceries to older adults most at risk of contracting COVID, they immediately organized food runs and drop-offs. It makes me think about all of the opportunities we might be letting pass us by in the PC(USA). It’s hard to rationalize not taking action when we know how much work there is to do in our local communities. Our churches embody enormous support networks of experts in all sorts of fields, passionate helpers willing to extend a hand to anyone who needs it, and it makes me really hopeful to think about the type of change we can enact if we resolve to do so. Coming up this weekend, I’ll get to join worship at Fintry for the first time and I’m so unbelievable excited to meet the congregation and thank everyone in person for their prayers over our YAV journey, and also for the incredible baked goods. Our first official start day is this upcoming Tuesday, and I can’t wait to share more as my YAV year in Scotland begins in earnest. Thank you for coming along with me on this journey! I will be chronicling my YAV year on this blog and welcome your support - be it prayers, letters (message me to be pen pals!), and you can donate to support the YAV program and our site in Dundee at https://www.presbyterianmission.org/donate/e210102/. One of the most fundamental ways the pandemic has changed our way of life is in our workplaces. For a lot of people, over the past year going to work has meant settling in at the dinner table, walking two feet from their bed to a desk, or attempting to find a single quiet corner in our homes as the workplace has shifted to a virtual format. As more and more people are vaccinated and we start planning how to return to a more communal work format, we have a unique opportunity to rebuild the ways we view work, our conceptions of work-life balances, and reshape the dynamics within our workplaces.
WomenLift Health and Change.Org Foundation cohosted a parallel event on how to use this unique time to empower the voices of women within the workplace. Monifa Bandele, Chief Operating Officer at Time’s Up, said that in our return we must demand the highest level of work-life balance, and to reach for the north star of what we’re demanding in the form of truly equitable workplaces. “If we get back to ‘normal’ we have to wait for another major event to expose all the cracks in the system,” she said, “while right now, we have the opportunity to build something completely different.” During COVID-19, Bandele said, two million women have been forced out of the workplace in one year, mostly because of caregiving responsibilities. If the current rate continues, women will be at 1980 levels of representation in the workplace, an unforgiveable regression not just because of the lack of economic access and power women are undergoing, but also because so much of the modern advancements within the workplace are due to the organizing power of women. “Women are the ones doing the work to unravel what’s making our workplaces sexist and racist, but we also have the dual burden of caregiving,” Bandele said. Kazuna Yamamoto, President of Voice Up Japan, shared that this problem is not unique to any one country. In every country, women bear the dual burdens of the demands of full time employment and the unpaid care work done within the home. Yamamoto’s organization has studied the issue in Japan, and found that the average working woman in Japan spends three hours a day on unpaid labor in heterosexual couples, while men spend on average forty-one minutes. To a certain extent, Yamamoto said, it’s impossible for women to keep up with both their career and their care. The additional care burden makes having a work-life balance even more unreachable for women. “Women make the world work,” Preethi Herman, Change.Org Foundation’s Global Executive Director said, pointing to the fact that women make up two-thirds of the informal workforce, and even in the formal workforce women are underpaid and unrecognized in the most vulnerable positions. Despite this, Herman said, “so much of the progress we’ve made is a result of women organizing and demanding it, not it being handed to us.” To go about changing this, we have to take several different approaches. Doyin Atewologun, Dean of the Rhodes Scholarships program, talked about the need to help people recognize that it’s not just women who stand to gain. In organizations and societies with higher levels of gender equality, Atewologun noted, have better outcomes across the board, in health, education, and economically. Atewologun also pointed to women in leadership positions, who have unique opportunities to wield their power to advocate for gender equality. “Women in power must be a champion of your authentic self, and ask themselves ‘What power do I have to speak openly about care responsibilities? What power do I have to make both work and leadership more collaborative and consultative?’” But changing societal perceptions about care work will take a cultural and narrative shift. Bandele talked about the historical and cultural weight of the stories we tell, and the narrative of women as heads of the domestic sphere and all associated care work is thousands of years old. “Narratives are built off of stories,” Bandele said, “And all of these stories are embedded in the psyche so that when you’re presented with facts, like the fact that everyone’s outcome improves with more equality, people still feel like we should most burden women with caregiving.” The names we give things have power and contribute to this cultural perception too. Bandele pointed to the use of terms like maternity leave or paternity leave instead of just family leave. “These policies aren’t just for women, they’re for everyone. We have to deconstruct the idea that what we traditionally think of as women’s work has to always be women’s work.” Doyin Atewologun talked about considerations we should all take into account in our workplaces, in person or virtual. “When thinking about equality, we have to ask what kind of women or people are our policies implicitly including or excluding? We have to ask ourselves about what is the impact of what we’re doing on different groups of women? This can help us open up more solutions.” In terms of advocacy within the workplace, Atewologun said women of color need to be focused on in particular, and our first step should always be to stop and listen. Atewologun noted that listening is often taken for granted, but emphasized that we have to assume positive intent, and understand why there’s anger and frustration, and a legitimate reason behind these emotions. We should also challenge our assumptions, Atewologun said, that just because we haven’t heard of or experienced something before doesn’t mean it can’t be real. This also means resisting the urge to justify or explain. “Deep listening is advocacy in action,” Atewologun said. This reminded me of what we talked about during our Ecumenical Women worship services: advocacy is worship, and worship is advocacy. After all, deep listening is one of the most important parts of worship and prayer practices. The women discussed ways in which men and women can approach gender equity advocacy within the workplace in different ways to accomplish more. For men, Bandele said they must lean into family policies and care policies to help disrupt the narrative around care work. Men cannot just advocate, but have to model the behaviors, Bandele said, “because when you model you tell a different story.” The normalization of coparenting, of men taking family leave after children are born or to take care of ailing relatives, is a key part of disrupting our cultural perceptions of care work and the undue burden placed upon women. Amie Batson, WomenLift Health Executive Director, pointed out that men cannot just be passive allies on the sidelines cheering women on in the fight for gender equity. “Men have to be a part of the solution because they’re a part of the problem,” Batson said. Doyin Atewologun centered her description of the ways men can be advocates in this fight around the word discomfort. The assumption of comfort, be it in meetings, negotiations, or even conversation, currently is given to men. Men who say they’re allies, who talk about gender equity in terms of what it means for people they know personally, their wives, their mothers, their daughters, with comments like ‘I can’t imagine my daughter going through this,’ has a certain implication for the women who are nottheir partners, or daughters, or family, Atewologun pointed out. When men have to consider the women outside of their personal acquaintance, that’s when it becomes uncomfortable for them, and increases not just the degree of discomfort but also the amount of work that needs to be done. “When working with women who are unfamiliar because of their gender identity, or sexual orientation, without a familiar affinity, the conviction you need to have as an advocate is weakened,” Atewologun said. Atewologun challenged men, and everyone, to find their ‘why’ beyond “I’m doing it for someone related to me, someone who looks like me.” Of course, women need to be centered in the work for gender equality within the workplace and in every sphere, and so our work looks different from the work men must do as advocates and allies. Young women in particular are in a unique position to push change, act fast and are able to work with different peope, Kazuna Yamamoto said. Yamamoto also pointed out that young women tend to be unapologetic because we’ve seen the women before us fight, and without all the women that came before us we wouldn’t be here now. “The road is paved,” Yamamoto said, “and so we’re able to come straight to the point to fight. We don’t have to fight for the right to vote, we can use it.” At a time when many of the major protest movements have been led by young people, be it in the Black Lives Matter protests in cities all over the U.S. and world, or the climate action movements, Yamamoto also spoke to the unique challenges young women activists face, even from well-meaning allies. Yamamoto pointed to funding as a big obstacle for youth-led organizations, but also the tendency for older activists and others to speak over and for the youth. “People say ‘we’ll deliver your voice for you, we’ll amplify you,” Yamamoto said. “But we need to be able to deliver our voices directly to decision-making positions.” Preethi Herman, Global Executive Director at Change.Org Foundation, spoke to the changes they have seen on their platform, which echo broader movements globally. “Women across different ages are beginning to see that just because something is normal, doesn’t mean it’s okay.” Herman pointed to the metrics their platform uses to evaluate the types of change.org petitions established and who is starting them show that while men start more campaigns, women win more on their website, accomplishing the aim of each petition. “When we look at the data of common features, almost all of these campaigns women won had very powerful storytelling, talking about their experience and how they felt and why it happened and what they want to change,” Herman said. “Moving from the external narrative to saying ‘this happened to me’ is one of the best ways to get people to commit to your cause.” Herman pointed to the importance of sisterhood and building a community of allies to support these movements, be they on change.org or elsewhere, because advocacy journeys are isolating. “When one of us steps up to create change, we tell our sisters and the world this is possible and can be done,” she said. Change.org Foundation conducted a training program in India that taught women how to use different online tools and resources to start and conduct their campaigns, focusing on local topics of interest to each participant’s area. By the end of the program, their initial community of 150 women had created and conducted more than 5,500 campaigns to create change in their communities, a powerful example of the work just a small group of women can accomplish together. “When a woman is shouting about something, it’s one mad woman, but if a million people join her, it becomes something different,” Herman said, and didn’t exclude men from her remarks. “Patriarchy and sexism are so deeply ingrained, this issue isn’t men vs. women, but it’s all of us against the system.” Kazuna Yamamoto, who along with her role as President of Voice Up Japan became one of the leading activists in the movement to hold Tokyo Olympics Chief and former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori accountable after his sexist comments that “women talk too much” in meetings, talked about the global scope of sisterhood in activism. International media, embassies, and other civil society organizations joined in the outcry after Mori’s comments, and helped create pressure that led to Mori stepping down from his role. Amplifying the calls of Yamamoto and fellow advocates created change. “There is a sisterhood kind of mentality when people are speaking up, even if it’s not directly related to them,” Yamamoto explained, pointing to the intersectional movement Don’t Be Silent in Kazakhstan and the Ni Una Menos movement in Latin America, as well as the #YoCreoQue and #MeToo social media movements. When women are able to connect with each other, share similar experiences, and find solutions together, Preethi Herman said, “magical transformation happens.” The stories we read and watch about women shape the way we view them. But media coverage of women, and the work of women as journalists, sources, and experts, pales in comparison to the coverage and screen time their male counterparts receive. Women made up over 70% of the global health care force during the COVID-19 pandemic, but according to Joyce Barnathan, President of the International Center for Journalists, only 1 in 3 health specialists cited on television news were women, and on the internet, women were even less visible in stories relating to the pandemic than non-COVID news, despite playing a disproportionate role in treatment and care efforts.
The formative role that media plays in perpetuating gender stereotypes and inequities now makes it a powerful tool to be used in the opposite way – to counter gender stereotyping through the media’s role and connections with regulatory frameworks. Free Press Unlimited, the Global Forum for Media Development, and International Media Support hosted this parallel event at CSW65 to discuss the shocking underrepresentation of women in all forms of media and in all roles, and to discuss ways to flip the current power dynamics on their head. Continuing to point out the inequities, Barnathan said that women are subjects or sources only about 26% of the time across all media. And when women are represented in media, it isn’t always in a positive light. Instead, Barnathan said, gender stereotyping within media impacts how women are viewed in society, shaping cultural expectations and often excluding women from full participation in public life by relegating them to preconceived subsidiary roles in all realms of life. Motunrayo Alaka, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer at the Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Journalism in Nigeria, elaborated on the lack of stories on women’s leadership and the important role women have played during the COVID-19 pandemic globally, comprising the majority of the global health care work force. The Wole Soyinka Center she leads conducted surveys of news stories, and found that the “hero” narratives in stories were reserved for men, while stories about women and girls with regard to COVID painted them as victims, preventing them from being portrayed as some of the most vital workers during the pandemic. “The difference,” Alaka said, “is that there is no intentionality to use women sources in stories.” Right now, one of the most powerful ways gender stereotypes are perpetuated is through what we watch on television, both the shows andthe advertisements, and the news stories we watch and read. But the power of advertising in internalizing gender stereotypes cannot be overlooked. On our phones, on every website we visit, every show we watch, even walking down the street on buses and bulletin boards and shop windows, we are digesting messages about the roles different genders are expected to conform to. Melanie Tobal, Founder of Publicitarias, an Argentinian organization that unites women working in advertising, marketing, design and communication to promote diversity and the use of gender perspectives in the communication industry, pointed to advertising as the responsible party for creating and promoting gender stereotypes. Victoria Sandino, a senator from Colombia, pointed to the reproduction of gender stereotypes as a symptom of the patriarchal systems that affect us all. “Stereotypes lead us to violence against women, against any kind of diversity,” Sandino said. Chiara Adamo, head of the Human Rights, Equality, and Democracy unit at the European Commission, also echoed the universality of gender stereotyping. “In many respects,” she said, “the triggers for gender discrimination are seen at a global level and then translated in each and every culture.” Gender stereotyping doesn’t just harm women. Brian Pellot, Director of Taboom Media, which aims to improve ethical media coverage of taboo human rights topics, spoke to the harm that gender diverse, gender non-conforming, and transgender people also experience through media perpetuation of gender stereotypes. In about 70 countries, it is illegal to not be gender conforming, which means that the media has an ethical responsibility when reporting on topics or stories concerning these people so as not to expose them to harm, which few journalists take time to consider. All of the panelists had suggestions for ways to change the media landscape. Motunrayo Alaka said that it starts with educating the newsrooms. When reporters and editors and photojournalists are able to fully understand the issues they are dealing with, they write more compelling stories. But for many journalists, Alaka said, working under deadline does not give them enough time to learn the nuances of the issues they’re reporting on or reflect on their own biases they bring to the story. “We have to understand that we are all products of sociology. Even as journalists, we have biases,” Alaka said. This also applies to not just the journalists themselves, but the experts that journalists bring in to provide commentary and background information for their stories. “The media can make or break newsmakers,” Alaka said, and stated that the media has a duty to look to female experts in all fields, to tell women’s stories. Brian Pellot also spoke to education within newsrooms as a solution, especially when it comes to sexual and gender minorities. The bar for journalists writing about these topics is much lower, Pellot said, and there is a need to teach basic terminology around these topics but also the unique safety issues that come with interviewing sources who are members of sexual and gender minority groups. Chiara Adamo stated that changes needed to come from within media, with the help of incentives from regulatory agencies and governments to provide extra motivation. Direct funding, Adamo suggested, with clear incentives for trainings to develop gender sensitive reporting within media organizations is one way to go about it. Adamo also noted that the European Commission is working on introducing common standards for hate speech that can lead to gender-based hate crimes, using sanctions from regulatory commissions as a deterrent. Melanie Tobal said that the same weapon being wielded against women and gender minority groups now can also be used to create change. “Advertising is so creative in constructing and spreading gender stereotypes. Everyone, anywhere, has seen a sexist ad at least once in their life,” Tobal said, “so it can be an amazing tool to help heal as well.” The people in decision-making spaces decide over and over to perpetuate gender stereotypes to sell products. This is not surprising, given that the majority of advertising executives are white middle-aged men with class privilege, who are used to seeing things through their own lens. In Argentina, Tobal said, only 8% of ad executives are women. Simply putting women in executive positions of storytelling is not enough, though, because while the individual may be different, the system is the same. “You have to train women who have leadership capacities to understand the access and power they have and what they can do with it,” Alaka said. Alaka also noted that this lack of women in leadership is not unique to media, and is in fact seen across all sectors. In every industry, there are more women at entry level positions, but the higher you go, the fewer women there are in the room. Alaka said culture is at the center of this issue, as the cultural expectations for women to perform full-time unpaid care jobs at home discourages women from achieving all they can in their paid professional sphere as well. Colombian senator Victoria Sandino said that changing these habits doesn’t depend only on the journalists, but on media owners who set the agenda. Many media owners, Sandino said, have constructed large economic conglomerates that also wield significant power. The political will must be there from individual journalists but also from those at the top, the media owners, to create broader participation of women in journalism and media as well as training and educating all journalists, to have a safe way to treat women to eliminate harmful stereotypes. Melanie Tobal offered a solution that allows women to seize more power over the stories the tell: create their own media. With the rise of social media, and platforms like Spotify that allow anyone to start their own podcasts, women have all the tools now to create their own media platforms. Motunrayo Alaka also supported this suggestion. Outside regulations to promote gender equity can certainly be helpful, but slow-moving and dependent on the goodwill of regulators. “We must let women put their resources together and start a media house with female editors, female writers, female reporters,” Alaka said. “With intention, we can do things that immediately change the face of what we’re looking at and help us to move forward.” From our very first orientation prior to CSW65 beginning, the Ecumenical Women worship planning team and organization, led by Rev. Dionne Boissiere, has emphasized the intergenerational and intersectional nature of the work we must do as faith communities in advocating for gender equality. Our Presbyterian delegation joined Ecumenical Women for their orientation, their weekly advocacy meetings, worship every morning at 8am prior to events, and their two parallel events focused on ending gender-based violence in faith communities and the public square. A common theme from every faith leader who spoke and preached and shared during these meetings was the duty that faith organizations have to advocate for gender equitable societies. Bishop Munib Younan of Palestine and Jordan emphasized that “addressing gender justice is not limited to the Western world. It’s deeply rooted in our Christian faith.” Lopa Banerjee, with UN Women USA’s civil society section, says that when religious leaders and faith communities advocate for gender justice, they begin to “drive political will.” R. Evon Idahosa, Executive Director and founder of Pathfinders Justice Initiative, which works to eradicate sex trafficking and exploitation in Nigeria, referenced the biblical nature of gender justice work. “Hagar in the Bible refers to God as the God who sees, and we too must see what our contribution to this work is. There is no neutral position.” Idahosa, a former lawyer who retired to pursue her social and gender justice work full-time, said that we as faith-based people must start to think of ourselves as intercessors in this work, standing in spiritual defiance of injustice and bringing the kingdom of heaven to Earth, as dispensers of hope and people who are called to this work as a form of ministry. Rev. Sally MacNichol, co-Executive Director of Connect, a New-York based nonprofit preventing interpersonal violence and working to promote gender justice, echoed the call for faith communities to play a much larger role in this work. “Faith pulls us out of our abusive situations, it’s what makes people strong, but faith communities also exile women when they won’t listen to them or offer help,” MacNichol shared. Rev. Sally MacNichol shares the work that her nonprofit Connect in the New York area and talks about the role faith communities play in ending gender-based violence. Faith communities give girls their earliest messages about who they’re supposed to be and how they’re supposed to behave, MacNichol said, especially teaching values like obedience and subservience. The task now is to empower girls and women through their faith with the conviction to continue in this work for gender justice and force their voices to be heard. MacNichol noted this will be an intricate process, saying “there is a lot of repentance and rebuilding and re-understanding our sacred texts that needs to be done.” And this work cannot all be done by women. In the U.S., Rev. MacNichol pointed out, women struggle “not just with abusive partners, but with abusive systems. Here, women have to leave abusive situations, women have to take all the action, and take care of each other, and there hasn’t been a focus on male accountability.” Professor Ezra Chitando, a professor at the University of Zimbabwe studying religion, gender, and history, is among the male accomplices who seek to interrupt these abusive systems. “While allies are supportive of a movement, accomplices have skin in the game,” Chitando explained. “We need a groundswell of committed women and men who sincerely believe that women’s rights are human rights, that women are fearfully and wonderfully made, just as the Bible says.” Professor Chitando acknowledged the burden of toxic masculinity to women and men alike. “If masculinity must be expressed in ways that cause harm and violence to women and girls, I refuse to be a man.” Chitando emphasized the importance of taking this message to young boys and men across all communities of faith, that “there is a different way to be a man, by acting compassionately and in solidarity with women and girls.” No matter your religion, Professor Chitando said, “every religion is built on justice and equality.” And it will take every faith community to accomplish change. Professor Chitando issued a call to action, saying that “we need communities of faith beginning to generate a critical mass of like-minded boys and men who advocate for gender justice, starting with rereading of sacred texts to promote gender justice.” Ecumenical Women's parallel event "GIRLS ON FIRE!" discussed the role faith communities must play in ending gender-based violence. The second “Girls on Fire” event hosted by Ecumenical Women talked more specifically about the intersectional nature of the work that must be done within and outside the walls of religious organizations. Dr. Iva E. Carruthers, in our orientation, noted that this must all start with the decolonization of theology, saying “there is no greater story of justice than God’s liberating story of love and justice.” Rev. Aundreia Alexander noted that we cannot address gender inequity without also addressing racism, class, and other factors. But despite these overlaps, “America tend to be really bad at recognizing the intersectional nature of our problems.” This pattern extends to faith communities, where Black women “find patterns of racism at the intersection of faith and politics,” Dr. Iva Carruthers said. The solution then becomes engaging with women who are directly impacted by these intersections. Dr. Ulysses Burley III, founder of UBtheCURE, a company that consults on the intersection of health and human rights, noted that this intersectionality is also manifested in public health, where what neighborhood someone lives in, their access to health care, their gender, and their education level all shape the choices they are able to make and the resources they have available to counter the differing levels of inequality they face. An often understudied and underreported form of violence against women and girls is the distortions of women that are utilized as weapons against us. Rev. Alexander referenced in particular the role that the fetishization of Asian women by the white male shooter played in the horrific events as an example of how these distortions of women are used as weapons to commit violence against women and girls. Many of the panel participants spoke to the power of community when countering gender-based violence. “There is power in collective rage, and the trick is to use your rage and anger to make a change,” Rev. Alexander declared. Youth activists Tawanna Brown and Claire Jackson, of Girls Learn International, talked about community in particular with girls and young women. “Peer to peer support from a young age is so crucial and different for young girls,” Brown said, noting that “we are what we see and hear,” so it’s important to create a community through dialogue and open communication so that girls feel protected and supported. Jackson also noted the importance of creating an intergenerational coalition to create space for survivors. “We have to take up space even if they don’t want to hear us,” Jackson continued, “because you’re not just fighting for yourself, you’re fighting for the girl sitting next to you and the girl on the bus across from you, because she needs you and we all need each other.” Community support is imperative in empowering women and girls and ending gender-based violence, and there are few communities more established than those of faith communities. Bishop Eduardo Martinez noted that “we as religious leaders have opportunity and responsibility to work to make our communities more inclusive and respectful, in order to overcome patriarchy and discrimination and make this world better for all of us.” Dr. Ulysses Burley III was unequivocal in his remarks. “It is a mandate of men and boys to be advocates of women’s rights, and relinquish power that patriarchy has given [us] and redistribute it.” Dr. Rima Salah, former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, faculty member at Yale’s School of Medicine, and Member of the United Nations High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations also spoke to the power of faith communities in setting gender equitable norms and ending violence against women and girls. “Religious leaders and faith communities can nurture values and spirituality in families, to prevent violence both in the family and in society,” she shared. The Ecumenical Women worship services also served as powerful reminder each morning of the strength in collective action and international and intergenerational community. The theme, repeated over and over throughout the two weeks of the CSW, was that “we go together”. Harking back to R. Evon Idahosa’s Hagar reference during the first EW parallel event, Rev. Sonia Hinds declared during one worship service that “our voices of the church must join the Hagars of the world and in the wilderness, we must walk the winding road of detours and bumps, so that God can be present and hear their cries and they will know that God is in the wilderness with them.” As the worship team said one morning, “Community will carry us through this life. Sometimes we carry and sometimes we’re carried, but when we go together we all win.” A major advocacy effort by the Ecumenical Women organization is the #ThursdaysinBlack movement, which invites everyone, regardless of age, race, religion, or nationality, to take a pledge committing to wear black on Thursdays in awareness and mourning for the 1 in 3 women worldwide who face violence in their lives, and all the victims of sexual and gender-based violence. For those with a faith practice, they are also asked to pause at noon local time to pray for and remember the lives lost and those who are currently living under threat of sexual and gender-based violence. Professor Ezra Chitando, from the University of Zimbabwe and a panelist at the parallel events, shared that to him, “dressing in black is a political statement that this cannot continue.” To take the pledge yourself, please visit https://www.ecumenicalwomenun.org/thursdays-in-black. Confronting climate change is not something any one group or country will be able to accomplish by themselves. While the Paris Climate Accords were a formal and necessary first step, the actual work that must be done to create a more sustainable way of life for all of us is being led by youth activists and women activists in countries all over the world. The FEZANA event touched on the severe underutilization of women as valuable and effective resources for sustainable living and resource management, and this parallel event hosted by No Limits for Women/Sustaining All Life explored in more detail the role that women play in the fight for climate justice and the barriers that we must confront, some of which I had ever considered. I also want to note the extraordinary format of this event, that was unique among the 20+ events I attended throughout my two weeks at CSW65. The event began with an introduction of the organizers, who were from the US, Kenya, Mexico, Hungary and The Philippines. We were all taught how to say hello in English, Kikuyu, Spanish, Hungarian, and Filipino. Whereas previous events had several different interpretation channels you could choose to listen to simultaneously as the English presentation, this event instead had each speaker share a bit at a time, and then we sat and waited for the translators to translate those sentences. Malinali Castañeda Romero, with Sustaining All Life, explained the reasoning for this structure. “English helps us all communicate from different places, but that does not make it more important or mean that it is the only language that should prevail,” Romero shared. Teresa Enrico, also with Sustaining All Life, talked about the international cooperation necessitated by a challenge as big as climate change, and noted the importance of genuine human connection through communication, nontraditional though it might be. “Warm attention and response can communicate a lot, where words fail,” Enrico noted. There are ways of communicating common to all humans, even with a language barrier. Throughout the two-hour event, we were also sent to Zoom breakout rooms in small group conversational sessions after each presenter to allow us to process the information we were being given, as well as put into practice warm communication even in rooms with those who may not speak our same language. This was one of my first opportunities to meet with people in less formal environments and have casual conversation, simply because of the virtual nature of the commission this year. I got to speak with women my age from Mexico, California, the UK, and Germany, and we each got to share the work we do and why we’re passionate about climate justice, while bonding over our participation in such a unique event. This experience and the solidarity throughout the event embodied the concept of sororität, which literally means sistering in German but is used more commonly to refer to the practice of fully embracing our sisters and seeing them in all their beauty and power. One of the cool things about this event is that someone could share a term like that in their language, and ask others if there was something similar from their own language. Another participant shared the concept of sororidad in her culture, which is referred to as a relationship of solidarity between women, especially in the fight for empowerment. Sustaining All Life’s Teresa Enrico explained to us that this format was intentional, in order to demonstrate to us through personal experience that groups of women all over the world can support each other while we organize and activate in our communities. To Enrico, being a woman and caring for the environment are intertwined because of the caregiving roles foisted upon women globally, throughout their lifespan. As girls, Enrico described, we are strong, intelligent, caring, good thinkers and good problem solvers who make leaders. As we become women, we are all of these things and more, providing work and leadership that sustains communities, that take responsibility for the survival of our families, who work as caregivers for previous, current and future generations. Women and girls, Enrico summarized, take care of everyone emotionally but are denied that same support, “from our young years until we are elders, our belief in ourselves is eroded, we are denied access to education, health care and other resources, even as we conduct a lot of unpaid, unacknowledged labor and leadership we do to keep our families and our communities growing.” Women’s lack of control around our own choices, our bodies, family planning, our economic circumstances, Enrico shared, multiply on top of climate crises. The changing climate leads to more instability in our personal and global environments, through rising sea levels and more intense and unpredictable seasons, leaving women and girls in even more vulnerable situations. Although this crisis affects all of us, Jenene Cook with No Limits for Women pointed out that lived experiences are unique to each person and area, and that solutions should be individualized to each area too. Cook pointed to indigenous leaders as a valuable resource, especially the knowledge indigenous people have passed down for centuries on how to live in cooperation with the land and not exploit it. “It is important to understand the history of where you live and your place and role within it,” Cook finished. With that in mind, women from all over the world began sharing the current situations within their countries, facing both a global pandemic and climate change in addition to the already-existing burdens of women in each place. Jane Lucy Wambui Gachihi, a climate activist from Kenya, noted that in her country, women bear the brunt of climate change through domestic violence, paying the price for their partner’s or family’s inability to find jobs, or utilize environmental resources. Lack of food and access to basic needs make it difficult to sustain families, and the lack of resources create tension on families and lead to higher rates of femicide within the country. Jane Lucy talked in particular about the ways the concept of sororidad, or sororität can sustain women’s lives while confronting the challenges caused directly and indirectly by climate change. “We are better able to listen to each other in turns, cry, mourn, and thereafter we feel better and are able to think well together,” she shared. Malinali, Sustaining All Life activist from Mexico, echoed the difficulty women in her country face too. In Mexico, 11 women are killed every day. “It’s difficult to be an environmental activist when your body and your life are in danger all the time,” she tearfully noted. But Malinali also talked about the power she found in sharing with women around the globe. “It helps me notice that I have a lot of people with me in this work, and we deserve to heal, to be able to organize ourselves, and change the world together.” Jenene Cook, in Boston, talked about the intersection of socioeconomic status and climate change in her city and the United States as a whole. In Boston, a quarter of all women (nationally, 56% of those below the poverty line in 2018 were women, a rate more than double Boston) and 42% of single mothers live below the poverty line, Cook said. In Cook’s neighborhood, which has the highest percent of women and people of color of any neighborhood in the city, the forced closure of roads into and out of the neighborhood has happened over twenty-five times in the past twelve months. These road closures and frequent flooding are a symptom of the climate crisis, which in the U.S. has meant a rise of 9 inches in sea level since 1950 at a current rate of 1 inch every 8 years, but the rate is accelerating. And, Cook shared, Boston was ranked the city 8thmost vulnerable to floods among 136 coastal cities, a status that will only worsen as the climate crisis does. Seeing firsthand the effects of the climate crisis in her neighborhood, where so many women and people of color are already suffering from the combined effects of low socioeconomic status, racism, and gender inequity, Cook says she “no longer believes the feelings or not being smart enough or big enough to not make a difference.” The ultimate goal here, for both Sustaining and Life and No Limits for Women, is to unleash the inherent power and intelligence of every girl and women, to empower them to be a force to be reckoned with in confronting the climate crisis and developing sustainable solutions. Healing from all the hurts the world inflicts upon girls and women, Enrico said, is the foundation for the rest of the work. In order for the healing to happen, listening exchanges like the breakout rooms we all got to participate in are fundamental to this healing. Providing protected spaces, where women can share our struggles and celebrate our success, shake or cry if we’re scared, shout if we’re angry, laugh if we’re happy, are signs that our minds are processing the hurts we’ve experienced and express ourselves instead of shying away from the difficult emotions. “Investing healing time in women and girls is both a powerful anti-oppression and pro-liberation act,” Enrico declared, “but also moves whole communities forward.” The sensation of solidarity shined throughout this entire event, and the creation of our listening exchange rooms made me feel just as comfortable with the women I’d just met from our respective homes in North Carolina, California, Mexico, the UK, and Germany as I feel when I’m talking with women I’ve been friends with for years. I never feel more secure than when I’m in a room full of women, and listening to the stories of these powerful climate activists from all over the world, sitting amongst a (virtual) crowd of women and girls all united by our desire to seek climate justice, was one of the most poignant experiences I had during CSW65. As women, we’re stewards and caretakers of mother nature, and we must support each other as we work to support and heal her.
Jenene Cook’s comment about understanding our place within where we live, and listening to each woman share about the unique crises facing their communities prompted me to think about what ecological crises North Carolina faces. Our coastline, filled with so much history and a source of livelihood for so many, are facing unprecedented threats of erosion as sea levels rise. While Boston is seeing sea levels rise at a rate of one inch every 8 years, North Carolina’s sea levels are seeing a rise of an inch per year, and in some cases the rate is horrifically worse: beaches in Dare County, NC are eroding at around 6 feet(!!) per year. The current solution right now is to renourish beaches by replacing sand where it was eroded, but this effort is both costly and ultimately a temporary fix that in some cases is erasedwithin 24 hours. My family has stayed at Ocean Isle Beach for a week every summer since I was in diapers, but the effects of climate change and rising sea levels there are impossible to ignore. Condos that we once stayed in have washed away, houses on the west end of the island have fallen into the sea or will within the next few years, and beachfront houses bear the marks of the increasingly common and more powerful hurricanes that have hit the state within recent years. The effects of coastline erosion are not limited to just the seaside towns. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, as sea levels rise and our coastlines change, our coastal ecosystems will be destroyed, hurricanes and tropical storms will become more intense, our infrastructure in the southeast will be even more stressed, agriculture will be disrupted and impair our ability to grow food and reduce livestock, our electricity consumption will increase, and human health will be imperiled in a number of ways. Have I convinced you to support climate action yet? Here are a list of environmental justice nonprofits and grassroots organizers here in NC to support, with their suggestions for how to get involved. NC WARN – co-chaired by a woman and the executive board is 50% women! Member-based nonprofit holding Duke Energy accountable and advocating for clean energy https://www.ncwarn.org North Carolina Environmental Justice Network (NCEJN) – people of color-led coalition of grassroots organizers addressing climate, environmental, racial, and social injustice https://ncejn.org North Carolina Climate Justice Collective – multi-racial, intergenerational organization centering leadership of youth, indigenous peoples, people of color, women, and LGBTQI+ people to strengthen communities impacted first and worst by climate and environmental harms and working to end unsustainable exploitation of natural resources (fiscally sponsored by NC WARN) https://climatejusticealliance.org/north-carolina-climate-justice-collective/ facebook @ncclimatejustice Twitter @NCClim8justice EnvironmentNC – policy and action group aiming to build a greener, healthier world https://environmentnorthcarolina.org/feature/nce/about-us Clean Water for NC – Promotes clean, safe water and environmental and empower, just communities for all North Carolinians https://cwfnc.org Event hosts https://www.nolimitsforwomen.net https://www.sustainingalllife.org If you’re like me, your social media pages the past few weeks have been filled with vaccine cards and people beaming as they celebrate receiving their first or second dose. While each post I see fills me with hope and relief that more and more of us are getting vaccinated, it’s hard to ignore that this is a reality denied to many so far. The World Health Organization hosted a side event in conjunction with the governments of Germany, South Africa, and Canada on ensuring gender equality in vaccine rollout, therapeutics, and care, and the overarching message is that we are falling far short of vaccine equity. In fact, South African journalist Redi Tlhabi described the current situation as “vaccine apartheid”.
Dr. Nono Simelela, Assistant Director General at the World Health Organization, noted that women in care professions, who were put on pedestals during the initial stages of the pandemic, are receiving their thanks in the form of exclusion from vaccine distribution and care. Canadian Member of Parliament Karina Gould shared that the UN estimated that 47 million women and girls have been pushed into extreme poverty by the pandemic, which also complicates vaccine delivery. “Inequity increases vulnerability,” Gould said, noting that the inability to distribute vaccines to those most at risk puts everyone else at risk too, especially as the virus mutates. Nena Stoiljkovic, Vice President with the World Bank Group and International Finance Corporation, explained that women are doubly disadvantaged within the vaccine rollout; not only are more women exposed to the pandemic as frontline and care workers, they’re also underrepresented in decision-making spaces on vaccine distribution. Without the inclusion of more women specifically in these vaccine distribution decision-making spaces, Stoiljkovic said, “global vaccination plans risk further exacerbating deep-rooted unequal access to care. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, emphasized that vaccine distribution is not just about health within a country. “Fair and equitable distribution,” according to Secretary-General Guterres, “is essential for building trust, maintaining peace, and preventing violence.” Maha Muna, with UNICEF, talked some about the complex gender-related barriers to immunization on both the supply and demand side. On the demand side, the value associated with gender, especially in children, prevents children being held back from being immunized, especially in other vaccination efforts like the polio vaccine. Additionally, Muna, said, women and girls’ mobility, stigmatization, lack of access to and control over resources, burden of house care work, low education levels and low health literacy, lack of awareness, and poor service provision all combine to present complex barriers to immunization on the demand side. On the supply side, Muna stressed the importance of women vaccinators, and the resources needed to ensure the safety of those women providers. Especially in countries with strict gender norms, it is important to be considerate of context-specific variables. Some women may not want or be allowed to be alone with a male vaccinator, and so gender-blind vaccine provision would not be very successful. People are more likely to trust health care providers when they see someone who looks like them, and is able to relate to them in a more informal way than the health care complex usually provides. Muna used Pakistan as a case study to emphasize the lack of women health care providers and vaccinators, and the need to incorporate vaccination plans through a gender lens. There are 16,000 vaccinators in Pakistan right now, but only 500 are women. One approach that UNICEF has used, Muna said, is pairing male and female frontline workers to maximize reach and coverage while also addressing safety and security concerns for women frontline workers. Dr. Choolwe Jacobs, a professor and researcher at the University of Zambia and with the organization Women in Global Health, shared that WGH made recommendations that we need to understand vaccine rollout within cultural context, especially in low- and middle-income countries, and try to implement contextually targeted interventions for the women most affected by the pandemic. Empowered female health workers, Dr. Jacobs said, are able to scale up both vaccination efforts and COVID-19 testing for everyone. Women’s unpaid care roles are the most frequently listed reason for why women delay vaccine appointments and other medical appointments. Dr. Nina Schwalbe, with UNU’s International Institute for Global Health, said that women, especially those who are primary caregivers, delay appointments because it is difficult to schedule around their home care schedules and if they have side effects from the vaccines, they wouldn’t be able to meet their caregiving responsibilities at home. At the economic level, Dr. Schwalbe said, vaccine requirements to return to work put women behind in generating pay. Dr. Schwalbe’s solutions of operating community-based clinics so women do not have to travel to get their vaccines, and paid leave so that women don’t lose income to get vaccinated, seem like common-sense steps. In many communities within the U.S., we have seen community-based clinics at churches and community centers and parking lots to expand access, which does help. But the economic aid is simply not there. Another big issue with vaccination rollouts is the lack of gender disaggregated data. If you’re not a math person, like me, this simply means breaking down who is and isn’t vaccinated by gender. UNU’s Gender 50/50 report surveyed 192 countries on whether or not they reported sex-disaggregated COVID data, and found that less than half did. Just as the EPAS panel on women in sport noted, data is essential to addressing gender inequity. If we don’t have the numbers on who most needs help, it’s difficult to design effective interventions. Although we don’t currently have sex-disaggregated data on COVID vaccinations, Dr. Schwalbe shared, there is available data on COVID infections and vaccinations disaggregated by zip code that demonstrate a mismatch in the areas hardest-hit by COVID infections and the areas where vaccine distribution has been most widespread. This mismatch is understandable because we have data we can point to, making the lack of sex-disaggregated data all the more glaring. We know that we have a problem with gender equity in vaccine distribution, we just don’t know how bad it is because we’re not collecting data. But ignoring a problem won’t make it go away. Dr. Mariângela Simão, Director of the Rights, Gender, Prevention and Community Mobilization Department at UNAIDS, said that the UN’s current statistics have 76% of the vaccine supply concentrated in only ten countries, making global equitable access to vaccines nearly nonexistent. “The greatest danger to women’s access to vaccines,” Dr. Simão noted, “is the huge disparity in vaccine access between countries, not within them.” Of course, these inequities weren’t invented by the pandemic, just made worse. Dr. Simão stated that the “best and fastest way to control the pandemic is for us to gather around the call for vaccine equity,” especially when it comes to empowering women leaders in communities to overcome cultural barriers. Dr. Jacobs said much the same, especially when advocating for contextually targeted interventions. Maha Muna with UNICEF concurred, and elaborated on ways to achieve contextually targeted interventions: the women who are already backbones of their communities. “We don’t see the investment in women’s organizations,” when it comes to vaccine distribution plans, Muna said, “but when it comes to vital trust, you’re not going to get better bang for your buck than in women’s agencies and organizations.” The tools we need to equitable and efficiently distribute COVID-19 vaccines are already here, working every day in paid and unpaid care work in their local communities. The mothers and aunties and grandmothers who are trusted sources of wisdom and advice to everyone in their communities are the same people who would be most useful in designing contextually targeted interventions, because no one would know their local contexts better. Once again, the underutilization of women as valuable and effective voices in resource management, be it natural resources or health resources, harms everyone in the community, not just women. When women have access to health care and can lead healthy lives, “their whole country benefits,” Canadian MP Karina Gould said. When women are able to lead in vaccine distribution and design vaccine rollouts tailored to their communities, our whole world will benefit. List of resources for further reading provided by speakers: UNICEF ROSA - Immunization and Gender - A Practical Guide to Integrate a Gender Lens into Immunization Programmes: https://www.unicef.org/rosa/media/13021/file Health in Their Hands: Testing & Women's Empowerment Means Better Health For All - A recent report released by @FINDdx & @womeninGH https://c8fbe10e-fb87-47e7-844b-4e700959d2d4.filesusr.com/ugd/ffa4bc_48abbc49eea14129ab2f9331382b9f22.pdf\\ COVID-19 Global Health Security Depends on Women: Rebalancing the unequal social contract for women https://covid5050.org/report/ Gender Equal Health and Care Workforce Initiative https://www.who.int/initiatives/beijing25/gender-equal-health-and-care-workforce-initiative Throughout the toughest parts of the last year and change, and really in any difficult point in my life, I have turned to my relationship with God and my faith community to see me through. The next year and a half of my life I will be working within a spiritual community in the YAV program deeply committed to dismantling structural racism, ending systemic poverty, and creating congregational vitality. Throughout my experience at CSW65 I have had the support of a deeply spiritual community with the PCUSA delegation and the Ecumenical Women worship services every morning, that help alleviate some of the discouragement and heaviness that comes with attending so many events and listening to really difficult stories, and coming up with solutions to really sad and frustrating and complex problems that women in our world face. For me personally, I don’t know how I would have gotten through some of the roughest parts of my life without my faith. This parallel event, hosted by The Grail, an international women’s organization dedicated to creating a sustainable world through peace and justice efforts within all spiritual communities, drew on that same philosophy to allow women a space to process all that we face and to pool our coping resources, in order to support each other across religions, nationalities, and generations. We began the event by reflecting on the spiritual practices and healing rituals of our ancestors that are still alive today. Attendees and panelists alike shared practices such as lighting candles, making and delivering food, and support circles where people can find social support. Speaker Veronica Alvear, speaking in Kichwa from Ecuador, talked about the interrelationship between human, animal, and environmental health. When one sector suffers, she said, we all suffer. Self-care is an integral part of not just our individual health, but becomes collective, Alvear said. If we cannot take care of ourselves, we cannot take care of our communities and our world. That’s what makes the habitual practice of self-care so important. After each speaker, questions were posed to attendees as a collective in an exercise the organizers called community dialogue. Alvear asked us, in light of her comments on the relationship between personal self-care and community care, what activities helped us and our communities during the pandemic to self-care. Answers included daily walks, zoom groups, community mutual aid, painting, dancing, and meditation. Margarida Augosto of Portugal and May Joy Madjos of the Philippines challenged attendees to envision what we want to see in our communities, and how we are working to overcome the challenges our communities face. Whether it be through formal means, like workshops and education, or more informal means like emotional solidarity, listening with attention, and strengthening the self-love of each person, Augosto and Madjos shared ways they are making a difference in their local areas. Aira Monlane, from Mozambique, talked about how our self-care is a form of empowerment. Meditation and prayer are powerful tools to search for mental and emotional balance, Monlane said, and that what we find in spiritual practice and self-care is what we can pass on to other women. “There is an interconnection between our spiritual practices, our self-care, and the achievement of our girls,” Monlane shared, “and we must empower ourselves so we can empower others. If I take care of myself, I ensure I can take care of others.” Monlane’s community dialogue prompt asked us what spiritual practices we developed to maintain mental and emotional balance to help ourselves and others during this pandemic. I’m sharing these answers because I didn’t think of some of them as traditionally “spiritual” practices, but this exercise and the community dialogue has really helped me think differently about ways I can practice self-care. Daily prayers, meditation, and simple quiet time were the most common answers, but participants also mentioned listing to music, reading poems, exercising, asking for wisdom from peers, and visualization exercises as spiritual activities. Bahlebonke Genu, from South Africa, talked about ways we can empower women’s’ full and effective participation in public life in and after the pandemic, a major theme of CSW65 and an end goal of several of the SDGs. Firstly, Genu said, we need to analyze the importance of women’s full participation in the first place. It cannot just be performative participation. As I’ve shared throughout CSW65, we need more women in leadership, who not only have a voice at the table but have the power to make decisions in resource management, in health care, in vaccine distribution, in climate change efforts, in everything. Women are valuable though underutilized resources, and women’s full and effective participation not only makes their lives better, it makes life better for everyone. The women at this side event came from five continents but shared common spiritual practices as self-care. Genu ended the event with community dialogue, asking us what we wished for the women and girls in our community. Participants responded that they wanted an end to gender-based violence, equal access to education, for women and girls to be treated with dignity, fairness and equality, to be able to raise their voices and speak truth to power, for fortitude for women and girls to stand up to men’s intimidation tactics. Someone wished that all women have strong friendships and circles to support each other. I said I wanted girls and women to pursue whatever they want without fear of intimidation or harassment. Others said they wished for the empowerment and support of indigenous women, of freedom from all forms of abuse, physical, emotional, psychological, and financial, that they wished we all become more aware of the ways people are excluded.
I’m going to be really honest: this event came a week and a half into CSW65, a day after I attended three really tough events on the rise of gender-based violence during COVID-19, when I hit a wall and was feeling burnt out and discouraged from the sheer breadth of obstacles that women and girls face in our world. Having the community dialogue, the space to share our lamentations about our difficult lived experiences made all the more so by a once-in-a-generation global pandemic, and to celebrate and share the ways we take care of ourselves so that we can take care of each other, reminded me why I wanted to come to CSW65 in the first place. It also reminded me that we cannot lose ourselves in all of the work we must do to fight for justice in our world, that it’s okay and even necessary to pause, and fill ourselves before we pour out into the world again. I’m lucky that I had a really supportive PCUSA and PW delegation and amazing support from PMUN throughout CSW65, and that my YAV experience has been so incredibly primarily because of the people I’ve met and shared community with each week throughout my virtual year. But this event was a nice reminder of the spiritual practices outside of organized religion that allow us to deeply connect to ourselves and figure out what we need to take care of us, so that we can then take care of our communities and our world. I hope that this post has made you ask yourself some of these same questions, about ways you can self-care during the pandemic and beyond, what you would like to see in your community, how you can work within your community to overcome the challenges it faces, and how you can maintain mental and emotional balance during a time that seems designed to upend any sort of balance in any realm of our lives. I kept thinking about a line from our Ecumenical Women worship team during this event because the EW morning worship services to me are a prime example of a way we can anchor and sustain our fight for progress through spirituality, so I’m going to end this blog post with it. “Community will carry us through this life. Sometimes we carry and sometimes we’re carried, but when we go together we all win.” |
AuthorRecent college grad from North Carolina just trying my best. Archives
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