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.
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