#Breaking the Bias International Women’s Month 2022

Every year we gather in March as women to speak out together about the world that we know is possible, a world of peace, a world with no poverty, a world in which we take care of our precious planet, and each other.

We continue to be ridiculed when we speak, and punished severely if we challenge the current system. But in March we come together in our home communities and here within World Pulse in large numbers globally, calling out the news, linking arms ever more strongly for what needs to change. Never in the history of this world have we been able to stay connected with each other to raise our voices and work together for freedom of women, in the way we do here within World Pulse. My home base is with my sisters here and everywhere in all of our organizations and we reach out especially to all who are still isolated, imprisoned, not free. We are finding each other to create change.

As this March approached, we watched in horror as tanks lined up at the border of Ukraine. We watch in horror as bombs are dropped, as a whole country of people flee for their lives. So very recently a bomb was dropped on a maternity hospital. What a message from the patriarchy. 

We search for news of our sisters in Afghanistan, so recently forced back indoors, with barely the blink of an eye from the world’s governments and largely silence from conventional news media. 

Because we are connected, we have ongoing news of all these wars. Drug wars, terrorist wars, land grabs, internal wars, external takeovers, mass murders. We know first hand from each other about the endless emergency work being done by sisters living through wars in Cameroon, the DRC, Nigeria, Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Mexico, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Iraq, Niger, Libya, Chad, Mali, Tunisia, Colombia, Mayanmar, Syria, Libya. Afghanistan. Ukraine. We name these wars and condemn this patriarchal system of bloodshed, torture and control.

We also condemn the intentional ongoing violence in homes, in streets, workplaces, places of worship in which women are beaten, raped, controlled, silenced, murdered.

We are repeatedly told to expect that freedom for women will take another 150 years. Some say 250. Who is making up these statistics?

As a feminist who has worked on this for more than 50 years, all I see are endless excuses and false promises while we hurtle into disaster through these wars that these men insist on having with each other, while they continue to allow and enjoy the imprisonment and torture of women. 

They know our hearts are breaking with the pain being caused by this patriarchy. They are well aware that for the most part we are the ones dealing with the poverty that has been created by this financial system, as billionaires cavort while most women work for no money, and while people are living in the streets and on dumps of garbage sent from rich countries. While multi billion dollar businesses continue to destroy our planet. While women who have been cast out, try to find food to feed their families and themselves.

We gather as women to hold counsel with each other about what to do with this disaster, and this year, here we are once again, speaking out to break the bias. To break the bias that women are not meant to lead. That we are to be kept from leadership. To break the bias that teaches men that they have the right to dominate, to control and to silence any woman who speaks out in defence of herself and her sisters.

Here's my message to the patriarchy this International Women's Month, 2022. 

We're breaking the bias that women aren't strong. Breaking the bias that dictates that men rule. Breaking the bias that we were never free, respected, leaders, as women, the bias that continues to teach boys that they have the right to dominate, to violate, encouraged, even expected to crush the spirit of any woman or girl. 

We are breaking the bias that it has always been this way. We are breaking the bias that women must accept being kept indoors, the servant to a man, the unpaid labourer, the bias against the woman too bold who has had acid thrown in her face, the girls too bold resisting breast ironing, or FGM, or being married off to be the servant of some old man who already owns many women and girls. The bias toward women sent off to what are called witch camps when their husbands die, losing everything.

We are breaking the bias that women must live without money in this money system, that we are to keep our opinions to ourselves, and not to be given even token leadership unless we pledge to uphold the same so-called traditions and rules. 

We’re breaking the bias by holding meetings with each other as women, by speaking freely about what has to stop, and about what we know is possible. We're breaking the bias by learning from women who have researched times throughout history in which women were respected leaders, times that were peaceful, in which everyone was respected, knowing that it has not always been this way, these thousands of rules that demand that we women be controlled. 

We are breaking the bias with every time we meet as women to speak about this, to share our information and our knowledge of how different this world has been in the distant past, and can be again. We are breaking the bias by meeting together, by creating together, by stepping forward together, by healing together, for ourselves, for our children, for our Mother Earth.

We are breaking the bias by honouring the trees, by meeting under the trees with each other, and by water, as we farm together, meet in rooms together, in markets together, in meetings we arrange together, online across distances, and in ceremony together, refusing to accept that men are destined to rule, refusing to accept that we are here to be servants of men, refusing to hide our knowledge, our wisdom, and the beauty that we carry. We are are here to create, refusing to repeat the narrative that it was always this way.

We live to break the bias. We live to see our ancestresses honoured. We live to see women and girls and all gentle people, honoured and free. We are here to melt down and disintegrate the patriarchy. We are here to create a world where this bias against women and girls, this ugly bias, this violent bias, this virus of control is transformed, into a bias for love.