Women Leading Climate Change Action on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country
Moonee Ponds, VIC | Thursday, 20 July 2023

Event report:

A number of WCC Melbourne members joined us for the Roadshow event in Ballarat on 18 July - and it was a great pleasure for Janet Salisbury to travel back to Melbourne and receive return hospitality from members at the Gaia Temple in Moonee Ponds, who welcomed us to their beautiful space and provided a  delicious breakfast for a mini-workshop a couple of days later.

A group of 10 women gathered to hear about the Women’s Climate Congress and talk about the WCC Charter for Change. The creative, artistic and spiritual surroundings of the Gaia Temple provided a great backdrop for our advocacy for women’s agency and leadership for action on climate change. 

Janet opened the meeting with a recital of the words of ‘Dear Earth’ - a song by Johanna McBride of Canberra’s A Chorus of Women - the group that inspired the formation of the WCC:

Dear Earth, planet Earth

Will you be our home?

We need to protect you

Reconnect with you

Deep in our bones, you are our home.

Fragile lives, precious lives 

All within the web

We need to protect you

Reconnect with you

Deep in our souls, we are one whole.

[See a video of this profound song here]

Janet also told the story of the foundation of the Women’s Climate Congress, including the remarkable story of 33-year-old Canadian born English literature scholar Julia Grace Wales who in 1914 wrote a plan to end World War I through mediation by the neutral countries (Continuous Mediation without Armistice) - which was the inspiration for Janet’s discussion paper that led to the formation of the WCC.

This story and the story of the 1915 International Congress of Women also underpin the structure of the WCC Charter for Change - with its actions to secure the climate (cf ‘stop the war’) and actions for longer-term human and planetary wellbeing (cf ‘create the conditions for a sustainable peace’). 

After sharing rich stories from participants on what had led them to this event, we read the Charter aloud and, using our Charter cards, the women each selected one of the action themes based on the image for that theme. The evoked a sharing of how the actions resonated with them, including:

• support for gender-balanced governance (Action 1) - particularly ‘moving beyond equality’ to full agency of women in addressing the reality of climate change and bringing about policy change. 

• a need to focus on climate adaptation as well as mitigation as we are well into the impacts of climate change and we are not well prepared.

• need for creative conversations/actions within the business sector.

• spending time in nature and rebalancing our relationship with nature so that that a life-sustaining and custodial ethos is prioritised in polices. 

• promoting citizen engagement and participation.

Examples of MPs working together across parties were shared  (eg Bridget Archer MP, Liberal, letter box dropping with Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney for a ‘yes’ vote in the Referendum) and we noted the value of publicising and congratulating such activity when they occur. 

Some wondered how kindness and compassion can find a place in our very adversarial parliamentary system  but again we shared some hopeful examples, including from the experience of WCC in talking to women MPs and others to these activities. 

We ended with a lively discussion of ‘Challenging the status quo’ led by Margaret de Kam who said that, at a personal level, we need to explore how the status quo is affecting us so that we can make changes (eg stop shopping at the large supermarket chains and support local shops and farmers). At a systemic/cultural level, women can become more fully aware of  not simply ‘fitting in’ to existing [patriarchal] structures and establish the new thinking/structures/ ways of working that support their agenda.

As always, there were many common themes and some new ones. The three pillars of the Gaia Temple of Ecology, Spirituality and Activation felt very alive in the Charter. 

We look forward to keeping in touch with the women there, and the others who attended. 

Attendee Candice Stanley wrote afterwards: “An excellent 'welcoming' and listening; thank you!  Sharing intertwined personal, professional and cultural  experiences and forward looking ideas that have lead this morning's participants; and women globally towards  embracing, energising and demanding responsible, immediate and dynamic actions for climate security and associated justice.”

If you want to run a Roadshow event in your community, we’d love to work with you to bring an event to you:
womensclimatecongress@gmail.com