Women: Write Your Stories

On Saturday, 19 February 2022, I attended a women’s breakfast at the home of Rosieda Shabodien. Late – as always – I stepped into a lush garden filled with my people, amazing women doing amazing things across all walks of life.

This day was also the birthday of both my daughter and my mom, and I shouldn’t have been able to make it, but some background research revealed that part of the discussion would include narrative on storytelling, and my story muscles sorely needed some motivation. And motivated they were!!

I always say: when women come together – magic happens. And this was no different, so much so that I have been reading my notes back to myself ever since and decided that this magic needs to shared.

The event was held to commemorate a visit by author and women’s rights activist Kim Weichel, South African born and living in the US for a number of years. She is the CEO of Peace x Peace, an international women’s peacebuilding organisation who, with her husband, run programmes at the Lifelong Learning Institute at American University.

“Why am I passionate about women’s leadership? First, we’re 50% of the population.”– Kim Weichel

If I could copy and paste her speech here, I would, but since all I have are my notes, I’ll share some of the points that really drew me in.

• In a Harvard Business Review study on leadership, it was found that women outscored men on 17 of the 19 capabilities that differentiate excellent leaders from average or poor ones.

• 50% of all peace treaties fail within five years. Why? There are no women involved. Signing a peace treaty is easy, maintaining it is hard. Women have the ability to sense conflict and deal with it before it erupts.

• One of the biggest inhibitors of women in leadership is Violence Against Women. Sex and labour trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry.

• Violence Against Women costs $1200 globally per woman exposed to gender-based violence. The current spend on services per woman exposed to GBV is $1.

• Weichel is part of and championing the new Every Woman Treaty to end violence against women. See here for more information: https://everywoman.org/

Weichel was extremely inspiring to listen to. She also spoke, however, about the importance of women writing and recording our stories, a sentiment echoed and emphasised by our host, Rosieda Shabodien, who is also a business coach and mentor.

“I was very active during Apartheid, but when I read about the (anti-apartheid) struggle, my name is not there. It’s like we never existed”– Rosieda Shabodien

“There are no books about us, no museums, no female heroes journey,” said Shabodien. “All the stories we tell amplify brokenness and most of our stories are driven by fear. How do we stop operating out of a paradigm of fear? How do we speak in a way that people come into consciousness?

“We need to tell the stories of women who are bending history,” she said. “When an author writes up her experience and advice, where she can’t go, her books will go. I am begging women of colour to write your stories. We need to be asking ourselves: what do I leave behind?”

Weichel, who self-published her books, added that it’s important to share our stories before we can’t. “We learn from each other and by having the courage to share [our stories], we inspire others.”

“I will dance my dance of courage… Find the things that I need to be strong…” from poem and performance by Philippa Namuutebi Kabali-Kagwa

When women gather, we touch on hundreds of topics in a very short time. I wish I could lay it all down here, but there wouldn’t be enough pages, so I am going to list just a few of the stories, points and narratives that emerged, in the hope that it sparks conversations in the circles where you gather. Thank you to every single woman who contributed ❤

• Dr Genine Josias spoke about making medical spaces that deal with sexual assault and GBV safe for victims. “The spaces can be very toxic and we need to work hard to stay on top of it” she said.

• Judith Kennedy, founder of Inside Out, spoke about how ordinary people on the street do not have access to social workers and mental health services, and that counselling work is also building consciousness. “This is why we regard our work as political,” she added.

• Clinical Psychologist and founding member of the Unyoke Foundation, Nomfundo Walaza, spoke about the question of who we are and that we must interrogate this. “We dehumanise ourselves when we believe that we are our titles, because titles get stripped away,” she said.

• This sparked comments on leadership as a practice and not a position, and how we are all the leaders in our own lives, as well as the perceived historical legitimacy of knowledge that has resulted in a gap between Academic vs Indigenous knowledge and experience.  

• We also spoke about how women are written out of history when we turn 60 with notions of retirement, and how women must interrogate what we can do, are capable of and can contribute during the ‘third act’.

END

Lenina Rassool is a writer, journalist and multimedia producer with 20 years’ experience in mainstream media and social justice spaces respectively. She has worked as a features Femina and Cosmopolitan Magazines, for Actiivate! Change Drivers (youth) and OpenUp (civic tech) and have spent the past five years in broadcast production pruducing and presenting The Womxn Show and Mental Health Matters on Cape Town TV.