“We agree! Ethical Markets posts all this news from our longtime partner WORLDPULSE, the most inspiring global media group networking women’s leadership worldwide.
~Hazel Henderson, Editor“
Welcome to the New Decade!
In 10 years, I know we’ll look back at the 2020s as the turning point to gender equality. The moment where there was no turning back. We will witness a surge of women’s collective power never before seen activated through technology and people power in communities. Movements like #MeToo and #NiUnaMenos have only shown us the tip of the iceberg.
This day is coming, but there is work to do. Fortunately, we know what needs to be done, which you’ll find in our 5 strategies for 2020 below.
The just released World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report is sobering – we are still on pace for 100 years until gender equality, 250+ for closing the pay gap. And, with less than half of the world’s women online (48%), progress to close the digital gender gap is slowing due to stubborn social norms and unaffordable costs. This is a deep chasm blockading women’s access to future economic and social opportunity that must be bridged.
In the coming years, I am committing myself and World Pulse to play a leading role in bringing women’s movements and the technology sector together to increase women’s voice and power across the globe – linking movements to speed up the pace to global gender equity. It’s high time for women-led antidotes to the big tech empires to rise and present the alternative path.
In hindsight, 2019 was a wake up call for me. I looked around and realized that World Pulse is one of the last global women’s social networks still standing strong. Over the past five years I’ve seen dozens of women’s online platforms and networks weaken and fold, some – but by no means all – are outlined in the recent online New York Times article, calling this phenomenon in the US a “gradual collapse.”
In the meantime, World Pulse has only grown stronger. With an established community of grassroots women logging on from every country of the world, we have become experts in how online community can lead to offline change, how to create online safe space for women, and conduct ethical digital research. We continue to step forward confidently on our strategic roadmap: growing more women leaders, building movements, and amplifying previously unheard voices.
In fact, in the past year we have doubled the engagement of women voicing on WorldPulse.com. Our community has reported that they’ve made the highest impact ever recorded in one year, improving the lives of 5 million people, adding up to a total of 12.6 million since we began rigorous tracking in 2012.
Aching, raw, inspiring stories blaze across our network. Women speaking out from the frontlines of the occupation of Kashmir, the deteriorating war in Cameroon, the bravery of blind women starting education campaigns for women with disabilities, climate resilience leadership in Philippines, gun violence in the United States, indigenous rights in Canada, and the surging protests to end rape and muslim discrimination in India.
Some of the most common words our members use to describe World Pulse when asked are: “My Home”, My Mother”, “My Family”, “My World”. Many are telling us that because of the support of our global sisterhood they did not commit suicide, that they’ve gotten jobs, changed policies for girls education, changed social norms around taboo subjects like menstruation and femicide, are collaborating on new, cross-border social change movements with their newfound sisters.
Thank YOU for making so much of this possible.
Looking ahead, here are 5 areas we have set our sights for more impact in 2020 and beyond:
We will link women leaders to build more movements across issues and regions
- 2019:We launched 18 new topic and region hubs that are nested on our social network. These hubs connect the leaders, stories, and resources from our network around key issues important to women globally. We are tired of women being relegated to single-issue silos like women & water, women & microfinance, women & reproductive health. Unfortunately this limits the holistic, intersectional nature of how women build solutions in their communities. Now we are breaking down those walls and, with a few clicks, our members can build community and network across all the issues they care about 24 hours a day on hubs such as: health, education, peace & security, environment, technology, girls, men & boys, peace & security, human rights, ending violence, and more.
- 2020:We will increase engagement and impact on select hubs, like environment/climate, health, and technology to link more disconnected issue-based networks. We will launch key hubs to the public throughout 2020 and tie them to key international dates such as Earth Day, International Girls Day and more.
We will grow women digital empowerment trainers everywhere to help bridge the gendered digital divide:
- 2019: We launched our digital ambassador train-the-trainer program. In the last 6 months 115 digital ambassadors in 25 countries have trained more than 200,000 women and girls with 701 events on how to bring their voices online and use the internet to shape their destinies.
- 2020: We’ll expand digital leaders into new regions with 2 new cohorts per year. Ultimately, we will cultivate women digital trainers in every community, helping to bridge the gendered digital divide and provide important career building digital skills. In the future 90% of jobs will require digital skills and women and girls are still too far behind, with 20-40% less access to internet than men on average globally.
We will raise the volume on women’s voices with crowdsourcing
- 2019: We crowdsourced women’s recommendations on Peace & Security from 62 countries, including conflict zones. Our resulting Peace & Security report has been delivered to Peace & Security policy makers internationally and the US State Department. Importantly, simply being invited to speak through the campaign sparked greater women’s participation in peace processes in several countries.
- 2020: We will build on our proven crowdsourcing methods and launch a major Advocacy Acceleration Allianceto regularly channel women’s voices to global decision-making forums, media outlets, and advocacy partners. We will kick off in March 2020 with a signature campaign called #SheTransformsTech – a crowdsourced campaign to unite women’s recommendations, leaders, and organizations to transform the future of technology, including Artificial intelligence, blockchain, mobile, internet access, digital literacy, and digital movements.
We will broadcast our expertise on how digital technology can boost women’s movements.
- 2019: We were showcased as the future of women’s movements on the plenary stage at the largest women’s conference of the decade, World Pulse leader, Chi Yvonne Leina, sat on stage next to the founder of #MeToo movement, #TimesUp director, and the daughter of Nelson Mandela among others and highlighted the power of digital movements for the next era of women’s organizing.
- At the #WomenFunded conference we teamed up with Global Women’s March to educate funders on digital collective impact strategies. We also shared learnings from World Pulse’s new collective impact model where we are digitally linking women leaders across India, teaming up with 4 prominent women’s international organizations, Global Fund for Women, Rise Up, How Women Lead, and Public Health International.
- Finally, we partnered with academic researcher Dr. Jasmine Linabary, expert in transnational digital feminist organizing, to produce guidelines for safe digital feminist space and ethical digital research guidelines – all developed with the participation of our community members.
- 2020: We will continue to promote more loudly on conference stages and industry articles our expertise in collective impact, distributed leadership, ethical research, and women’s online safety and security. In addition, we so excited to embark on an initiative to increase inclusion of women with disabilities across all of our work, generously supported by the Channel Foundation. Given the extreme invisibility of women with disabilities globally we plan to do more to lift these voices in everything that we do!
Growing our Log On. Rise Up. Fund Campaign to fuel our 10 year strategic plan.
- 2019:Our multi-year Log On.Rise Up Fund Campaign continues to grow, reaching the $5 million mark with new commitments, including international funders from Switzerland, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, and the German government. We have assembled an expert all-woman senior leadership team including Directors of Technology, Community, Storytelling, Development & Partnerships, Marketing, and Finance & Operations, and begun to expand our distributed leadership model to establish regional leads in Asia, Europe, and Africa.
- 2020: We embark on raising the next $10 million to close out the campaign enabling us to fulfill our plan to expand to digitally accelerate the leadership of 500,000 women who expand their impact to 1 billion more people.
PS – To hear from World Pulse members in their own words, I am sharing a 10 min World Pulse film that highlights the journeys of four women whose lives have been altered by World Pulse. Log On. Rise Up: The Film.
In 2020 I hope you equally have a chance to both #LogOn.Rise Up, and #LogOff.Rest up!