Ideas for a Feminist Life in 2025

Ngā mihi o te tau hou. Happy New Year. Kia kaha to all our many readers and 1000 subscribers. In 2024 we had over 25,000 reads from over 15,000 individuals. When we set up the Reimagining Social Work Collective website in 2015 we never imagined it would still be going in 10 years. But we’re here and still passionate about encouraging dissent in the struggle to build a better society. While I’ve written about many issues on the RSW blog, intersectional feminism still drives me forward. Please note feminism is for “all those who travel under the sign women. No feminism worthy of its name would…render trans women into ‘not women'”(Ahmed, 2017, p.14).

In keeping with our New Year’s Day post, I’m keen to share ideas for taking action in Aotearoa. As we said in our previous post, none of us have the time to do everything, but I hope the ideas below prompt you to find your place to stand in living a feminist life in Aotearoa. This post is inspired greatly by my re-reading of Sara Ahmed’s fantastic book ‘Living a Feminist Life’.

This short post suggests some actions for feminist solidarity, with each containing 1-2 actions you could take in your everyday life as a social worker. As always other ideas for action and your comments are welcomed.

A Free Palestine

Palestine is a feminist issue. Over 44,000 people have died in the Israeli genocide, over half being women and children. I can do no better that reproduce words from our ANZSW journal editorial, written a year ago, as nothing has changed, just worsened:

We weep for the women living in the rubble of their homes, birthing in the dust with no medical care, struggling to feed their children, burying their loved ones under bombardment. We burn with anger that this is happening and urge all women across the globe to act to bring transnational feminism into this struggle. We condemn the powerful nations which are continuing to express solidarity with Israel, by vote and by the supply of arms and thereby are continuing to condone the violence towards the women of Palestine. There can be no reproductive justice without freedom, security and justice” (Beddoe et al., 2023, p.1)

The suffering of all in Palestine is horrific. It is the site of unspeakable scale reproductive injustice. Feminist academics in the west have largely been silent, with some notable exceptions (see for example Ferguson & Desai, 2024 and Kynsilehto ,2024). Jemima Repo (2024, p.3) writes:

…reproductive violence against Palestinian women is exercised in many ways. According to the UN, in Gaza, 37 mothers are killed every hour. Miscarriages have increased by 300 per cent due to stress and trauma, and 95 per cent of pregnant and breastfeeding women face severe food insecurity. The lack of pre-natal and post-natal care severely endangers the lives of women and their unborn children. Poor nutrition and lack of pre-natal supplements like iron have made anaemia deficiency endemic, affecting half of all pregnant women by increasing the risk of pre-term birth, low birth weight and bleeding to death during labour. Anaesthetic during labour is virtually non-existent, even for caesarean sections. Some babies come into the world alone, rescued from the bellies of their dead mothers). For premature babies, there is a lack of electricity to run intensive care units (ICUs), which are repeatedly bombed by the Israeli military ….(all sources in original)

Please don’t forget or turn away.  Write to your MP. Sign a petition, End Israel’s Genocide: Call on the NZ government to act | Sign the Amnesty International petition. Sign up for information https://www.psna.nz/

There are weekly rallies/actions in most towns. Find some like-minded colleagues and make a pledge to go as often as is feasible. Make a badge, or a flag and turn up!

Support prevention of violence against women

Sadly, with the New Year barely in, women in Aoteraoa have been victims of violence with tragic ends. Support Women’s Refuge. One night of safety at Women’s Refuge for a woman and child costs just $20.

Gift a Safe Night  https://safenight.nz/

Join a women’s centre near you, for example Te Wāhi Wāhine o Tāmaki Makaurau . Help support their work on stalking legislation or attend one of their Wāhine Māori korero events in 2025, or make a donation.  

Support Reproductive Justice

Just because we have decriminalised abortion in Aotearoa it doesn’t mean our reproductive rights are safe. We have seen the rapid erosion of those rights in the US, with women dying because of draconian laws that ban the most basic reproductive healthcare interventions. Surveilllance of women’s bodies is in essence state level coercive control. In 2022 Eileen Joy and I wrote a blog  ‘Reproductive justice- the fight is not over’ about how the government here could undermine abortion access/ rights despite decriminalisation.

 Follow ALRANZ to learn about our ongoing work to ensure our rights are retained and obstacles to safe abortion care are removed. https://www.facebook.com/ALRANZ/

Go back and read the ANZSW journal special issue on reproductive justice, learn about abortion stigma, menstrual control, barriers to accessing health care and much more. Free to read right here.

Critique Efforts to Silence Women

This is aimed mainly at ‘those’ boring little men on LinkedIn and so forth who mansplain and gaslight. My suggestion is that you have a quota, to avoid too much aggravation in your feminst life. Block 90% of them but let rip every now and then. Let one or two of them hear your rage! Point out their argument in favour of platforming misogynists, transphobes or racists is not free speech; it is validating hate speech.

Be an Angry Woman

Imagine the thousands of times those boring little men have silenced their sisters, work colleagues, and partners with their banalities. And remember when they resort to ‘play the ball not the man’ you know they’re bereft of arguments. Be a “killjoy”, a thorn in the side, take a deep breath and be the one who says, “why is this (administration, emotional labour….) work always done by women?” Follow Sara Ahmed’s blog Feminist Killjoys, for inspiration and to remind yourself that you are not alone.

Be Brave in your Teaching, Practice and Research

If you’re a feminist educator actively choose to research topics that confront and challenge. Think about the role of discomfort in teaching contentious areas, do we avoid or pacify? Lopez-Humphreys et al. (2023) is a great read on the pedagogy of discomfort in social work education. Let’s reflect on this argument by Australian colleagues that trigger warnings may lead to the “pathologization of the experience of discomfort while simultaneously silencing oppressed students who may not identify with the language or experience of being triggered” (Newcomb & Venning, 2024, p1.).

One of my PhD supervisors said (when I got a shitty comment from a very powerful organisation who had ‘read’ my thesis prior to submission) “Liz, if you ain’t getting shit, you ain’t doing shit”. Teaching social work does mean making things uncomfortable. Poking at the uncritical religiosity that underpins anti-choice, trans/homophobic beliefs, and challenging those still struggling with their place in this land as tauiwi or Tangata Tiriti will get you pushbacks. White men will complain about you and your feminist colleagues especially if they are Māori or Pasifika. Student evaluations will reveal biases (Daskalopoulou, 2024).

Practice Citational Justice

This the final point in the manifesto because I have demonstrated the principle in the choices I made about citations for this post. Sara Ahmed (2017, p.16) writes: “Citations can be feminist bricks: they are the materials though which, from which, we create our dwellings. My citation policy has affected the kind of house I have built.” Making a conscious effort to cite mainly women, and in this land Māori women, and women of colour, is a step towards raising voices against male domination of academic spaces.  Academics, let’s review our 2025 reading lists. Could you swap out some of those “classic” or “seminal” social work books and articles and hunt for alternatives? In a book club for reading for relaxation? Make 2025 the year that you only read women of colour.

Kia kaha to the women of Aotearoa as we brace for another year of fighting patriarchy.  I wish you all a happy safe year and strength for the battles ahead.

And another friendly reminder, time is running out, please write your submissions asap:  

 Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill| Closing date Tuesday 7th January. Action Station offers an easy Treaty Principles Bill submission tool. Advice on making a submission from NZCTU, the Green Party, the Labour Party, Te Tiriti is Us

For a very helpful detailed overview on the international aspects of the Treaty Principles Bill and ideas for submission writing see this brand new post from Tina Ngata : Protecting Indigenous Treaties and Ending Colonialism everywhere – the International Dimensions of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Oranga Tamariki (Responding to Serious Youth Offending) Amendment Bill | Closing date Thursday 9th January. See the draft submission from People Against Prisons Aotearoa.

References

Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Duke University Press.

Beddoe, L., Joy, E., Meadows, L., Cleaver, K., & Crichton-Hill, Y. (2023). Reproductive justice: Holding the line and pushing forward. Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work, 35(4), 1–12. Retrieved from https://anzswjournal.nz/anzsw/article/view/1142

Daskalopoulou, A. (2024). Understanding the impact of biased student evaluations: an intersectional analysis of academics’ experiences in the UK higher education context. Studies in Higher Education, 49(12), 2411-2422. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2024.2306364

Ferguson, L., & Desai, S. (2024). Sexual and reproductive health and rights in Palestine: Securing spaces to speak out. Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 32(1), 2397956. https://doi.org/10.1080/26410397.2024.2397956

Kynsilehto,A. (2024). Feminist silences and silencing the critique of Gaza genocide. Gender, Place & Culture, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2024.2409703

Lopez-Humphreys, M., Araujo Dawson, B., & Rosich, G. R. (2023). Discomforting pedagogies and affective learning processes in diversity & social justice courses. Social Work Education, 42(8), 1418-1439. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2022.2033200

Newcomb, M., & Venning, A. (2024). Defending discomfort: A critical social work case against trigger warnings. Journal of Social Work Education, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2024.2387711

Repo, J. (2024). Genocide and the destruction of the means of social reproduction in Gaza. European Journal of Politics and Gender, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1332/25151088y2024d000000061