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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).

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Have a dissenting New Year!

To all 15,000 of our readers in Aotearoa and overseas and all 1,000 of our loyal subscribers, we wish you and your whānau the happiest year ahead.

Since we know what makes you happy is to educate, agitate, and organise, we want to share some ideas about actions and invite your own thoughts in the reply section below.

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The night is darkest before dawn

As a Pākehā Scotsman who spent most of his festive seasons in the northern hemisphere, I associate Christmas (and Pākehā New Year) with a time of darkness and renewal, with a pivotal pause and reflection point before making resolutions for the year ahead. In Aotearoa, that pivotal point in our annual journey is better reflected with the Māori New Year in June/July. I thank Tangata Whenua for sharing the gift of Matariki. Having said that, old habits are hard to shake off, and – as my comrade and friend Ian Hyslop has said – the slow days between Christmas and New Year are a time for reflection.

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We shall overcome

The relative calm of the slow days between Christmas and New Year afford an opportuntity for reflection. 2024 has been a challenging year. We have endured a complex hard-right political blitzkrieg from the coalition government. Their focus is on legislative and policy frameworks which promote ‘business freedom’ by facilitating optimum conditions for private profit. This flowering of capitalist fundamentalism (neo-liberalism on steroids) is supported by a range of deceptive ideological tropes – shallow and false representations of equality, such as the idea that the interests of capital and labour are the same or the notion that we can all be capitalists. A raft of contradictions lies below the surface layer of political deceit:

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Kotahitanga: From above and below.

It was good to read that Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer suggested that we “get past ourselves” and collaborate with others, highlighting ongoing policy coordination with the Green Party and the Labour Party. Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick stated, “We’re meeting regularly as the leadership of the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and Labour and identifying where those areas are for collaboration”.

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