Women Leading Climate Change Action on Wadandi Boodja Country
Margaret River | Tuesday, 28 May 2024

On Tuesday 28 May, WCC Founder Janet Salisbury met with 8 local women from the Margaret River area of WA to talk about the work of the WCC, including the Charter for Change.

The gathering was held at the Witchcliffe Ecovillage cluster 2B community shed, and several of the women who joined us were residents of the ecovillage.

The women shared their backgrounds which spanned many sectors and experiences including public service, local government, human rights (Save the Children), allied and public health, support for climate change start-ups and systems change. Themes of urgency and interconnection (humans and nature, and across issues of climate, peace, human rights etc) emerged. After hearing about the history of the WCC and reviewing the 11 themes action areas of the Charter, the conversation turned to how to take forward the WCC vision and Charter locally.

Interest focused around Action 1 (Promote gender-balanced governance), Action 5 (Support intergenerational equity and the rights of Earth life) and Action 6 (Elevate kindness and compassion in governance). Janet noted that women are mobilising globally in ever increasing numbers to take their full and rightful place in decision making to create a safe future for their children and grandchildren, and to usher in a policy shift towards compassion, kindness, care and nurture of all Earth Life. 

WCC is a collaborating partner with She Changes Climate – an international organisation founded at the same time as WCC (Jan 2020) and with a focus on women’s representation at United Nations climate conferences (COPs), including the more marginalised voices of Indigenous women and women from the Global South.

Women present who were from, or had lived in, the UK noted that gender equality and women’s leadership are more accepted as vital issues there than they are in Australia. Here,  the need for women’s organisations to give voice to women’s concerns, is still questioned and misogyny is more prevalent in the workplace.  

Janet also noted that WCC is a collaborator with the Charter for Compassion Australia, a member of the Global Compassion Council and in touch with the UK-Parliamentary organisation Compassion in Politics (which has some 100 member from all political parties in the UK Parliament) via its co-convenor Jennifer Nadel. Through these connections we are supporting work to introduce these ideas to the Australian Parliament.

There was interest among the group to reconvene to discuss these ideas further and consider organising an event to showcase these themes.