#8M - Feminism as a Collective Experience

"Feminism: The radical notion that women are human beings” -Cheris Kramarae

"Never doubt?that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead

10am, June 14, 2018: I let out a scream of excitement in my car, parked just on the corner of my workplace, as I listened to the radio. After a 24-hour session, the Chamber of Deputies of the Argentine Nation Congress had given half sanction -for the first time in history- to a law that would guarantee access to safe and free abortions for all women in the country.

I walked as fast as I could to my office to hug my colleagues. We cried, we laughed and we shared how we had spent the night (many of us had spent the night in a vigil around Congress, others glued to YouTube or the radio).

In the midst of the celebration my boss, a bit younger than me but from a much more conservative environment, pulled me aside and asked: "Why are you crying? I want to understand." She didn't mean it in a judgemental or disapproving way; she genuinely didn't understand how something that wouldn't necessarily impact our daily lives (as all of us had the means to access a clandestine but relatively safe abortion if needed) could fill us with so much emotion.

I did my best to help her make sense of it: that this set a precedent of immense value, that we had been advocating for the autonomy over our bodies in the streets for a long time, that this made excluded women visible and that it would prevent the death of the poorest, that an unwanted pregnancy is a tremendous factor of inequality, and that basically we live in a world that is still not fair to women. Finally, I told her that I came from a very apolitical family and that I had found in feminism a place of belonging and growth.

That moment was a tipping point in the way I advocated for feminism: I saw very clearly, suddenly, that the true engine of change was found in the transformative power of the collective; that although all women had been affected by patriarchy at some point, it was by sharing our voice that the experience became real and presented itself as a starting point for action.

My friend Mel, founder of Fauna Querida and one of the inspiring pillars of my life, defines activism or advocacy as: "involving ourselves in processes of social change and transformation that involve people and take time. Thinking more long-term than about ephemeral events, thinking about alliances and impact."

The personal is political, as we know, just as there are no personal solutions but communal ones. The processes of deconstruction must be accompanied by strategies that force state policies that provide the necessary legal and structural framework to exert change. It is about taking the individual feeling and activating it from the collective, both in the streets and in spaces of debate, consensus, and dissent; educating ourselves and facilitating access to information and the movement itself, allowing its massification and the amplification of the issue in the media.

Much of our identity and way of thinking is forged and valued from a young age by what we see around us, by the stories we are told and the role models we aspire to. Hence the importance of projects like #nomorematildas -which aims to make female scientists that history ignored visible in order to inspire girls and young women to join STEM careers-, publicitarias.org -which promote diversity and gender perspective in the communication industry-, Women in Tech -which fight for gender equality in science and technology-, spaces like Impact Hub (of which I am lucky to be part of) -that promote impactful entrepreneurship- and so many other projects that aim at the same: empowering girls and women through education, example and action.

The inequality between men and women is a fact and hampers global social progress, but the responsibility to reduce that gap is not individual but of the community and the State. Feminism and sisterhood have allowed women to group together and form pacts among themselves to conquer the political arena and advance in the conquest of equality, but we must still seize all opportunities to make equality a cause for everyone.

International Women's Day commemorates the struggle of women over the years for equal rights and for full access and exercise of these rights: greater political representation, improvements in access to health and education, more equitable working conditions, more prevention and support for situations of gender violence and a non-sexist judicial system. It is always an invitation to reflection on what has been achieved and what is still to be done, and an opportunity to raise awareness about issues affecting femininities and dissidences in general. Women's rights are human rights; as Malala said at the UN Youth Takeover in 2013: "We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back."

Finally, the legalisation and decriminalisation of abortion in Argentina did not occur until December 30, 2020. This time the news found me 12,000 km away from Buenos Aires, living in a country that had taken this step more than 10 years ago. I cried and celebrated, unable to hug my friends-companions-sisters, but I remembered that victories are not permanent, absolute, or perfect and that there is still much to cover. I am a human in the process of (r)evolution and my path is full of contradictions, but I walk it with the conviction that every action, no matter how small, leads to change... and that a better world is possible for everyone.