On International Women’s Day, March 8, Right Livelihood launched its first-ever Women Laureates Hub—a platform dedicated to fostering solidarity and support among female Laureates working in fields like climate justice and peacebuilding. Marking its debut, the Hub issued a powerful advocacy statement, calling out the global backlash against gender equality and urging immediate action from the international community.
A year in the making, the Hub brings together women change-makers from diverse fields to collectively advocate and share knowledge to advance gender equality and challenge patriarchal narratives.
Marthe Wandou, a 2021 Right Livelihood Laureate and Cameroonian gender and peace activist, is hopeful in the Hub’s ability to drive international change.
“To have impact, you need action,” she said. “Many networks are established, but action often doesn’t follow. I expect this network to create impact.”
One of the Hub’s first actions is its inaugural International Women’s Day statement, signed by Laureates focused on environmental justice like the Africa Institute for Energy Governance and Mother Nature Cambodia, as well as women’s rights activists Sima Samar and the Kvinna till Kvinna foundation.
Highlighting the global backlash against gender equality, the Hub calls attention to the gender apartheid being carried out in Afghanistan, the United States’ attacks on reproductive freedom and the violent repression of environmental defenders across Africa, among other injustices.
“These are not isolated cases,” the signatories said. “Across every region, women and gender minorities face escalating violence, criminalisation and systemic exclusion.”
The women Laureates called on governments and global institutions to “move beyond rhetoric” and involve women and gender minorities in the decision-making processes that govern their lives.
Later this month, members of the Women Laureates Hub will travel to New York to attend the sixty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), where they will amplify the statement’s calls to action in conversations with policymakers, activists and other non-governmental organisations.
