Hey everyone! Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while – I’ve been caught up with my dissertation and final deadlines (I finish my degree in three weeks yas yas yasss). Anyway, things have been quite busy aside from uni so I decided to share a bit on what the We Rise Initiative has been up to.
Last year we launched our #ProgressNotOppress campaign, using social media as a primary tool to get a basic message across. As women, as women from ethnic minorities in particular, we are stuck in an intersectional system of oppression and it has proven difficult to eradicate misogyny and patriarchy globally as the most oppressed people are often left out of the discussion. The campaign focuses on showcasing women breaking free and being them regardless of societal expectations and false standards. This can be through their successes, through their willingness to showcase their sexuality and basically just whatever a woman wants. We’ve done this through a lot of popular culture on Instagram and I must say, I’m loving it! Not only has it been fun scrolling through Tumblr and Instagram pages looking for the right posts, we’ve gotten such a great response.
To us, it is honestly just time to ovary-act, we want to inspire women feel free, to express what they want to at their own will and basically just stick a middle finger up to the oppression. Here are some of the posts:
On another note, we’ve got our Elevate Her London conference today and I am SO excited! We’ve changed the format of the event to a roundtable discussion, focusing on our theme which is ‘Maximizing Your Potential to Break Glass Ceilings’. Speakers include Afua Hirsch, Laween Atroshi, Mariah Idrissi and Bola Sol – I can’t wait to hear what they have to say. All speakers are affected by intersectional oppression in one way or another whether this is because of their gender, race, class or religion. This is also a follow-up from our conference in Lagos in December, which went so well. There are still a few tickets available if you want to come, here’s some more information:
Any way, I promise to put posts up more frequently as soon as I’m done with uni! I want to fuel a new conversation so if you have any ideas or if there are any topics you’d like to discuss with me on the blog, let me know!
Follow the We Rise Initiative on Instagram @WRInitiative for more posts if you like the ones you’ve seen!
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