Women rising
May 2021

18 and 20 May

On 18 and 20 May 2021 we explored the theme of Women Rising, which focused particularly on three of our values from the Congress vision and values statement:

We, a web of women, seek and support wisdom for the common good.
We acknowledge the ancestral wisdom of First Peoples and accept our responsibility as custodians of a precious world that must be nurtured as it nurtures us.
As holders of a great and universal desire to look after the young, we raise our voices, confident in the potential of women to lead positive change.

The conversation was introduced by Congress member Honey Nelson who is a former veterinarian and aviator, an artist and a writer, and a woman who has lived a number of years in central Australia working in remote Indigenous communities with love and respect for their cultures.

On 20 May, we were also joined by Kath Kovac, a new member who has worked with women in her community over several years and has now started her own business, Kupala, to empower women to change the patriarchal working culture into one that supports women and their unique needs and leadership styles. Thanks to all members that joined these two lively conversations.

Honey reminded us that it is a mere 5000 years of 100,000 years of human history, in which patriarchies have ascended to dominate worldwide hierarchical thought, structure, deities, and consequent history of conflicts and take-overs. These unmoderated exploitations have finally toppled our Earth’s climate balance, and harmed her life-sustaining waters, skies, and soils.

We exchanged our personal women’s stories of struggle, and our collective realisation that Now is the time when women’s leadership must rise and claim equal voice: as our descendants and all Life on Earth are facing a crisis of fire, flood, and unpredictable planetary upheavals. Our present leaders are failing to act with the immediacy and bold extremity which this emergency demands. Women’s natural ways of inclusion and nonadversarial debate are urgently needed, to balance the modes of power and decision-making that currently determine the climate and economic legacies we will leave to our children. This is a major part of Congress mission and action.