16 Days Against Violence Against Women and Girls: Shifting the Power 2024

Reading through the stories arriving daily into World Pulse many ways of Shifting the Power are made known, stories of how power has been and is being shifted, led by women, knowing in our bones that this is possible. These stories describe breaking glass ceilings, undoing stereotypes, providing girls with skills, making sure that girls have menstrual pads and are able to be in school, meetings to share news, stay in touch with each other, making it possible for us to know and share the information gathered through stories within World Pulse and within our communities. 

We are empowered by stories of women escaping and helping others to escape, of women getting funding as determined grassroots Changemakers, challenging governments, naming what needs to change, pointing to broken promises, providing healing, empowering rural women and girls in villages, doing extensive and change making work, all to often still with no funding.  

We document our stories, naming what needs to change, focussing on such basic rights for women, that every girl has the right to education, the right to laws that respect freedom, uniting women, lifting women leaders, calling for an end to the punishments. Calling for an end to all violence. We dare to speak about solving such basic problems: the lack of water, of power, the damage to our planet, as we work to shift power to women, bringing community discussion on the continuing control and violation of women and girls, naming these ways that women are still silenced, listening to elders who are being silenced, recognizing that books are being burned, history rewritten, our stories repressed, knowing with each other that the ongoing violence is intentional.

World Pulse sisters are building and protecting intergenerational connections, interweaving talking circles, developing and protecting platforms for grassroots leaders, creating equitable resource allocation and financial independence for communities who have been searching for and are desperate for funding, while being intentionally ignored. We attend to emergencies knowing painfully well how much more would be possible if in this global money system, women had access to money. We have been working to create inroads to funding, to able to expand the work being done. We are fully aware of all of the ways that we as women are expected to work with no funding. 

We create and cherish time for Shifting the Power through deep discussion that includes whole communities, ensuring all are truly included, including street kids, people with special needs, women locked indoors, bringing world news that we are working to free all women, working for women to be paid, working to change this horrendously unjust money system, working to find donors who want the money to go directly to the extensive grassroots, change making work being done, held back because of having no funding, the base of this patriarchal system, women working for free. We document through theatre, film, through exposing oppressive work environments, keeping known information on women’s rights, studying, carrying and sharing our herstory within talking circles, creating a library of books and films of the work being done. We are resolving dangerous birth conditions and work conditions and such basic problems as the lack of menstrual pads that keeps girls from school. 

We speak out about the importance of raising women’s voices in communities, addressing inequities, delaying marriage, ending all forms of violence, respecting women’s circles. We write plays about women, about the need for resource allocation to women and girls, intentionally kept from us in this patriarchal money system that thrives on wars and destruction.

We create avenues for decision making power for women and girls, for access to politicians, law makers and funders, messaging the empowerment of women through theatre, through meeting in communities, through building direct communication with the UN, knowing that our herstories, the stories of our foremothers that were kept from us in school, making sure they are kept known. We create powershifts through discussions, through writing, through dance and theatre, powershifting in groups and also in finding the time and freedom to take care of ourselves.

We challenge these laws that demand we remain passive and quiet as women, threatening and punishing us if we disobey. 

We find our own ways to be leaders and lift each other. We protect our communities from war, challenging police violence, challenging male violence, recognizing and celebrating the power of one woman speaking out, as we work to heal this rapidly increasing climate change, as we work to end these wars, dissolve these stereotypes, replace hate and violence with wisdom and love. 

We meet in circles of women leaders holding onto and living our traditions, sharing resources, opening paths for our voices to be heard at all levels of governments to eradicate poverty, crises and wars, to keep the work of the UN known, to challenge its shortcomings, to challenge and end this patriarchy at all levels and globally.

 We are shifting power by teaching children to shift the power, ensuring everyone is included. We are shifting power by getting funding to women, recognizing the leaders in the community, creating libraries, insisting on, breaking, dissolving the injustice of patriarchy, holding discussions on how to change all of these rules that oppress women, ensuring training and support for vulnerable women, creating together a society in which women are respected as leaders, keeping known that there are communities in which women have been and are leaders, sharing news, plans and ideas, ensuring everyone is included and cared for, shifting the power to women’s voices being heard, protecting our organizations doing this work, finding funding for women’s initiatives, amplifying the voices of young women and girls, addressing poverty and hunger, lifting struggling parents from blame, calling out and documenting what needs to change, meeting with women, with girls, holding village meetings, working with local leaders, stopping FGM, ending forced child marriages, ending all forms of violence, finding ways to create healing, getting pads to girls, offering sex ed and reproductive health, making sure girls know their rights, getting every girl into school, creating access to money for women, supporting each other as women, changing social expectations, calling out an end to all of the violence, finding our own power, learning from each other, celebrating that we are working together.

Each of these ways to shift power have been described through stories on World Pulse. We shift power by knowing, by acknowledging, by finding ways to be working together, so grateful to have met and have this World Pulse home together.

During these 16 days we celebrate and strengthen ties within this sisterhood of leadership, able to find each other through World Pulse and Hope For Her Global, able to be working together. 

During this 16 Days 2024 may we continue to find each other. May we know and carry each others’ stories, deepen our connections, interweave our paths, shifting the power.

Shifting the power

Recognizing it has not always been this way, and not everywhere.

Lifting the leadership of women and of girls

Holding to the end of all violence

Believing in our right and the possibility to live in a world of peace in which women are respected in every way.

Keeping girls in school.

Creating businesses for women.

Creating healing from violence

Providing time and space to listen to each other.

Providing safe houses to run to.

Providing food and a safe place to live.

Addressing government Agencies including the UN.

Refusing to be silenced.

Building and being active in these Circles, local, national, Global

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