In 2004, thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers from all four corners, moved by their concern for our planet, came together at a historic gathering, where they decided to form an alliance: The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers.

This is their story.

Four years in-the-making and shot on location in the Amazon rainforest, the mountains of Mexico, North America, and at a private meeting with the Dalai Lama in India, For the Next 7 Generations follows what happens when these wise women unite.

Facing a world in crisis, they share with us their visions of healing and a call for change now, before it’s too late.

This remarkable film documents the unprecedented journey and timeless vision of an extraordinary group of women whose wisdom will inspire you.  M.T.

To read more, please visit For the Next 7 Generations.

International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) is committed to collaborating with project partners and stakeholders to promote and support dialogue in relation to women, gender and development. As part of our ongoing strategy to advocate for best practice in the sector, we are pleased to bring you E-Gender - a mechanism for Australian and international readers to share information on their gender and development work, both nationally and internationally, as well as sharing international resources and items of interest.

Thank you for your feedback to date, and we encourage your ongoing input in this initiative. IWDA is keen to feature information about resources, events and opportunities in Australia and invites you to contribute. Please send information to be included to egender-items@iwda.org.au

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Location: New York, U.S.

Application deadline: Position is open until filled.

Under the supervision of the Director of Global Advocacy, the Global Advocacy Program Officer will work as part of a team to advocate for increased political commitment for and financial investment in maternal, newborn, and reproductive health and to ensure these remain high priority at the global, regional, and country levels in collaboration with a range of partners.

For the complete position description, please visit Family Care International.

International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) is committed to collaborating with project partners and stakeholders to promote and support dialogue in relation to women, gender and development. As part of our ongoing strategy to advocate for best practice in the sector, we are pleased to bring you E-Gender - a mechanism for Australian and international readers to share information on their gender and development work, both nationally and internationally, as well as sharing international resources and items of interest.

Thank you for your feedback to date, and we encourage your ongoing input in this initiative. IWDA is keen to feature information about resources, events and opportunities in Australia and invites you to contribute. Please send information to be included to egender-items@iwda.org.au

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Location: Any Action Aid Office.

Closing date: March 21, 2010.

Reporting to the International Theme Head-Women’s Rights, the Project will manage a new European Commission Funded Multi-Country Project on Women’s Rights to Land, ensuring effective delivery of the project in line with the Action Aid Proposal and donor requirements.

This project is aimed at enhancing poor and excluded women’s access and control over land, as a strategy for empowerment and fighting hunger.

It will be implemented in Guatemala, India, and Sierra Leone, plus an international component.

For the complete position description, please visit Action Aid.

International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) is committed to collaborating with project partners and stakeholders to promote and support dialogue in relation to women, gender and development. As part of our ongoing strategy to advocate for best practice in the sector, we are pleased to bring you E-Gender - a mechanism for Australian and international readers to share information on their gender and development work, both nationally and internationally, as well as sharing international resources and items of interest.

Thank you for your feedback to date, and we encourage your ongoing input in this initiative. IWDA is keen to feature information about resources, events and opportunities in Australia and invites you to contribute. Please send information to be included to egender-items@iwda.org.au

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Maasai women are among the poorest and most marginalised groups in Tanzanian society.

A local women-led organisation - the Pastoral Women’s Council - works to improve the lives of Maasai pastoralist women and children by increasing their access to social services and economic empowerment.

Research from the Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC) in Tanzania, and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in the UK, examines how the work of the PWC helps women to claim their rights and address their basic livelihood needs.

The Maasai community lives in Ngorongoro District in the Arusha Region of northeast Tanzania.

They are pastoralists: semi-nomadic livestock keepers who move with their herds but their livelihood and way of life are under constant threat because the Tanzanian government does not recognise their land-use rights.

This resource provides a fascinating insight into the Pastoral Women’s Council’s approach to addressing the problems faced by Maasai women via encouraging communities to play an active role in designing and implementing their own development projects. MT.

To view the complete document, please visit IIED.

International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) is committed to collaborating with project partners and stakeholders to promote and support dialogue in relation to women, gender and development. As part of our ongoing strategy to advocate for best practice in the sector, we are pleased to bring you E-Gender - a mechanism for Australian and international readers to share information on their gender and development work, both nationally and internationally, as well as sharing international resources and items of interest.

Thank you for your feedback to date, and we encourage your ongoing input in this initiative. IWDA is keen to feature information about resources, events and opportunities in Australia and invites you to contribute. Please send information to be included to egender-items@iwda.org.au

#egender 

On Wednesday March 10, 2010, One Just World brought together over 500 people to explore How Women Can Change the World. International Women’s Day comes at an important time this year as, with only five years to go until 2015, there is still an enormous amount to do to reach the Millennium Development Goal of gender equality and empowering women.

Hilary Charlesworth AM (internationally renowned commentator on international law and human rights) and Dr Helen Szoke (Commissioner, Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission) joined Jane Sloane (Executive Director of IWDA) at this forum, with the fabulous entertainment by Kavisha Mazella, Kankelay and the Women’s Circus.

Read Jane Sloane’s speech below:

Jane Sloane - Photo By Jools Thatcher

I’d like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people who are the Traditional Custodians of this Land. I’d also like to pay respect to Elders both past and present of the Kulin Nation and extend that respect to other Indigenous Australians present.

Over the last week there’s been much debate over the impact of Germaine Greer’s book, The Female Eunuch, fueled by an article by Louise Nowra in The Monthly magazine.

I was thinking about the seminal influences in my early life and that the first record I bought was Helen Reddy’s ‘I am Woman’ (hear me ROAR), a song to set me on the path of advocating for women’s rights if ever there was one. I bought this soon after I’d joined the YWCA and both the music and the experience of being at the Y affirmed me, built my self-confidence and gave me a sense of possibility of my place in the world.

By then The Female Eunuch had been the wake up call for countless women who made radical changes to their lives. Greer’s bawdy humour and intelligent, brave and impassioned call for women to make their own life, on their own terms, was compelling. Women took up new careers and new relationships, started managing money themselves, challenged laws and the culture of sexual harassment.

On International Women’s Day this year, Greer wrote:

‘Every new generation of women struggles to define itself. There is no need for today’s women to march to a 40 year-old feminist drum. ..The feminist revolution has not failed. It has yet to begin. Its ground troops are fast developing the skills and muscle that will be necessary if we are to vanquish corporate power and rescue our small planet for humanity.’

I was thus curious to read the responses to Louis Nowra’s own polemic and I was fascinated by the range of issues and perspectives it attracted. One particular exchange caught my attention on the ABC’s ‘The Drum Unleashed blog site.

Jason wrote ‘As to the modern woman being oppressed, I for one am tired of this old record. There is not a single university in Australia that would deny a woman entrance. I am a middle-class white male that has worked for the majority of his life in a female dominated world (education). Yes business is dominated by us…but no one helped us get there. We don’t have support groups, we don’t have governments taking care of us, we are just meant to shut up and put up. We get ahead because we put in what is necessary to get there. We don’t ride along on skin colour, gender or sexuality…..maybe its time all the rest of you did the same….maybe then you will be a true equal.’

Miffy wrote back, ‘Jase, honey, as a middle class white male you DO ride along on skin colour and gender. I assume you don’t have children - curiously you haven’t mentioned anything about the division of labour in holding down a paid job, running a household and caring for children (no, I don’t just mean “helping out” now & then when it suits). Not to mention trying to “put in what is necessary” - attending the compulsory breakfast meeting that the boss has called, when the child care centre hasn’t opened yet, or working back late to finish that project when working against the deadline of picking up children from child care before it closes. Maybe your wife does all that????’

In one of her later books, White fella jump up, Greer closes with the command, and it IS a command. ‘Sit on the ground, damn you, sit on the ground’. This isn’t to do as Nowra suggests, to sit at the feet of Greer, the shabby, witheringly old feminist and hear her polemic, but rather it is an invitation to sit and listen to Aboriginal people on their own terms and territory and in their own time.

I remember going to meet a group of Aboriginal women who were excited about the opening of a new cultural centre in their desert space. They invited me to go fishing with them and I had that sense of sitting on the ground, watching, chilling out, listening and learning.

I continued to follow the progress of the cultural centre through the woman who managed it. The mining company funding the cultural centre organised a big launch and the Aboriginal men and women on whose land it was, organized cross cultural tours as an immersion experience in their own cultural and environmental ways and practices. The whole community was excited about the opportunity to sell their art and craft and to stage performances and organize tours for the steady flow of visitor traffic.

Fifteen months later, a new mine manager needed to find savings in his budget and so he pulled the money committed to the cultural centre and it was soon forced to close. The community was devastated. Several young men committed suicide, others recommenced binge drinking, many slumped into listlessness and the number of rapes and the amount of domestic violence escalated dramatically. The community had lost trust, lost purpose, lost hope. Some of the women organized themselves into night patrols to keep themselves and their children safe. Others took their children to Darwin to start school away from the violence while others formed a group to advocate for improved health conditions and for federal funding for the cultural centre.

Eventually they got their cultural centre back, on safer ground and in the interim, the women had kept their families as safe as possible and their children educated and cared for.
This scenario plays itself out in similar ways in so many communities in Pacific countries where the issues are very much the same.

When I was in PNG a few years ago on a leadership fellowship that was partly sponsored by several mining companies, we were taken on a tour of a mine operation’s support services for those working for the companies. I saw a group of women watching us from the sidelines on one of these visits. ‘Come and sit with us, sister!’, they called out to me. So I did and they called out to more women to come and sit with us. They told me of the lack of any health facilities to help with pregnancy related health issues, the lack of treatment and support for malaria and other diseases and for HIV testing. They spoke of the rampant domestic violence, of the number of women who had committed suicide because they felt there was no other way out, of the lack of a place to meet as a supportive space to talk and to share their burden. The women talked of their plan to create such a space, and to also introduce adult literacy circles to give other women a greater chance of getting a job and thus greater independence.

We need to sit and listen, to seek out ways to be in solidarity with women and to know what we can do that will change the equation for them and their families.

There are seven factors that I consider women and men need to take seriously if we are to change the world and ensure it is equitable and just for all women and girls. These are:

1. Building self esteem for ourselves and others
2. Embracing leadership and women leaders
3. Recognising the power of mentoring
4. Engaging in movement building
5. Being informed and engaged citizens
6. Practicing ‘give and learn’ as a lifelong commitment
7. Utilising radical creativity

And of course it’s important to recognise the inter-related and mutually reinforcing nature of these seven factors.

In my own life I’ve been given the opportunity to participate in many leadership programs. All of these have served to expand my perspectives on issues and my own sense of responsibility. I’ve also been fortunate to have time with some inspirational figures and mentors, and in turn, I am a mentor for young women and men in Australia and overseas. So these seven factors have played a significant role in my own development too.
So, to my first point..

1. Building self esteem for ourselves and others

So many studies, including some important recent qualitative research by Oxfam Australia, has shown that issues of self esteem and self worth are as vital as literacy and micro finance programs in terms of empowerment. Without addressing self-esteem we can’t go far on the path of political, social, spiritual and economic empowerment and transformation for women.

Interestingly, when IWDA held its own focus group sessions with women last year on why they give, or why they would give, to IWDA, one of the top reasons for doing so was that it gave donors an increased sense of purpose and self-worth.

Similar results came from a pilot program we conducted last year called Global Youth Impact, which was designed as a leadership program for young women in schools. This program gave these young women a deep belief in their own worth and their potential in their communities and in the world, and this unleashed their own power to act.

In their book Half the Sky, Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women and Girls Worldwide, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, writers for The New York Times, declare that the global struggle for women’s equality is “the paramount moral challenge of our era” and they call the current situation ‘gendercide’. They cite a woman’s belief in herself as critical to helping women to get out of poverty. In contexts where so many women live with sustained violence, conflict and oppression, it is no wonder really.

The stories in Half the Sky bear witness to this. Stories of women such as Mukhtur Mai, the victim of a Pakistani gang rape who did the unthinkable for a Muslim village woman. Not only did she expose her assailants, but she incurred the wrath of her country’s president, Parvez Masharraf, endured abduction by his henchman, started a school and even made an ally of her resentful older brother. The school remains open to this day.

In staging the Asia Pacific Breakthrough Summit in December last year, IWDA and the other organisations involved, including World Vision and AusAID, ensured that many women from Pacific and Asian countries, as well as from Indigenous and refugee Australia, were able to tell their stories. One woman, Ruth Maetala, who is working with one of IWDA’s partner organisations in the Solomon Islands, held the audience spellbound while she told her deeply affecting story at the Summit. Ruth came away from that experience feeling heard, affirmed and lifted up. She’s currently in New York, funded as a result of speaking at Breakthrough, to tell her story, and the situation facing so many Pacific women, to a global gathering at the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Self esteem counts for a lot and is a prerequisite for empowering women and girls.

2. Embracing leadership and women leaders

The opportunity for women to learn and assume leadership is critical if they are to take their place in every aspect of public and community life. We need to actively seek out and embrace our own opportunities for leadership as well as for women and girls who are experiencing extreme disadvantage and poverty.

This leadership takes many forms. IWDA’s program partners are involved in supporting a Karen Young Women’s Leadership School - advocacy and human rights training for young women in refugee camps on the Thai Burma border. In Cambodia we partner with Banteay Srei to address violence against women through a program designed to enhance women’s confidence and safety by changing attitudes and behaviors and supporting women who choose to take action in the courts. And Banteay Srei’s Cow Bank has not only helped women gain economic security, it has provided them with opportunities to assume leadership positions. In Fiji we partner with fem’LINKPACIFIC which manages a suitcase radio program for young women to learn broadcasting and interviewing skills. In addition, we’re supporting a program to get more Pacific women into local government, and then hopefully more women into national parliaments. fem’LINKPACIFIC has used its own research and analysis to engage more women in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, designed to involve more women as peacemakers, peacekeepers and peacebuilders.

We can also do all we can to support women who use their position to speak out for women everywhere. This includes Aung San Suu Kyi, the visionary leader of the Burmese Independence Party, and Arundhati Roy, writer and human rights activist who has been a tireless advocate for water rights for people across the world - to ensure that women, who bear the main responsibility in many developing countries for provision of water for their families, have near and ready access to water.

And the Hon Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, who said this week at the UN Commission on the Status of Women, ‘Women are not heard, not respected and not funded’. She called for a requirement that 30 percent of negotiators in all peace processes be women for the UN to be involved. A recent UNIFEM study of ten major peace processes in the past decade found that women were on average six percent of negotiators.

So, our ability to assume leadership positions, to support women leaders, and to fight for processes that enable and require women’s involvement is crucial to helping shape a different world for all of us, not just for women.

3. Recognising the power of mentoring

We need to recognise the importance of mentoring, in all its diverse forms. It’s a powerful means of confidence and skills building, provided with generosity and grace by those with the maturity of experience and emotions to help guide others.

One of the reasons that women in Pacific countries have given for not nominating for a position in local or national government, or not renewing a term in office, is because of the isolation and lack of support when working as a councillor or parliamentarian. The Local Government Women’s Association in Australia formed an alliance with its newly formed counterpart in the Pacific to provide support and mentoring across the region. Seeing what is possible by working with women who have been there provides both learning and empowerment. One of IWDA’s programs, with Kantha Shakthi in Sri Lanka, has created a mentoring model for women to learn financial and small business skills and then to join one of the small savings circles that allows them to create their own business while contributing to a communal fund. In such a way the money also goes to fund the equivalent of social enterprise hubs which provide child care support, health clinic access and school programs. This highlights the difference between the transactional and the transformational:  the impact is on the overall quality of women’s lives, not just on the number of women and girls who benefit from, say access to finance or a higher school enrolment rate. Because what else is happening in women’s lives will determine how much of an impact any specific initiative will have on their overall quality of life.

Indeed, research by Professor Sylvia Chant from the London School of Economics has found that opportunities for greater labour force participation and involvement in the formal economy has, for many women, not been a liberating experience but rather associated with a growing feminisation of responsibility for both productive and reproductive roles in the family. Professor Chant has found that as women’s lives have changed to take on more responsibility for household livelihoods and moving their families out of poverty, there has been little compensating increase in men’s sharing of household work.

So, we need to be aware of the whole context, of the way in which women are living their lives, to understand what will really make a difference, what kinds of support or infrastructure or policy change may help lighten the burden for women and indeed how a mentor may help in guiding our own decision-making and direction.

4. Engaging in movement building

As I mentioned earlier, last year IWDA was the Presenting Partner for an ambitious initiative called Asia Pacific Breakthrough: The Women Faith and Development Summit to End Global Poverty. As the name indicates, the focus of the initiative was on improving the lives of women and girls in the Asia Pacific region and in Indigenous and refugee communities in Australia. The summit provided an opportunity to focus attention on Millennium Development Goal 3 (Promote gender equality) and Millennium Development Goal 5 (Improve maternal health) and it was deliberately held on the eve of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in order to influence the attitudes and policies of the several thousand religious and faith based leaders from around the world.

Our call for new funding commitments for programs to benefit women and girls in the Asia Pacific region attracted almost $1.2 billion, increasing the overall resourcing of programs to address the particular needs of women. We’d hope to also influence the many billions of dollars annually committed in development aid to ensure it is designed and delivered in a way that is gender inclusive. I hasten to add, just in case you think IWDA has morphed into a large NGO over the last few months, that these funding commitments weren’t to IWDA itself, they were commitments made by other agencies such as Oxfam, World Vision, AusAID, UN Population Fund, the Danish Government, Room To Read, the Nike Foundation and the Victorian Government, to name a few.

We presented Asia Pacific Breakthrough to the UN this month as a replicable model for other countries wanting to mobilise greater financial commitments to projects designed to benefit women and girls in some of the world’s poorest countries, and to influence political will. The momentum here was for more than the Summit itself. It was for building a movement that sharpens the focus and resource alignment across sectors in order to achieve new action and better outcomes for women and girls, to reduce poverty and to increase opportunity.

With this same commitment to movement building and engaging new players, IWDA invited Christine Grumm, Executive Director of the San Francisco based international Women’s Funding Network and co-founder of Women Moving Millions, to come to Australia in February this year. Chris’s visit was coordinated by the Australian Women Donors Network and she spoke to audiences about how women and men have been encouraged to make living bequests by investing in women’s funds and seeing their money work to lift women and girls out of poverty in their lifetime. Amnesty International was started by a living bequest - a reminder of how an initial commitment from one person can spark global change.
So, this movement building and gathering momentum for social change through a ‘glass half full’ invitation to join the effort is what is needed to improve the lives of women and girls worldwide.

Business as usual isn’t an option if we are to see real change by 2015, the target date for the Millennium Development Goals. There’s widespread acknowledgement that investing in and empowering women is among the most important thing we can do as a global community. Such recognition is important, indeed a pre-condition for greater focus. But it isn’t enough. Policy making and resourcing needs to follow. While there is progress toward gender equality, it remains too slow, in large part for want of political will and dollars. The central importance of investing in women needs to drive what we do, the processes we use and where the money goes.

5. Being informed and engaged citizens

The situation for the poorest women is affected by the policies and resource allocation of national and local governments and donor agencies, as well as by civil society and the private sector. We need to be across what is happening, and also what can make a positive difference. We need to go and hear speakers who will deepen our knowledge and challenge our perceptions and who will provide their own perspective and roadmap for what may help us change the world.

I don’t know how many of you have read Three Cups of Tea and the sequel Stones into Schools by Greg Mortenson, Founder of the Central Asian Institute? They are both worth reading and they provide plenty of room for applause as well as reflection. Some of the requests to those building the schools for children were from women in remote communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan who asked for their own learning spaces. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was the author’s wife who urged him (and his band of twelve men - the ‘dirty dozen, as he refers to them in the book) to invest in such a program for women.

It was a young girl he consulted who told him why children in Pakistan were refusing to go to the tent schools they created after the Pakistan earthquake (they didn’t have desks in them and desks were a symbol of stability and safety for the children) and it was the author’s daughter who suggested that they add playgrounds to each school to give children a space to play in as well as the formal learning. Hearing from women and girls about what was needed to allow them to gain an education made it possible for the author and his supporters to deal directly with the opposition and obstacles. Again, it affirms the vital importance of directly involving and consulting women and girls if their needs are to be met - and it also affirms the importance of complementary programs to increase women’s decision-making roles at the village level as much as at the boardroom table.

These books on educating girls that are becoming bestsellers, backed by an active and engaged citizen constituency, have the potential to make an impact at a policy level. So too do online books, and websites such as The Girl Effect. This website was created with support from the Nike Foundation to demonstrate the positive effects of investing more in girls education and wellbeing. When you consider the ‘Ripple Effect’ of paying attention to girls, as articulated on this website, you would hope that urged on by strong citizen action, government priorities and policies would recognise the need for - and benefits in gender sensitive policies and programs.

One of the noticeable trends in books such as Half the Sky is that there are few facts shared about women in Pacific countries. One probable reason for this is the lack of research available to support the stories told.

Those international development agencies working in the Pacific have a clear sense of the challenges faced by women and girls in these countries. We know that the level of political representation by women is less than 1% in Parliaments in Pacific countries and that the rate of maternal mortality in the Solomon Islands is increasing, not even stabilizing. We know that the rate and level of sexually transmitted infections in Papua New Guinea is higher than in any country in Africa, and that it is highest for women and girls. And yet there is little sex disaggregated data available and what we do have is quite old.

At IWDA we’re advocating a Pacific hub for research on women so that we’re able measure the impact of programs undertaken by governments and international NGOs. Tracking the achievements of investments is critical to knowing what works and why. IWDA is also a funding partner in a three year international research collaboration supported led by the Australian National University, to develop better indicators of gendered poverty and of gender equality. While there’s widespread recognition that poverty is multidimensional, existing measure of poverty focus largely on income, and on dimensions of poverty that anyone can experience rather than those that uniquely affect women or men. The research is working toward alternative measures that better reflect the situation of poor women, with the aim of providing a sounder basis for poverty and gender related policies and programs.
In some quarters, including among IWDA’s program partners, the activism and advocacy is cause for optimism and hope. We’ve staged a successful Breakthrough Summit, we’re in discussion with researchers and funders re a Pacific research hub and we’re managing to engage more women from Pacific countries in key decision-making forums on issues affecting their lives. And yet for many women there is still so little opportunity to break out of a cycle of domestic violence, illiteracy, desperately poor health, poverty and social isolation compared to opportunities and privileges often afforded to men.

This is the reality and the challenge that we face - the sky is the limit for many men and for far fewer women. Those of us who personally do have opportunities also have the opportunity to change the equation for others.

Imagine.

To look up and see an abundance of women from all countries and of all creeds in their element, realizing their potential (loved, nurtured, encouraged), taking up space (in parliaments, in board rooms, in the home and at play), taking to the skies (as leaders, pilots, explorers), standing their ground (as stewards of the land and protectors of life). To see the image of one woman, reflected many, many times over, the world over, embracing the world confidently with the calm, clear gaze of someone who knows her own worth.

I hope I see it in my lifetime.

6. Practicing ‘give and learn’ as a lifelong commitment

Years ago IWDA introduced an initiative whereby all the hundreds of people present at a gathering were invited to give up a day’s or a week’s wages in support of one of IWDA’s programs, and to learn more about the impact that their giving had made on the lives of women and girls in that community. This was the spirit of giving and learning in action.

Overseas, the concept of social investment teams is becoming popular. This is a group of like minded people who want to pool their resources to contribute to a cause they care about. The goal is not only to raise money but also awareness of the critical situation of women and girls in many countries and the kinds of programs that are making a transformative difference. House Parties are another great way to give and learn by introducing friends and colleagues to what they can do to make a positive difference. In New York recently, one author gave $100 to each of nine friends to use in whatever charitable manner they saw fit, with the caveat that they reconvene in a month where they would be required to share what they did with the money. They formed the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy, an alliance that continues to this day to test the best investment of their money to improve the lives of others.

Of course some people choose to go further, and they are often encouraged to do so by their children who ask the hard questions. This was the case with Kevin and Joan’s daughter, Hannah, whose astute observation when they were stopped at a red light three years ago with a Mercedes on one side and a homeless man on the other led the family on their own transformational journey. Hannah remarked that if the person didn’t own the expensive Mercedes the homeless man could have a meal. She then pleaded with her family for them to personally do more to help others. So, they sold their home, bought one for half the cost and embarked on a year-long family study of where and how to give away half of the proceeds from the sale and how to observe the impact their money had on changing the equation for families and communities. They ended up giving the money to the Hunger Project to aid Ghana and traveling to Ghana to see it through. And in the process, Kevin and Hannah wrote a book called The Power of Half, where they documented how they came to give away half their money and what they gained in return. These gains included a deeper level of connectedness as a family, more open lines of communication and trust and togetherness. The children saw their parents as more than just parents and Kevin and Joan saw their children for who they were at their core.

7. Utilising radical creativity

There are plenty of people I can think of who have pushed the boundaries using their own creativity and talent to effect social change. One woman who continues to inspire me is Jane Tewson, the founder and Director of Pilotlight and who also founded Comic Relief. The idea of Comic Relief started with a late night basement gathering with people such as Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral writer and director) present. They gathered to conceive an idea to raise money for Africa and, while they were brainstorming, someone had a red texta and painted his nose. Jane looked at him said ‘that’s it!! Red Noses for Comic Relief ‘ and the initiative was born. Jane spent a day and then a full night sleeping on the waiting room couch and another day in the waiting room at Saatchi and Saatchi advertising agency until the Chairman finally agreed to see her and she left half an hour later with a cheque large enough to launch the campaign.

Jane left Comic Relief at its zenith to return to grass roots work. She created Pilotlight as a means to show politicians and heads of companies what was happening in the streets of London and what type of social change was required through changes in government policy and injections of funding.

Jane told Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and now Prime Minister, that his Government was making decisions about people it knew nothing about. To his credit, Gordon Brown organised for politicians, parliamentarians and business leaders to go with Jane on visits to some of these community projects. Jane led project visits to centres dealing with homelessness, drug abuse, social isolation and gambling. In the meantime, Jane had married an Australian and returned with him and set up Pilotlight in Australia to do the same work - in both Melbourne and Sydney. Jane’s is a radical creativity - a creativity rooted in changing the odds for those who are poor and broken. We need to harness our own radical creativity to reflect and respond to a world that is tilted against the needs of women and girls and whose rebalancing will restore wholeness for all women and girls, men and boys.

So, in summary.

We need to be doing more to meet the needs of all women and girls and in turn help transform our world for the better:

1. Building self esteem for ourselves and others
2. Embracing leadership and women leaders
3. Recognising the power of mentoring
4. Engaging in movement building
5. Being informed and engaged citizens
6. Practicing ‘give and learn’ as a lifelong commitment
7. Utilising radical creativity

We know that women make a sizeable difference to the health and wellbeing of families and communities. We know too that if women feel good about themselves and are well supported then they are more likely to act in relation to an issue or opportunity that will make a difference to their lives. We know that the compelling reason for supporting women to claim their space is because it is their right as humans, aside from the flow-on benefits to children, families and communities.

And so what is my final message for today?

It’s one of hope. Hope for citizen action that dynamically embraces the seven factors I’ve identified to achieve the ‘full sky revolution’ required for women and men.

In this respect, the last word goes to Germaine Greer who wrote in The Female Eunuch:

This book represents only another contribution to a continuing dialogue between the wondering woman and the world.

Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it. It is not a question of telling women what to do next, or even what to want to do next. The hope in which this book was written is that women will discover that they have a will; once that happens they will be able to tell us how and what they want.

…we would imagine…the freedom and confidence to assume their immense potential in life.

Let us work until it is so.

Thank you.

[See post to listen to audio] 30 minutes

Recognising that violence against women is a human rights, development, economic, health, policing and family issue - the Pacific Legislatures for Population and Governance (PLPG) have appointed five national legislators as Champions for advocacy on gender issues in the Pacific.

The Chairperson of the PLPG Executive Committee, Hon Mapu Taia, Speaker of Parliament of the Cook Islands says PLPG is driven by the commitment to being active custodians in sustainable development, equitable engagement and accountable leadership.

It is believed that with these strategies in place, PLPG with the support of its regional and international Partners will strive towards promoting more informed parliamentary debate on gender issues, expanded gender equality policies and programmes as well as providing better support for equitable roles of women in decision-making through reform of legislation.

This article highlights the PLPG’s strong support and commitment to gender equality issues through approaches of gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment. MT.

For the complete article, please visit PINA.

International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) is committed to collaborating with project partners and stakeholders to promote and support dialogue in relation to women, gender and development. As part of our ongoing strategy to advocate for best practice in the sector, we are pleased to bring you E-Gender - a mechanism for Australian and international readers to share information on their gender and development work, both nationally and internationally, as well as sharing international resources and items of interest.

Thank you for your feedback to date, and we encourage your ongoing input in this initiative. IWDA is keen to feature information about resources, events and opportunities in Australia and invites you to contribute. Please send information to be included to egender-items@iwda.org.au

#egender

Women and girls still suffer excessively from conflicts and the lawlessness of post-conflict environments.

At the same time, women are far too often excluded from playing a role in maintaining, restoring, and defending stability.

NATO’s military authorities have developed guidelines for the integration of gender issues into NATO planning and operations.

Many of the world’s longest and deadliest conflicts - in Congo, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, and elsewhere - occur in regions where women’s rights are often infringed.

As the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has recently written, “[C]ountries that marginalize women often end up unstable.”

To read the full article, please visit The Huffington Post.

International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) is committed to collaborating with project partners and stakeholders to promote and support dialogue in relation to women, gender and development. As part of our ongoing strategy to advocate for best practice in the sector, we are pleased to bring you E-Gender - a mechanism for Australian and international readers to share information on their gender and development work, both nationally and internationally, as well as sharing international resources and items of interest.

Thank you for your feedback to date, and we encourage your ongoing input in this initiative. IWDA is keen to feature information about resources, events and opportunities in Australia and invites you to contribute. Please send information to be included to egender-items@iwda.org.au

#egender

Date: June 7-9, 2010.

The conference plans to focus on political, economic, social/cultural, and technological solutions.

This global meeting will expand on Women Deliver’s hallmark of exclusivity, reaching out to new partners and new communities.

With all these partners in one room, the aim is to further prove that maternal and reproductive health is a global priority.

Women Deliver 2010 will move the dialogue to the global arena with two strong messages:

1. The MDGs will not be achieved without investing in women.
2. There is just enough time, if the world commits funding now, to achieve MDG5 - additional US$10 billion annually by 2010 and US$20 billion by 2015.

For further information, please visit Women Deliver.

International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) is committed to collaborating with project partners and stakeholders to promote and support dialogue in relation to women, gender and development. As part of our ongoing strategy to advocate for best practice in the sector, we are pleased to bring you E-Gender - a mechanism for Australian and international readers to share information on their gender and development work, both nationally and internationally, as well as sharing international resources and items of interest.

Thank you for your feedback to date, and we encourage your ongoing input in this initiative. IWDA is keen to feature information about resources, events and opportunities in Australia and invites you to contribute. Please send information to be included to egender-items@iwda.org.au

#egender

Location: Budapest, Hungary.

Deadline for applications: April 10, 2010.

The Gender Equality Research Fellowship is a new ERRC programme, introduced in 2010.

This programme will provide the opportunity for interested individual activists working at a local level in Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey and Ukraine to conduct research on gender equality issues that have been neglected up to now or on issues already researched, but looking at them through perspectives not yet explored.

The fellowship is expected to start in April/May and will last for approximately 6 months.

For the complete job description, please visit the ERRC website. 

International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) is committed to collaborating with project partners and stakeholders to promote and support dialogue in relation to women, gender and development. As part of our ongoing strategy to advocate for best practice in the sector, we are pleased to bring you E-Gender - a mechanism for Australian and international readers to share information on their gender and development work, both nationally and internationally, as well as sharing international resources and items of interest.

Thank you for your feedback to date, and we encourage your ongoing input in this initiative. IWDA is keen to feature information about resources, events and opportunities in Australia and invites you to contribute. Please send information to be included to egender-items@iwda.org.au

#egender