When Futures + Feminism = advancing women's and girls' rights

As we mark International Women's Day, I would like to reflect on the power of collective imagination, futurism, and feminism in shaping gender equitable futures.

Through my experiences facilitating storytelling workshops with hundreds of women and girls in vulnerable contexts, I've witnessed firsthand how oppressive systems have co-opted the imagination of marginalised individuals, women and girls in particular. To me, there is nothing more sad than when I observe a refugee woman, a woman of colour, an adolescent girl living in a slum, believing that the reality they are currently in is all there is and all that will ever be for them. This is the ultimate sign that our historical systems of oppression and discrimination have coopted their very last resource, their imagination. If you look at the eyes of a person who lacks imagination, it is as if their internal light has been turned off.

Feminist Futures is a response to that. I invite women and girls to join me in safe physical or online spaces, where we play with futures methods to nurture and expand each other's imagination and reconnect with our desires for different realities.

Why Futurism?

In the futures field, we often hear that the future doesn't exist. And, yes, I agree that there is no such thing as a pre-determined future. The future is yet to be created as our present, as our lived reality. But the opposite is also true. All possibilities of reality—past, present, and future—exist already, at least as potential. What we experience as our common present is where we put more energy, matter, time, space, focus and intention.

This is why I find working with the body and the notion of desire so important when working with futures. Through our desires, feelings, and emotions, we have hints of other possibilities of reality or resonances, if you like, other than the one we are currently experiencing. When we pay attention to the body, with our hopes, dreams, and wants, we connect to parts of the resonances of different futures. When we can truly connect to at least a tiny piece of these other possibilities and allow our imagination to play with them, more aspects of that alternative reality begin to unfold to us. Therefore, it becomes easier for us to acknowledge what we truly want - not a given when we were told what to desire and what not to desire our entire lives - and take concrete individual and collective steps towards that direction. Through affect, we discover other dimensions of our desirable futures.

Why Feminism?

I would argue that intersectional feminism is one of the best paradigms we currently have to imagine, hope, and dream about a different, better, fairer world for all.

Feminism provides us with a holistic framework for imagining and enacting transformative futures. Beyond advocating for gender equality, feminism encompasses social and racial justice principles, diversity, inclusion, and regeneration. It challenges unequal power dynamics, prioritises collective well-being, and celebrates diverse ways of knowing. Feminism invites us to reimagine a world where care, love, and joy are central tenets, where ancestral wisdom intersects with visionary aspirations. It offers us a lens through which to envision a future that transcends the limitations of the present, weaving together threads of resilience, empowerment, and solidarity. Intersectional feminism is in itself a collective vision of our most desirable futures.

Through an intersectional feminist lens, we consciously, intentionally, and fiercely exercise our agency to resonate those desirable future realities every day in our bodies, emotions, thoughts, words, creations, and choices. The more we do so, the more we interfere with the signal of the current resonance we live in. I am not saying that this will magically change everything because very strong systems are in place to keep reproducing themselves. However, in physics, when two different waves encounter each other, a third wave or a third resonance emerges from their interaction.

I do believe all of us are always collectively co-creating futures. But we usually do that very unconsciously by reproducing the resonances of the status quo, of a world of oppression, discrimination, and inequality, the resonances of a bunch of harmful social norms. But if we consciously and collectively imagine and connect with the resonances of our desirable futures and bring that into the present, we will have stronger desirable resonances interacting with the status quo and with each other and possibly letting better outcomes emerge in this eternal collective reality becoming something else.

As we celebrate International Women's Day, let us honour the resilience and creativity of women and girls worldwide and commit to fiercely and joyfully crafting irresistible futures where every one of us can fully thrive in all our diversity.

Before anything else, I am a storyteller

Before telling you more about Feminist Futures, I thought it would be a good idea to start by telling you first about myself and why I am doing Feminist Futures. From personal experience, I can say things have a greater chance to prosper when they are built on strong foundations. Feminist Futures is an authentic expression of my Soul.

My name is Thays and I was born a storyteller.

I said my first words at the age of 10 months and at 1 year old, I was already reciting short poems and prayers taught by my mother and aunts.

I was lucky enough to be the daughter of two storytellers with very different and complementary styles. My mother used to read me stories before going to bed, whereas my father was more about telling stories he had learned from his childhood, only with the care of changing the tragic into happy endings. Both were quite theatrical in their storytelling.

I remember telling stories out loud to my dolls and getting lost in my vast imagination. When I was 5, I let my baby little sister fall from the bed because, instead of watching her, I began to imagine a story and perform it with my dress ribbon. I got teleported back into that room by her scream. Luckily, she was well.

At the age of 7, my mother helped me write a story about a circus in town, and I remember stating very clearly that I would like to be a writer when I grew up. I always find it fascinating how much children know about themselves before they get conditioned by the world's expectations.

At 11, a Portuguese teacher asked us to write a journal as one of our yearly assignments. I love it so much, I never stopped. I have a huge and heavy suitcase full of them in awful handwriting. A computer will never be as comforting as a good piece (peace) of paper.

Writing saved my life despite family dysfunction, depression, and abuse. Telling myself stories about dreamed futures created strong magnetic fields towards them at the odds of high levels of anxiety, codependency and confusion.

Even having studied Journalism and Screenwriting, and told numerous stories in various formats and mediums, I was very unaware of storytelling being my very reason for Being.

But one day, after I turned 30 and was doing my Masters in Gender Studies in London, one of those days where only writing could calm me down, in cathartic writing, pages after pages, I wrote: "Before anything else, I am a storyteller". My Soul was revealing herself to me.

One year or so later, I was facilitating digital storytelling workshops for adolescent girls in Rio. Now that I was a conscious storyteller, it was time to hold spaces for other women and girls to tell their own stories, together.

I don't know if you ever experienced the power of safe, feminist spaces for stories to emerge. Untold stories, unheard stories, stories of deep wounds and trauma. At first, my commitments were to (i) hold the space for deep collective listening; (ii) set wise boundaries so the trauma of one girl was not transformed into a trigger for the rest of the group; (iii) not end the workshop until every girl had finished their story, so they could leave with a sense of completion and the understanding that no matter what happened, they were much more than their stories.

However, I was the one beginning to feel incomplete with those workshops. Something was missing. And again, it was time for my Soul to show me the next step.

To help the girls tell their stories, I used to guide a visualization where they would go on a magical boat to revisit the river of their lives and identify key moments that led them to their present moment. Maybe there was a whirlpool at some point, a rock that changed the course of the river, someone who helped them paddle, or a day of blue sky and calm waters. And one day, as I was guiding them to approach the margin of the river, so they could take off the boat and take their attention back into the room, I first invited them to look to the other side of the river - to the future. Where the course of the river was still in creation, and they could be the captains of their boats and choose their destination, despite not having full control of the waters.

I was not planning on saying that, but my intuition said it through me, out loud, so I could realize the future was the missing piece. After that, life began to send my way several future-related tools, events, and courses. And I discovered in futures methods not only a source of hope and empowerment, but also a great deal of joy.

Feminist Futures is an expression of my past-present-future river of life.