Stories of Five Pioneers and Leaders from the YWCA Movement The COVID-19 pandemic unmasked the ugly reality facing young women and girls who were trapped in close quarters with their abusers, facing issues of employment and income generation and managing the multiple burdens around health and access to resources. It […]
Trigger warning: discussions of sexual and gender-based violence For Geneva Peace Week 2020, World YWCA and Norwegian Church Aid got together to amplify young women’s voices – quite literally! Over the course of two podcasts hosted by Chhavi Sachdev, we listen to four women from different corners of the globe as they […]
“Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.” Dwight Eisenhower, 34th US president The world as we know it today is marked by uncertainty. What is not in doubt, however, is the prevalence of violence globally and locally. A culture of extremism and terror has been established and peace […]
Story of Tina Herrera While most of her peers were fitting in the societal expectations of what an ideal woman should pursue in her career, or to fulfil a more traditional gender role, Tina Herrera was training as a mechanical engineer, a field that was highly dominated by men. Self-assured […]
Story of Ashkhen Aslikyan Born in a small village named Berdavan in Armenia, Ashkhen’s upbringing was conservative. There was so much she couldn’t talk about then because regressive attitudes of people within her community. It took the Armenian young woman leader close to a decade to fully embrace the ideology […]
Story of Vera Syrokvash For Vera Syrokvash, at the age of six years old, she was already a solitary feminist though unaware of it. As a child, Vera often did not understand why girls were treated differently. Her desire to argue and finding out the truth was not encouraged. There […]
Story of Satoko Yamaguchi Do you remember when you were a teenager? Or in your 20s? Is this a time you want to forget? Or do you want to go back and change the events of your teenage life? Satoko Yamaguchi from Japan often reminds herself of her 16-year old […]
Story of Lucy Masiye Learn to cook, take care of the family and get married off. For decades and even now, this has been the sequential reality of very many young women and girls. A desire for something different is frowned upon, forcing women to continue living in the cocoon […]
Many young women and girls who identify as feminists, say their first experience with feminism was experimental, intuitive and intertwined with their own histories, identities and the family background they grew up in. As they go through life, learn and organize their world view changed which could be attributed to […]
#16DaysOfActivism “I wouldn’t know how to be a woman who is not a feminist.” That has always been my answer whenever people ask me why I am very passionate about women and feminism. What they don’t know is I didn’t just wake up one morning and identified myself as a […]
