When sleeping women wake, mountains move
Celebrating International Women's Day 2025
Happy International Women’s Day!
There is an ancient Chinese proverb that say, “When sleeping women wake, mountains move!”
That’s how it felt this morning, when I joined a webinar celebrating the launch of The Hesitant Feminist’s Guide to the Future Perspectives and Symposium, led by Dr Ivana Milojevic and Dr Anisah Abdullah.
Ivana’s monograph, The Hesitant Feminist’s Guide to the Future was published in 2024. I promise you, it is a life-affirming and life-changing read to guide us all forward, to challenge the toxic, dominator narratives that we’re hearing, especially in these current moments.
Our conversation this morning, joined by women and men as allies, from around the world, brought us together around feminist futures for partnership society (Riane Eisler) and a gentle society (Elise Boulding) to create an empathetic society (Ivana Milojevic), between humans, Mother Earth and more-than-human beings.
Today, is such a beautiful day to, as Ivana said, “give thanks and acknowledge the work done before us” by women as problem-solvers for people and planet, through our connectivity and community in the present.
I invite you also to take a look at the rich array of essays which form the Symposium and Vol 29/3 of the Journal of Futures Studies, generated from deep connection with Ivana’s work.
I feel blessed to have an essay included in the symposium. My first double-blind peer-reviewed academic essay, A Metaphor to Catalyse Women Entrepreneurs.
We are never too old and it is never too late to be in healing spaces that support us in being vocal and visible, to believe in each other so that we find the way home to believing in ourselves.
As women who are problem-solvers for people and planet, the Flourishing Futures Collective is a space that I invite you into, to learn how to use futures thinking tools and approaches to unfold transformation.
One of the most powerful ways I know of transforming old, tired and toxic narratives in the spaces that we are in, is to use a Futures Wheel in formal and informal conversations. I’ve found myself that it enables me to feel safe and to rapidly bring new perspectives to discussions, so that our words can become shared spaces of empathy.
Join me the next class on 20 March 12.30h – 14h CET to learn how to easily and quickly lead others in explorations of impacts and consequences that transform narratives that bring harm instead of hope.
