Events 

NEWSFLASH!  National Congress of Women 
Day One — Women Rising. Why Women? Why Now?  
Tues 30 November 2021, 10.00-4.30 pm
Program and registration now live!  
Further details are on the National Congress of Women website.  

Scroll down this page to find information on some of the events that the Congress has held: 
–  Members circles 
–  Meeting with a First Woman
–  Women in Climate and Health - women's networking breakfast (March 2021, Canberra)–  
–  ​Integrating the arts conversation event – How can the arts help to find new ways to look at climate change and find solutions? (Oct 2020)
 – Canberra film and philosophy night (joint event with A Chorus of Women) (Oct 2020)
 – Our inaugural meetings (January/February 2020)

See our Women's Climate Conversations page for information, video recordings and reports of our 2020 and 2021  online conversations series.  
 

Join us to celebrate the Women’s Climate Congress!
AGM: Thursday, 28 October 2021,
12:30-2pm AESDT (NSW, ACT, Vic), 11.30am-1pm (Qld), 12.00-1.30pm (SA), 11.00am-12.30pm (NT), 9.30-11am (WA)
The Women's Climate Congress was incorporated just over a year ago, and at our upcoming AGM, we’d like to celebrate our progress and be inspired for the next steps. Please join us!
Please RSVP on Trybooking

We’ll look back over our achievements of the last year, including meeting with MPs, connecting with other organisations and our work to promote women’s voices and shift the conversation towards collaboration on the vitally important issue of climate action. We’ll also look back at the contributions from our online speaker series and our conversations with you, our members, and how they are informing our new-format National Congress of Women.

Lyn Stephens and Jane Geltch have been working on our first Annual Report, and I’m looking forward to seeing their creative presentation of the unfolding of this last years’ work. 

During the formal part of the meeting, we will:

• vote on a special resolution to change our constitution so we can apply for Donor Gift Recipient (DGR) Status.
• discuss and vote on the question whether WCC should set a membership fee of $25. 
• vote to appoint at least 4 directors. Please feel free to send any comments on any of the above items ahead of the meeting. 

Read further details of the formal proceedings here

An AGM would not be the same without an ‘after dinner speaker’ (or in this case, after lunch/morning tea!) 
And we are excited to announce that our guest speaker for the event will be Biff Ward – who many of you will know/recognised as one of the indefatigable women from the 1970s  women’s liberation movement who was features in the movie Brazen Hussies.
Biff’s talk will be entitled: Memories and Learnings from Early Women's Liberation
 
About Biff Ward
Writer and activist, Biff Ward is one of the original, so called ‘Brazen Hussies’, those fiery feminist activists of the 1960s and ‘70s who defied the status quo, demanding gender equality and profound social change.
She featured in the recent documentary film, Brazen Hussies, that celebrates the social activism and grass-roots nature of the Women’s Liberation movement.
In March this year, Biff was one of the speakers on stage at the Canberra rally outside parliament house. In a beautifully moving speech, she brought women to tears as spoke of her joy, at the age of 78, in finally seeing women rally in huge numbers to protest against harassment, violence and inequality. A long-time campaigner for a woman’s right to be heard, Biff told the crowd she never thought she’d live to witness such a collective show of women’s strength.
 
Biff’s talk will be followed by Q&A, a chat with Biff and with each other about how to build our new women’s movement towards systems changes that will finally allow full participation of women on their own terms (not just ‘fitting in’), with the elevation of women’s policy priorities and agendas to their rightful place alongside men.  And we will share a toast to the Women’s Climate Congress. #WomenRising!  
 
As our AGM will be only days before COP26, our eyes will be on that most important meeting and the ways in which WCC can follow up on the undertakings from that meeting. See our campaign to write to MPs ahead of COP26.

---

Members circles 
About once a quarter, the Women’s Climate Congress invites members to join an online conversation circle. These are different to our monthly Women’s Climate Conversations online, which have a more webinar style of format. These member’s conversations are run as virtual circle conversations. Each has a theme concerned with climate change issues, our societal structures, responses and ethics, and the ways that women think and feel in the face of such threats to our families and future, and to the Earth and all her besieged and dying species.
These circles, hosted online by our membership convenor, Lyn Stephens, are for new members and for those who have been with us for a while who want to stay connected, get to know each other, hear about what the Congress aspires to achieve and what we are doing, and contribute ideas.   

How can the arts inspire and sustain us in this time of existential challenge?
Members circle (online), August 2021
On  17 August, 21 members from around Australia met online to talk about how the arts influence public discourse.  The online circle was facilitated by Lyn Stephens. The circle was opened with a recording of A Chorus of Women singing ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ with words by Canberra poet Hazel Hall and music by Glenda Cloughley. Members introduced themselves briefly in breakout groups - considering a time when an artwork/artistic expression had had a particular impression on them. 

Dr Sally Blake, who has been coordinating our 'Integrating (or more precisely 'Reintegrating') the Arts') group spoke a little about her visual art practice in relation to climate change of how the arts express and speaks upon what is deeply held and felt. 
Other artists in the circle also shared information about their projects. 

One participant said: The failure to act on climate change is a failure of imagination. The arts can bring us to the imagining of a renewed future.
Another said : Amid a culture bedded in scientific facts and dry journalism, the arts move us emotionally – that other immense realm of feeling which drives much of our behaviour and expression. As women, this is our familiar realm, and the arts can join us wordlessly together.
Others commented on the power of art to enliven protest.

We are a movement of women, and we need to re-plan and revise the language and direction of societal politics and economics. We talked of bringing the arts forward in public discourse: the necessity for such expression from the heart, to restore compassion, empathy, contemplation, grieving, and renewal to public narratives.

Read a report of this event here
 
After the event, www.kuweni.com  visual artist Kuweni Dias Mendis wrote:  
"Thank you for hosting for such a beautiful online space that I felt inclusive and safe. I really enjoyed the interactions, insights and was feeling connected to the women knowing we were all wanting the same thing even though we had different ways of going about it. 
I am looking forward to connecting with these artists and working together as artists to connect people back with nature. 
I must also make a special mention about the meditations you did at the start  and your comments about reflecting about the art work before commenting that really struck a chord with me. Thank you bring that feminine way to the way we conduct our selves in a meeting and allowing everyone to speak without power and control I truly appreciate it."

---

Women Rising — Members circles (online), May 2021
On 18 and 20 May we explored the theme of Women Rising, which focused particularly on three of our values from the Congress vision and values statement: 

We, a web of women, seek and support wisdom for the common good.
We acknowledge the ancestral wisdom of First Peoples and accept our responsibility as custodians of a precious world that must be nurtured as it nurtures us.
As holders of a great and universal desire to look after the young, we raise our voices, confident in the potential of women to lead positive change.

The conversation was introduced by Congress member Honey Nelson who is a former veterinarian and aviator, an artist and a writer, and a woman who has lived a number of years in central Australia working in remote Indigenous communities with love and respect for their cultures.
On 20 May, we were also joined by Kath Kovac a new member who has worked with women in her community over several years and has now started her own business, Kupala, to empower women to change the patriarchal working culture into one that supports women and their unique needs and leadership styles.
Thanks to all members that joined these two lively conversations.

Honey reminded us that it is a mere  5000 years of 100,000 years of human history, in which patriarchies have ascended to dominate worldwide hierarchical thought, structure, deities, and consequent history of conflicts and take-overs.  These unmoderated exploitations have finally toppled our Earth’s climate balance, and harmed her life-sustaining waters, skies, and soils.
We exchanged our personal women’s stories of struggle, and our collective realisation that Now is the time when women’s leadership must rise and claim equal voice:  as our descendants and all Life on Earth are facing a crisis of fire, flood, and unpredictable planetary upheavals.  Our present leaders are failing to act with the immediacy and bold extremity which this emergency demands.  Women’s natural ways of  inclusion and nonadversarial debate are urgently needed, to balance the modes of power and decision-making that currently determine the climate and economic legacies we will leave to our children.  This is a major part of Congress mission and action.
Yes, Women are Rising!
Read  a longer report and reflection from Honey Nelson  
Photo by Honey Nelson from her artistic and poetic vision, Womansong, published online: https://womansong.net/

---

Meetings with a First Woman
One of the working circles of the Congress was set up to encourage ‘Respectful learning and sharing relationships with Indigenous Women’ and we are deeply aware that reaching out must be done in respect and friendship.

Congress member Honey Nelson is a settler woman who has developed friendships with Indigenous people over many years, and on 25 February she introduced Congress members Kirsten Anker and Janet Salisbury to Ms. Diyan (Dee) Coe, Wiradjuri woman and resident caretaker of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra.  Honey’s longer story about this meeting, written in compliance with Diyan, is linked below. Here is an excerpt and introduction: 
 
‘This first meeting was more a teaching than a conversation.  We learned something about the First Peoples’ ancestral way of societal and spiritual balance:  in the equal significance of women and men, of their shared and also their separate practical and sacred responsibilities, the deep and necessary differences in their tasks and the ways they think.
 
We talked about a lot of things: including the unhealed cruelties not only upon Indigenous peoples and country, but also upon the early convicts.  I have concentrated on Diyan’s picture of men and women, that we have similarities but necessary differences.  In my early conversations with Dee on Women's business, this fact of our special identity is central. I think we can open an opportunity to talk more about women's deep realms of understanding and responsibility.’
As Honey says, the messages of balance, equity, responsibility, good law, respect for all Life, are worth spelling out. Read the full report here

Since February, we have met with Diyan on 2 further occasions. See a report of the May meeting here. 

---

​

​

​
​

---

Clockwise from top left: Sophie Lewis, Liz Hanna, Felicity McCallum, Dhani Gilbert speaking at the breakfast event

Arnagretta Hunter moderating the Q&A

Janet Salisbury welcomes attendees at the breakfast

Networking over breakfast!

Women in Climate and Health - women's networking breakfast  
7:30-9:30am, Tuesday 16 March 2021
Senate Rose Garden, Parliament Square & King George Terrace, Parks ACT
The Congress was proud to host this free event in collaboration with Dr Sophie Lewis (ACT Commissioner for Sustainability and Environment), and Dr Arnagretta Hunter (physician and cardiologist, ANU Climate Change Institute).  

The breakfast was an opportunity for women and gender diverse people to come together, connect, and collaborate in a safe and welcoming space.  In addition to diverse ACT and region women, we invited all women federal MPs and senators, and ACT MLAs and we were delighted to welcome Julie Owens (ALP, MP for Paramatta), Alicia Payne (ALP, MP for Canberra) and Senator Janet Rice (ALP, Victoria) as well as ACT MLAs — Marisa Paterson (ALP), Elizabeth Lee (Canberra Liberals) and  Emma Davidson (ACT Greens). 

Congress Founder, Dr Janet Salisbury, welcomed guests, and Sophie and Arnagretta led an alfresco panel discussion and Q&A about the ongoing impacts of and recovery from the 2019-20 bushfires, and the health and other community implications of climate change overall.

Dhani Gilbert (former Young ACT Citizen of the Year, Wiradjuri woman and environmental science student) spoke without notes and enlivened us with her aspiration to build the connections between ancient Indigenous knowledge and western science to deal with the climate challenges ahead. 

Felicity McCallum (an Awabakal woman from the Hunter Valley and Reconciliation Scholar at Charles Sturt University) spoke movingly on climate change and the bushfires through a lens of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relationships and talked about how to reach out to those with whom we disagree with humour and tenderness. Here’s a link to Felicity’s presentation.

Dr Liz Hanna (Honorary Senior Fellow, Fenner School of Environment & Society, and Climate Change Institute; Chair, Environmental Health Working Group, World Federation of Public Health Associations) brought some of us to tears reminding us of the terrible bushfires of 2020 and their ongoing impact.
Here’s a link to Liz’s presentation.  

Speaker bios:
Dhani Gilbert, is a proud Kalari (Lachlan River) Wiradjuri young woman who’s focused on achieving just and sustainable outcomes for First Nations Peoples, Country, community, and young people. Dhani is currently a second year university student studying at the ANU, the Co-chair of the ACT Youth Advisory Council, a community outreach educator with the Woodlands & Wetlands Trust, and working with young women in ACT schools to facilitate culturally safe learning and community connection through weaving workshops. Dhani is a community driven young person passionate about doing what she can where she can to address inequality, First Nations injustice, protect our environment, empower young people, and contribute to lasting change that allows all people to thrive and flourish. Dhani’s contributions in community has been recognised and awarded 2018 Young Canberra Citizen of the Year, 2018 ACT NAIDOC Youth of the Year, 2018 ACT NAIDOC Scholar of the Year, 2019 ACT Miss NAIDOC, 2019 Austcover Young Landcare Leadership Award, and a 2020 finalist for ACT Young Woman of the Year.

​Felicity McCallum has 25 years of experience in education in the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors in Australia and France. Felicity is a Awabakal woman (Mid-North Coast region of NSW). Her doctoral research focuses on the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. She lectures at the Australian Catholic University on the common good, dignity, solidarity, preferential option for the poor and care for creation. Felicity is a facilitator in formative spirituality and non-executive Director on a number of national boards in Australia, including the National Council of Churches.
 
Dr Elizabeth (Liz) Hanna chairs the Environmental health Working Group of the World Federation of Public Health Associations. Prior to that, she was President of the Climate and Health Alliance.

Late in 2008, she joined the ANU to convene Australia's National Climate Change Adaptation Research Network for Human Health. She continues to be contracted by governments here in Australia and across the pacific to design and conduct climate change vulnerability assessments and present keynote addressed at international and national conferences. She is a recipient of multiple awards for her research and advocacy on climate change impacts on human health.

Dr Arnagretta Hunter is a physician and cardiologist with an interest in environmental health and the impacts of climate change. She is the inaugural Human Futures Fellow at the ANU College of Health and Medicine.

​Dr Sophie Lewis is the ACT Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment. She is also a climate scientist and is a lead author on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, which are used worldwide to develop policies around climate change.
Dr Lewis was named 2019 ACT Scientist of the Year in recognition of her research, particularly on weather extremes and how climate change contributes to events such as bushfires and droughts.

Dr Janet Salisbury is the founder of the Women’s Climate Congress. Formerly she founded and build up the Canberra business Biotext Pty Ltd, which became an Australian leader in writing, editing and designing science content for government and other organisations. This gave her a strong interest in dialogue around public policy issues and has initiated, facilitated and supported many initiatives to promote collaborative conversations in the Canberra community. 

Sally Blake and Robert Glasser with Sally's artwork 'Lithosphere'

How can the arts help to find new ways to look at climate change and find solutions?

On 22 October 2020, an enlivening conversation between old Canberra friends Dr Sally Blake and Dr Robert Glasser showed how pathways to creative social change can emerge when artists and scientists share their stories.

In this first in a series of Women’s Climate Congress conversations, visual artist Sally Blake met with Robert Glasser, a climate change practitioner, advocate and policymaker. Bringing together their unique perspectives, knowledge and ways of thinking, they gave a fresh look at climate change and its impact on humans and the natural world.  This opened into a lively conversation with the audience.

We were reminded about the wise paths Indigenous peoples take when they integrate profound scientific understanding in stories, visual arts, music and dance. Sally’s stories about artworks she created after last summer’s catastrophic fires encouraged Robert to talk of experiences in climate-devastated traditional Australian and African communities.

Read the full story of this event in Sally’s own words illustrated by her beautiful artwork

Read more about our 'integrating the arts' initiative

---

Canberra film and philosophy night 

​On Thursday 1 October, ACT members joined with members of A Chorus of Women  at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture to watch the film Signs out of Time – a documentary film about the life and work of Marija Gimbutas  (1921–1994)(see http://belili.org/marija/aboutSIGNS.html )    
The film was introduced by A Chorus of Women founder, storyteller, composer and singer, Dr Glenda Cloughley.  Glenda has drawn inspiration for the many songs and performance works she has written for A Chorus of Women from wisdom in the most ancient layers of European mythology, her training in Jungian analysis and PhD research in cultural psychology. Glenda dedicated the evening to her close friend and mentor Dorothy Cameron (1917–2002), an Australian archeologist whose work followed the same path as that of Marija Gimbutas. 

The film transported us to Neolithic Europe of 10,000 years and more ago. There, people lived peaceably and had a spiritual connection to 'Mother Earth', nature and the cycles of birth , death and regeneration, which they  perceived as a goddess.  From sites across central Europe Gimbutas retrieved 100s of Earth goddess (Venus) figurines. She meticulously studied them to understand the symbols and patterns they portrayed.  Made by the friends of Gimbutas, the film is also a fascinating story of women passing knowledge down generations. It is also a grounding story of how we can gain confidence from the indigenous European cultural heritage, which points to the rebalancing needed today for us to transition from the present power-over (‘warrior king’) systems to more regenerative, community structures that favour harmony with nature.  

After the film, local artist Dr Sally Blake, who is a member of the Congress and coordinates our 'integrating the arts' circle, and has also been much inspired by the work of Marija Gimbutas, showed us her life-sized black and white drawing of an ancient European goddess figurine she calls 'The Ancient Gaze', as well as some of the 100s of coloured drawings of goddess figurines that she has made since the start of the COVID outbreak.   

Glenda brought us into the present time  by reading a poem by Dorothy Cameron called 'The Singing Hill' . The poem tells what Dorothy heard in the original place now known as Capital Hill.  It also tells of the women who gathered regularly with Senator Jo Vallentine in Parliament House in the early 1990s . They would encircle the fountain near the entrance to the chambers, meditate and hum together.  When she retired from the Senate, Jo Vallentine read 'The Singing Hill' into Hansard.    You can read the full text of the  poem is here: 'The Singing Hill' by Dorothy Cameron.

Viewing Capital Hill as a location of “endless disputes”, in the poem Dorothy observes that: 

… once it was the Singing Hill  
The hill which sang the Earth Song
At the meeting of the ley-lines
And the crossing of the song-lines 
In the centre of the Hills of the Circling.

She then proceeds to reveal the profound vision that guided her life and work.
 
With the passing of the seasons
Music from the Singing Hill
Will transcend the voices
Of the dark suits
Shouting their abuse …
 
The shouting will be stilled.
The healing of the planet will begin . …
 
And the daughters of a different Dreaming Will recover the mystery,
Rediscover the harmony,
Of the Centre of the Circling Around the Singing Hill.
 
And to close the evening, we played video footage of A Chorus of Women and friends singing  'Hymn to Gaia'  and 'The Promise'  from the finale of The Gifts of the Furies,  Glenda Cloughley's big story song about climate change, in Old Parliament House in 2010 (with Bob Hawke in the audience!).  To see this footage, as well as Bob Hawke's impromptu remarks  after the performance, see A Chorus of Women's News item 'Vale Bob Hawke'.  

It was marvellous to gather face-to-face and a great release from our Covid/Zoom bubbles as well as from the day-to-day work of starting a new organisation, and replace these day to day tasks with a poetic, musical, artistic and thought provoking journey from neolithic Europe to Parliament House Canberra! 

Our inaugural meetings 
On 20 January and 11 February 2020, as bushfires ravaged our country and smoke and hail swirled around the city, 44 women gathered in Canberra to explore how women could lead a movement for united action on climate change. In those discussions we:

• shared what brings us here
• offered suggestions on how to enact a no blame culture and create the cultural change needed to allow collaboration across current divides 
• considered how we can empower/inspire women to join us
• formed our initial identify and vision
• identified actions and concepts we need to take us forward
• re-affirmed the energy and creativity that can emerge when women gather to think deeply about important issues.

See an account, photos and reflections on the inaugural meeting.