EJC Voices

On the week of International Women’s Day NC Interfaith Power & Light Director, Rev. Susannah Tuttle shares how women around the world are coming together with compassion and forgiveness, with curiosity and convictions, with expansive vision and a deeply personal call to action in response to the urgency of these times, by highlighting the Feminist Agenda for a Green New Deal and the responsibility of the world’s religions to affirm women’s dignity and human rights.

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We are living in very challenging times and many days it seems as though the world as we know it is completely falling apart. With compassion and forgiveness, I pray that the heartbreak we are experiencing is actually a soul-matter of renewing our faith through a process of breaking our hearts wide open so that we can experience even more love than we can yet understand during these very troubling times. I am grateful that we are able to come together in community and to know that the season of Spring will bring about a renewal of the universal lifeforce.

I am grateful for the invitation to share during the week of International Women’s Day. It is my intention to lift our spirits by sharing inspiration and information about current work taking place around the globe to advance Gender Justice ~ as a central part of Renewing the Heart of Our Humanity.

Many of you know that I, in my role as Director of NC Interfaith Power & Light, spend an enormous amount of my time working to bring about Climate Justice.  Although I have been helping to lead the theological conversations in North Carolina about the importance of Eco-Justice and caring for our Mother Earth for over a decade, it has just been in the past couple of years that I have been working with the U.S. Fair Shares Collaborative as a Faith Community Liaison. 

It is through this perspective on what the United States responsibility and accountability on an international scale is, that I have begun partnering with a women’s environment and development organization called WEDO – such a beautiful acronym – the W is for Women, the E is Environment, D is Development, and O is Organization – WEDO!

WEDO is a global women’s advocacy organization for a just world that promotes & protects human rights, gender equality and the integrity of the environment. Established in 1991 WEDO grew out of an extraordinary group of women, including Gloria Steinem, who started Women USA in 1979, and became the organization it is today through the vision of WEDO pioneers, Wangari Maathai, Vandana Shiva, and many others.

I don’t know about you, but when I find out that organization’s like WEDO exist – my heart grows three sizes larger!

WEDO’s organizational vision statement is: 

A just world that promotes and protects human rights, gender equality and the integrity of the environment.

Doesn’t that sound very similar to the foundational values of UU Principles?

Just imagine:

A just world that promotes and protects human rights, gender equality and the integrity of the environment.

Is this even possible? But of course! Anything is possible, if the heart of our humanity can be renewed.  The practical implementation question to ask is:

What conditions need to exist in order for this transition to be realized?

WEDO describes the conditions necessary as:

A world where: Leadership at all levels is diverse, representative, feminist and intersectional;

A world where: Policies center ecological health, human rights and gender justice;

A world where: Feminist solutions to creating a regenerative economy are implemented across countries and communities;

A world where: Fundamental human rights, including the right to food, water, land, housing, healthcare and education are universally realized;

A world where: Bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights for all are fully achieved.

Sounds celestial, doesn’t it? 

I know I want to live in this kind of world, and I imagine you all do too.  So how do we get there? 

Divinity often comes in the form of threes. WEDO’s theory of change is designed as a three pillar framework: Moving Power, Moving Money, and Moving Minds.

One of the primary platforms WEDO has developed to make these moves possible is a Gender Climate Tracker App.

This is an incredible resource for any of us that have been trying to follow the very complicated Climate Negotiations at the United Nations… there’s an App for that! 

Since the Paris Climate Agreement took place in 2015, the global community has entered into a crucial phase where Governments, UN officials, and civil society organizations – of which faith communities are a part of –  now require tools and technical support to comprehend, track, translate, and intervene in global policy processes.

WEDO has helped to develop the Gender Climate Tracker App downloadable on your smartphone which allows everyone to become a part of what is happening on the global stage of decision making. 

With the ability to track the roles women are playing in international climate diplomacy and report on gender-specific progress in each country…

THIS is an opportunity for how we can all help to collectively bring about gender justice and renew the heart of our humanity!  

No doubt, we are living in an exciting moment for climate action and activism. 

Another very exciting resource WEDO invites us to participate in is the endorsement of the Feminist Agenda for a Green New Deal.

The energy around the Green New Deal has incited a national conversation around solutions to the climate crisis— solutions that are based in the real, systemic, transformative change that is needed to meet the scale of what science and justice demand. 

Movement leaders, activists, politicians, and academics are seizing the opportunity to shape the vision of what this systemic overhaul could look like, how it would happen, and who it would center.

In early 2019, WEDO joined a coalition of women’s rights and climate justice organizations came together in recognition that feminist analysis must be part of this discourse. The coalition includes WEDO, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, MADRE, the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network – known as WECAN, and Grassroots Global Justice Alliance among others.

In a conversation focused on envisioning a healthy planet and communities, these groups knew that gender equality was-and is-key. 

Thus the Feminist Agenda for a Green New Deal was borne. This global coalition consists of individuals and organizations working towards justice at all of the intersections that the climate crisis touches: migrant justice, racial justice, economic justice, labor justice, reproductive justice, and gender justice.

Below is the opening narrative of the 10 Principles of the Feminist Agenda because I think it is some of the most profound language written about the climate crisis and what needs to be done to actually solve it.

“As a collective, we welcome the opportunity presented by the Green New Deal – and by the efforts of advocates and progressive policymakers – to secure rights-based policies and programs recognizing the global implications of US climate action and inaction. 

To truly address the root causes, as well as the scope and scale of the climate crisis, the Green New Deal must be cross-cutting in its approach, steadfast in feminist principles, and strive to combat historical oppressions. It must advance a transformative feminist agenda that centers the leadership of women, and acknowledges and addresses the generational impacts of colonization and anti-Black racism. It must end oppression against and be led and articulated by frontline, impacted communities – especially women of color, Black women, Indigenous women, people with disabilities, LGBTQIAP+ people, people from the Global South, migrant and refugee communities, and youth.

The climate crisis has emerged from interlocking systems of capitalism, resource extraction, labor exploitation, the commodification of nature, settler colonialism, imperialism, and militarism. It has roots in the exploitation of enslaved people, whose labor created wealth in the Global North, and of the continuing systemic racism that deepens and institutionalizes global inequity. 

To confront this crisis, we need coherence across policy sectors, from trade to military spending to development, to confront these interconnections. We must recommit to multilateralism and a democratic rule of law to build a policy architecture that can stabilize the planet and secure a just transition to post-exploitative economies.”

Yes, yes, & yes, WEDO.

Women and girls around the world are demanding and creating systemic change and a sustainable future for all. We need collective power to attain a just future – we need you.

For anyone who asks why feminism? Because at its core, feminism is simply belief in full social, economic, and political equality for women. Therefore, if you believe that women should have the same political, social, and economic rights as men, you are a feminist.

As a lifelong Unitarian Universalist, I join women of faith around the world working to create a world where everyone can thrive no matter their gender, gender identity or expression, or sexual orientation.

Together we are on the frontlines of faith communities committed to gender justice and I do this in part by lifting up the UU Principles’ “living tradition” of wisdom and spirituality which honor:

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

These strong values and moral guiding principles are deeply connected to the principles of a Feminist Agenda for a Green New Deal and WEDO’s vision of A just world that promotes and protects human rights, gender equality and the integrity of the environment.

Here are the International Women’s Coalition 10 Principles for Engagement

As policymakers, advocates, and communities shape the Green New Deal, we must: 

• Require intersectional gender analysis across all actions.
• Recognize that there is no such thing as domestic climate policy.
• Confront institutional patriarchy and racism.
• Center Indigenous Peoples’ rights and leadership.
• Systemically confront exploitative and unsustainable production patterns.
• Advance reproductive justice.
• Ensure democratically controlled, community-led solutions.
• Reject false and harmful responses to climate change that fail to address root causes.
• Create regenerative economies that center systemic, feminist alternatives.
• Respect the leadership of young people as they fight for future generations.

Again, these actions and activities reflect directly upon what we say we value as progressive people of faith.  

In closing I will circle around to reminding us that March 8th is International Women’s Day. 

And to also remind us that as of today – the Equal Rights Amendment has still not been ratified in the United States. We are all being asked to imagine a world of gender justice, to affirm women’s dignity and human rights, and to renew the heart of our humanity. 

For the love of our Mother Earth and all her beloved children of all species… May it be so!

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*Susannah Tuttle, M.Div (she/her)
Director, NC Interfaith Power & Light | ncipl.org
NC Council of Churches Eco-Justice Connection | ejc.ncchurches.org
US Fair Share Community Liaison | usfairshare.org