“If we want to be free, we have to conquer our freedom ourselves.”

The Zapatista Women,  International Zapatista Encuentro of Women in Struggle. March 8, 2018, Chiapas, Mexico

Transforming Visions into Lived Experiences

In this political moment, many activists and movements across the world are facing attacks and severe backlash. More than ever, the convergence of fascisms, fundamentalisms and corporate power calls for powerful organizing with clear demands and proposals.

We believe that feminist futures are not only possible but that they exist now, in the many small and big ways people and movements live, struggle and build. We understand feminist realities both as current, existing practices that people and groups are forging as well as the ideas, ways of thinking and doing, the ‘proposals to become practice’ that are in the works. These feminist realities go beyond resisting oppressive systems to show us a what a world without domination, exploitation and supremacy look like.Spotlighting and amplifying feminist realities will be central to AWID’s work over the next five years.

Our Feminist Realities:

• Affirm human rights, center self-determination and balance the needs of individuals and collective well-being.

• Mobilize communities to divest from systems of oppression towards resourcing transformative, justice-oriented feminist alternatives.

• Increase our collective power to define how we live our lives with greater sovereignty over our bodies, labor and land/ home.

We believe this will contribute to greater social imagination of what is possible and a greater political will to shift resources towards the structures and systems that reflect our feminist values and visions.

Our Actions

Through this initiative, we:

• Create and amplify alternatives: We co-create art and creative expressions that center and celebrate the hope, optimism, healing and radical imagination that feminist realities inspire.

• Build knowledge: We document, demonstrate & disseminate methodologies that will help identify the feminist realities in our diverse communities.

• Advance feminist agendas: We expand and deepen our collective thinking and organizing to advance just solutions and systems that embody feminist values and visions.

• Mobilize solidarity actions: We engage feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements and allies in sharing, exchanging and jointly creating feminist realities, narratives and proposals at the 14th AWID International Forum.