Women's Climate Congress publications
This page provides an in-depth look into the Women's Climate Congress's thought leadership and advocacy. It includes the Annual Reports documenting achievements, alongside foundational documents such as discussion papers, position papers, and background studies. These writings, authored by the founder and members, explore critical topics like gender and climate action, unified policy building, and sustainable problem-solving. Each piece reflects the Congress's commitment to collaboration, inclusivity, and fostering dialogue to address climate challenges. Readers can engage further through downloadable content.
Annual reports
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2025 has seen another year of intensive activity for the WCC. Our ‘grassroots’ activities have incuded our second national face-to-face convening held in the beautiful regional centre of Castlemaine in Victoria at the end of March, our regular online member’s forum and bookclub events and our ever popular Women’s Climate Conversations online evetns. Meanwhile we have continued our political advocacy, inluding meeting with many women in the 48th Australian Parliament to encourage formation of a multiparty Parliamentary Women’s Climate Congress. We have started planning towards a new Rural and Regional hubs initiative and continued our ongoing participation and development of a collective of women’s organisations (now called the Feminist Climate Collective) working on climate action and justice, and particuarly planning for a potentially Australian-Pacific hosted COP31 in 2026.
Special thanks to Liz Courtney for compiling our 2025 Annual Report.
Read the full report here
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As each year passes the truth of the opening statements of the WCC Charter for Change ring louder. The abyss is awfully real and terrifyingly close.
Meanwhile the global political landscape continues to throw up extreme challenges.
But at the same time hope is all around us in the form of those who work tirelessly to secure the climate for future generations and all life on Earth through personal actions, community and political leadership and advocacy, and many other initiatives.
2024 has been another exdtremely busy year for the WCC – from our Retreat in February through attendance at climate conferences, running roundtable events with women in the federal and ACT governments our regular Women’s CLimate Conversation online events and a myriad of other activiteis and outreach to other organistions.
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Seeking wisdom to address climate change and protect all Earth life
2023 was a year of consolidation. Program activities have revolved around dissemination of the Charter — through our advocacy work, outreach to local communities (the ‘Roadshow’), online public events and member circles. T
These activities have made some significant impacts. Meanwhile we haved worked on our organisational structures and focus - which as provided some challenges. Across these external and internal facing spheres of activity, an underlying theme for 2023 seems to have been ‘Seeking wisdom’. This theme is reflected in our title and cover image for this Annual Report with artist Sally Blake’s evocative Powerful Owl artwork from her exhibition ‘Wise’.
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Weaving new ways of being tgether ….
Last year we were focused on our overarching theme of ‘Women Rising!’ but this year the outstanding theme of our activities has been ‘Weaving’ and this is reflected in our cover design and through the various activities described here.
Once again many thanks to Lyn Stephens for the hours of work writing many of the sections, coordinating writers of individual articles, and pulling it all together, to Sally Blake for the cover image and to members of the Steering Circle, Hub and National Congress Hosting circles for contributions and review.
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Women Rising!
At our online WCC Celebration and AGM in October 2021, we were proud to present our first annual report, which tells the story of the founding of the Women's Climate Congress, our vision and values, and our achievements and activities since the very first gathering of 35 women in Canberra in January 2020.
Find out more about our underpinning principles and the ways we have been promoting our vision.Many thanks to Lyn Stephens for the hours of work writing many of the sections, coordinating writers of individual articles, and pulling it all together. Thank also to Jane Geltch for invaluable content development and editing assistance, Fiona Malcom of Purpose Partners for graphic images, to members of the Steering Group circle and others for contributions and review, and to Richard Stanford for formatting.
The section below highlights key insights and ideas from the Women's Climate Congress. The WCC Founder’s Discussion Paper proposes independent mediation as a pathway to unify action on climate change.
The WCC Position Papers outline the Congress’s stances on critical issues like climate security, national agreement building, and the unique role of women in climate action.
The Background Papers by Members feature member contributions exploring historical lessons, dialogue strategies, and collaborations with First Nations communities to address climate challenges.
Discussion and position papers
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Janet Salisbury, 'Independent mediation for uniting action on climate change.'
In 1915, Julia Grace Wales, a 33-year-old English scholar at the University of Wisconsin, published a plan to end WW1 called Continuous Mediation without Armistice, 2 She proposed that, without attributing blame to either side, the neutral nations should form an independent conference to mediate between the warring countries. This was, according to Julia Grace, ‘the natural thing to do’.
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WCC position paper #1, 'What do we mean by climate security "
Our vision statement says we aspire to ‘create climate securtiy by 2030’. This information paper clarifies what we mean by ‘climate security ’ and provides some criteria by which to judge our progress.
What is ‘climate security ’? The ‘climate security’ we aspire to is one where we can rely on a sufficiently stable (scientifically based) and safe (socially acceptable) climate that is not under pressure of human activities (in addition to natural forces) in ways that create unacceptably high risks of dangerous impacts and extreme events.
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WCC position paper #2, 'Building a unified national agreement for Australia’s climate response'
The Women’s Climate Congress was founded in early 2020 with the objective of bringing together the diverse voices in our public discourse to agree national priorities and actions to address climate risks. In 2022, there is new interest in united, collaborative climate action, but there is still dispute on the best ways forward and we need a process to enable this to happen quickly, effectively and equitably.
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Proposal for a multipartisan Parliamentary Women’s Climate Congress
Women have a particular care and concern for life, future generations, sustainability and the environment, and a track record in collaborating for the common good and passing more ambitious environmental legislation. This could be better leveraged to focus on changing the current attitudes in the Australian Parliament and mainstream political processes, which are ‘going slow’ on ambitious and collaborative planning and implementation of climate action.
July 2025
Background papers by members
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![Disability Pride Month logo with several diagonal coloured stripes depicting different forms of disability.]()
Wildaliz de Jesus Arocho and others, 'Embodied experiences of thermal injustice: truth-telling through disabilities'
In research on climate change, extreme events, and social and health impacts, people with disabilities often remain an afterthought in adaptation efforts or are performatively accounted for with little to no groundtruthing. This gap is most troublesome in the context of increasingly frequent and severe heat events. Critical scholarly advances at the juncture of human geography, disability and global health studies, and urban climate justice show how the lived experiences of heat of those with a disability, intertwined with systemic marginalization and intersectional discrimination, are routinely invisibilized. In this joint research in Western Australia, we analyze such experiences of thermal injustice, drawing on the feminist and anticolonial praxis of storytelling. Our aim is to counter structures of violence and expendability that negate the daily, corporeal struggles of people with disabilities in intolerable climates. We offer disability-inclusive heat preparedness as a transformational approach for better weathering and embodying thermal care.Description goes here
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Kirsten Anker, ‘How the women of 1915 speak to us in the 21st century. We move forward by looking back.’
Response by Kirsten Anker to Janet Salisbury’s discussion paper, Independent mediation for united action on Climate Change
In 1915, just as the War was heating up – the War that we now know abruptly ended the Golden Age in Europe, cost 40 million lives, impoverished nations and set the stage for even more tragedy over the next century – a group of women came together to try to stop it
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Honey Nelson, 'Bringing together settler and First Nations women.'
One of the important ambitions of the Women’s Climate Congress is to enjoin women from the diverse communities in Australia, to come together on behalf of the Earth and our descendants, in the face of climate heating. And we especially wish for the involvement of First Nations women: those who belong to the 250+ different nations in our continent, and who have been so afflicted by settler invasion, and the consequent extreme harm to their lands and waters and atmosphere.
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Rhian Williams, 'Sustaining Dialogue: The Key to Sustainable Problem Solving and Planning'
The challenges facing experts such as planners, environmental engineers, policy makers, economists and others in creating sustainable solutions are manifest. The current emphasis on integrated approaches requires experts, with often highly divergent areas of technical expertise, to work together. These experts are often primarily focussed on “what” they see needs to be done; however, “how” they talk to and engage with one another can hold the key to whether they are able to effectively achieve significant and useful outcomes.
Why women’s leadership and gender equality are vital topics for climate change conferences
Women’s leadership and gender equality are essential yet often overlooked topics in climate change discussions. We question: Is having women in the room enough? Representation must go beyond presence—it should involve the integration of women’s knowledge, leadership, and lived experience into decision-making. Addressing barriers to equal participation and acknowledging how climate change disproportionately impacts women and girls is vital.
Explore our letter to ImpactX Climate Summit organisers (Sydney, April 2022) and ur discussion starter about this issue here Gender equality and women’s leadership as an urgent short-term priority to accelerate transformative climate action
Resources to explore:
Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth: A new economic paradigm prioritising environmental and unpaid labor. And in Europe, Amsterdam is using doughnut economics to frame its post virus recovery plan – it will be interesting to see how they go.T
This article gives some further ideas on how to change the way we think about economics: 5 Economists Redefining ... Everything. Oh yes, and they're women'Getting the conversation started': A succinct guide to initiating climate change conversations with friends and family, created by Australian climate action group, Together We Can. The guide covers the importance of asking open questions, actively listening, inviting your conversation partner to take action, and centring your climate change conversations around hope.
‘100 Climate Conversations’: Described as Australia’s most ambitious climate-focused cultural project, 100 Climate Conversations showcases 100 visionary Australians taking action to respond to the most critical issue of our time, climate change. In conversations hosted by some our nation’s most respected journalists, each guest offers an inspired narrative of invention, community and resilience.