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On 17 September 2024, New Women Connectors launched a new series titled, “Leading Resilience: New Knowledges”, to shine the spotlight on global community leaders, thought leaders, and influential changemakers who are leading the way in shaping a brighter and more inclusive future.
Through this series, we address the role of resilience in leadership when addressing cross-cutting issues such as migration, displacement, climate justice and feminist leadership. This initiative is done in collaboration with iMatter, a global dialogue that recognises and values women and girls as critical leaders during and after a crisis. The goal of this series is to gather global perspectives on community-led, grassroots and bottom-up solutions to the intersecting crises that we face today. These perspectives are unfortunately missing from current high-level global fora such as the Summit of the Future and COP29 where a select few make monumental decisions for the rest of the world.
By focusing on resilience, we spotlight the strength, creativity, expertise and knowledges inherent in different communities globally, challenging narratives that position them as victims or passive recipients of aid. When we refer to new knowledges, we refer to plurality of knowledges, in that there are many ways of looking at an existing issue. These knowledges are “new” as we are now foregrounding them in our discussions, but they are not novel as these ways of knowing have existed over generations. Feminist discourse posits that knowledge is a construct of power, serving to legitimise certain ways of understanding the world to the benefit of those in power. Through this online series, we aim to mobilise and mainstream perspectives from different underrepresented communities and collectively work towards systemic change.
The first session in this series features Anila Noor, the Founder and Managing Director of New Women Connectors (NWC); Olanike Olugboji-Daramola, Executive Director of Women Initiative for Sustainable Environment (WISE) in Nigeria; Joel Abraham, Chief Executive Officer for the Fijian Competition and Consumer Commission (FCCC); and Razia Sultana, activist and lawyer and the Founder and Director of the Rights for Women and Welfare Society (RWWS) in Bangladesh. The session was moderated by Nurhidayah Hassan, Partnership and Community Lead of New Women Connectors.
RESILIENCE IN LEADERSHIP
During the first part of the online conversation, the speakers reflect on what leading resilience means to them. Olanike Olugboji-Daramola, whose work at WISE in Nigeria entails championing women’s voices and building their leadership skills, explains that for her, leading resilience means disrupting the status quo by equipping women with knowledge and skills to cope and adapt to unanticipated changes. WISE strengthens the role that grassroots women play in community resource management.
For Joel Abraham, who leads FCCC, a statutory board in Fiji, resilience in leadership reminds him of how Fijian communities cope with the real threats of climate change. Fiji is a small island-state in the South Pacific that experiences disproportionate effects of climate change. Abraham says, “For me, leading resilience means looking at communities not from a public policy perspective, but from a human perspective. It is about listening to the people who are affected, mainstreaming solutions to include and support them, and not simply giving them handouts.”
Razia Sultana’s extensive work with Rohingya communities in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, understands deeply the question of resilience. Cox’s Bazar is home to almost one million Rohingya refugees – it has been touted as the world’s largest refugee camp. Being Rohingya herself and having worked with Rohingya refugees for a long time, her organisation reaches out to women in the overcrowded camps and support them in dealing with issues like gender-based violence and the lack of access to basic resources. For Sultana, resilience is multifaceted; while she instils resilience in women through the organisation’s programmes, she too has had to build up self-resilience as she was confronted with criticism and scrutiny within the community itself for supporting women. As a feminist fighting for the rights of vulnerabilised women, Sultana also sees the importance of working hand-in-hand with men to achieve long-term change in society.
FEMINIST APPROACHES PAVE THE WAY FOR COMMUNITY-LED KNOWLEDGES
As we know, the multiple crises we face today – whether it is climate change or forced displacement – impact communities differently. Research shows that women and girls, refugees or forcibly displaced people, remain the most vulnerable to these crises because they make up the majority of the world’s poor. Using a feminist lens to address these intersecting crises means integrating women’s rights and women’s knowledges into policy solutions.
Women in rural areas, for instance, are highly dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods, whether it is about securing water, firewood or food for their families. Olanike Olugbuji-Daramola highlights that it is crucial to tap into the knowledge of the communities because they have the solutions to the problems they face. For example, in some areas in Nigeria, women must track for over two kilometres to gather firewood for cooking and in the process, they face sexual harassment, violence, and risks of being kidnapped. She emphasises, “We can no longer sit back and just be passive recipients of policies and initiatives. Women must be actively involved because they are at the frontlines. The communities that are feeling the pain should be the ones making the decisions and driving the change.”
A feminist lens is also particularly useful in pushing for solutions to address power inequalities that stem from patriarchy, capitalism, colonisation, concepts of nation, racism and classism. The lived experiences of Rohingya women and girls that are marked by forced displacement, gender-based violence and abject poverty are reflections of existing systems that have rendered them marginalised. In the face of these injustices, Razia Sultana persists to ensure that Rohingya women are not left behind. She supports the creation of women-led groups in Cox’s Bazar who have been self-organising to raise awareness of their rights. These groups also empower women to build their confidence and leadership in advocating for their rights. She connects them to different women’s groups outside of Bangladesh and diaspora leaders to amplify their voices and to ensure that their stories are heard outside of the camp.
REJECTION TOKENISATION THROUGH MEANINGFUL PARTICIPATION
The development and humanitarian sectors are rife with hierarchical ways of operating, where aid, programmes, and policies reach affected communities in top-down mechanisms, demonstrating the inherent power relations between decision-makers and communities. Meaningful participation is a decision-making approach that centres the voices of those with lived experiences, aiming to rectify existing power imbalances, address inequalities, and foster equitable partnerships to combat injustices.
To this end, Joel Abraham has been representing Fiji at high-level global events and dialogues, advising states and development agencies on different topics like climate-induced displacement, climate financing and advocating for loss and damage fund, especially for Pacific island-states. While he outlines the need to approach solutions from a human-centred perspective, he also urges policymakers to bring communities and women to decision-making tables who can bring community-led responses that are grounded in their knowledges and experiences. The voices of the most marginalised communities, which are crucial for effective policymaking, are frequently ignored in discussions.
Echoing this sentiment, Razia Sultana also expresses that when she or other Rohingya women are interviewed or participate in discussions at different levels, these organisations (from international NGOs to other influential bodies) fail to take measures that consider the safety of women or provide financial support for their time. This illusion of participation or inclusion veers into the unethical practice of tokenisation. Instead of including Rohingya women’s voices as input into policies and programmes, they are simply invited to for ad-hoc consultations or to share their stories. Tokenisation, which involves merely symbolic representation, is counterproductive to meaningful participation, as it fails to provide genuine inclusion and agency. As a result, there remains a huge disconnect between aid programmes and what women need on the ground. She offers, “INGOs often highlight individual stories of female leadership but real issues faced by women like security in the camps and sexual abuse are never prioritised. To achieve transformative change, policymakers and programme managers need to focus on issues that women face on the ground. This can only be done through closer collaboration and regular exchanges between all stakeholders and the women experiencing the issues. We need more involvement and inclusion of women from the field level.”
Communities from the Global Majority world, especially women, remain underrepresented and marginalised in global spaces. By uplifting their voices through this series, we aim to challenge existing power structures, push the boundaries, and contribute to shaping our common future - one that is equitable, sustainable and inclusive.
Written by: Nurhidayah Hassan
To watch the Leading Resilience: New Knowledges first online session, click HERE or on the video below. Stay tuned to our website and social media pages for updates on the upcoming online sessions in October and November!
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