"People laughed at me when I said I
wanted to be the Premier of my state. They said I sounded crazy. But when my
women sisters at Nguvu Collective heard my dream, they clapped for me and
cheered me on. It was the first time that I truly felt seen and heard."
I was so moved when I heard this
story from a 30-year-old woman, Nguvu Change Leader.
She had always been completely invisible and minimised for
dreaming big that she never understood she had any self-worth.
Undeniably, if the same political
aspiration had been voiced by a man, nobody would have batted an eyelid.
He would have found instant
validation and maybe even a fanbase.
But this woman struggles to find a
job because a woman who voices her aspiration to be a politician is perceived
as “trouble”.
Most women that we train through
our global women’s leadership program tell us that they didn’t realise they had
a voice until they went through our training in Powerful Storytelling and
became a part of our women’s collective, where they were celebrated and
recognised as leaders.
But even after they find their
voice, they are almost always unseen and unheard.
They are denied opportunities to
speak up and claim their place in their families, communities, and public
places.
The crackdown on the Anti-Femicide
protests in Kenya is a classic example of invisibilising - attributing genuine
concerns of Kenyan women to a foreign hand, denying permissions to convene in
public places, teargassing women who took to the streets peacefully…
Choking women’s voices through
authoritarianism and brute force has led to 50% of the world’s population
staying on the fringes across many countries.
This #IWD2025, as we embrace the theme #AccelerateAction, let’s pause and consider this:
●
Are there safe
spaces for women to tell their stories and lived experiences?
●
Are there
inclusive spaces for their voices to drive policy and implementation?
●
Are there
empathetic spaces for their concerns to be validated and acknowledged?
● Are there sensitive spaces for their ideas & opinions to result in concrete Action?
That is where #AccelerateAction
needs to begin. From creating enabling spaces for women to emerge as powerful
voices that drive gender-equitable actions.
We need more women’s voices to be heard in Board Rooms, in Politics, in Art, in Newsrooms… Policymaking should be
driven by women’s voices with their experiences from the ground.
With this intentionality, for
#AccelerateAction, let’s invest in understanding what approaches and
interventions on centering women’s voices have contributed directly or
indirectly to systems change.
When governments co-build their
systems to design solutions with women survivors or women activists, what is
the scale and depth of that impact?
When there is no voice, there is
no representation!
When there is no representation,
there is no inclusion! When there is no inclusion, there is no true governance!
(Durga Nandini is the
Co-founder of global organisation, Nguvu Collective. She is a Training Expert,
who builds capabilities of social entrepreneurs and women change leaders on
Strategic Campaigning.)
