A space for women* to celebrate Global Women’s Strike Week
11-4pm Monday 28th October 2024
Linklater Pavilion, Lewes
* See below for more information about the Global Women’s Strike Week
Jess and Razia, warmly invite you to down tools in solidarity with women all around the world. Rest from your labours in a space for women, in which nothing will be asked of you. You can sit, lie down, stand, move. You can speak or be silent. You can sleep, dance, share, eat dialogue or just wander. This is not a usual space – it is a fertile void that you will fill with your laughter, tears, prayers and stories.
The Linklater is wheelchair accessible. There are no planned activities: whoever flows through the space will contribute to a converging, forming, diverging and dissolving in small or big groups. And also on your own, if you want. What you bring will create our environment. The trees, river, soil and skies around and below us will hold and witness.
Razia and Jess will care for the safety of the space. It is our intention that women, however you identify, feel able to be in this space. We will be sensitive to any behaviour not in tune with this intention, and will seek to meet any tensions, difficulties and challenges experienced by women who come into this space with curiosity, warmth and non-judgment, as well as clear boundaries. Please tell us ahead of time if you have particular needs which we should know about to make the space welcoming for you.
Things you can do, amongst so many others…
If you can, bring some food to share (making sure you display ingredients clearly). We will provide basic hot and cold refreshments.
Bring a poem. Bring a song. Bring musical instruments, games, ideas, questions, unformed wonderings, or your own brand of nothingness. Bring yourself, your care for yourself, for each other and for our world and all its peoples and nations – plant, animal, mineral, flying, swimming, crawling, walking and dancing.
We do not have to do. We do not have to solve or work anything out. We are here to be. We can be broken, and whole in our brokenness. We can heal or get stuck. We can be happy, sad, frustrated, enraged, joyful, curious. We can touch each other lightly or firmly with deep respect for the luminous beings we are.
About Global Women’s Strike Week:
On 24 October 2024, women and allies from around the world will participate in the Global Women’s Strike, commemorating the historic 1975 Icelandic women’s strike, where women halted their unwaged and waged work in the home and outside, in the city and the countryside, bringing the country to a halt.
Inspired by the power of collective action demonstrated by the Icelandic women and other women-led movements, including in the global south, we rise together, to demand a future that prioritises caring for people and the planet — across every race, gender, and generation.
This strike is a unified call to action, highlighting that the survival of our communities depends on radical investment in all caring work and people’s needs, social and climate justice, and equity.
This is not just a one-off call to action; we are using it as a stepping stone towards the 50th anniversary of the Icelandic women’s strike next year.
Women Rising is a coalition of women-led groups and organisations. Our struggles for social and climate justice, equity, peace and liberation are connected.
To join the coalition, please use the googleform
If you have any problems adding your group please email: womenarerisingnow@
*We welcome all self-identifying women into this space.
Surround yourself with strong women…
Surround yourself with strong women, women more beautiful than you, smarter than you, and don’t envy them, admire them.
Surround yourself with good women who know how to listen, who know how to care, from whom you learn to relate to the world, women who teach you their power.
Surround yourself with women to weave an invisible web, a web for other women, so you don’t let them fall, so they feel the collective hug, so they don’t feel alone or crazy.
Surround yourself with women who embrace their shadow, who don’t apologize for being light, who are aware of their beauty and that they are alive.
Surround yourself with irreverent and brave women, women fighters who open the way and tear down walls, women of reference, women who do not ask for permission, who build their homes with the same hands, with which they cradle and caress.
Surround yourself with women who help you live as you are, who give you confidence and affection, who remind you that they are all one.
Roy Galán
