In this episode of RiseUp! we talk to three women who have personal experience about fostering Young Women Leadership.
Start the episode with Suju Poon from Women Lead in Nepal, talking to host Chhavi Sachdev about stories of women-led initiatives and movements. Next, Yadanar from the United Nations Population Fund shares her perspective on supporting young women in repressive conditions. Chhavi concludes the discussion with Rajina Neupane, a YWCA RiseUp! Lead in Nepal. What tools can organisations use to centre the voices of young women in their leadership? Listen to find out …
This podcast is brought to you by the Australian Government under the RiseUp! Young Women’s Leadership and Advocacy initiative in Asia-Pacific region.
Guests: Suju Poon, Yadanar and Rajina Neupane
Host: Chhavi Sachdev
Team: Dr. Suchi Gaur and Nirmala Gurung at World YWCA
Podcast production: Chhavi Sachdev and the team at Sonologue: Sharad Joshi & Deepa D.
In this episode of RiseUp! we talk to three women who have personal experience about fostering Young Women Leadership.
Start the episode with Suju Poon from Women Lead in Nepal, talking to host Chhavi Sachdev about stories of women-led initiatives and movements. Next, Yadanar from the United Nations Population Fund shares her perspective on supporting young women in repressive conditions. Chhavi concludes the discussion with Rajina Neupane, a YWCA RiseUp! Lead in Nepal. What tools can organisations use to centre the voices of young women in their leadership? Listen to find out …
This podcast is brought to you by the Australian Government under the RiseUp! Young Women’s Leadership and Advocacy initiative in Asia-Pacific region.
Guests: Suju Poon, Yadanar and Rajina Neupane
Host: Chhavi Sachdev
Team: Dr. Suchi Gaur and Nirmala Gurung at World YWCA
Podcast production: Chhavi Sachdev and the team at Sonologue: Sharad Joshi & Deepa D.
Our future is in the hands of the youth, and across the world, young women are seizing leadership positions with confidence and courage. I'm Chavisach Dev, and this is the sixth episode of Rise Up, the latest podcast from the World YWCA. In season three, I'm talking to women and young women leaders from many different nations about the concepts and philosophies that help them choose the parts of community building that they do and what drives their leadership in various spaces around various themes. We believe the stories these leaders share will provide you with a deep dive into the importance of advocacy and training, because we believe that growing feminist leadership is one of the most powerful ways to effect change for this planet. We know, when women lead, great things happen. In this episode, we're taking a look at the nuts and bolts of leadership and what it takes to foster it, specifically in young women.
Speaker 3:First things first. I think the organizations and institutions should understand that young women are the future right, either whether we are ready or not. They are ready and they will start things up for everyone.
Speaker 2:We start off by hearing from Suju Poon from Kathmandu. Suju is a senior program manager at Women Lead Nepal. She has a clear idea of what feminist value-based leadership looks like.
Speaker 3:It's not just, like I think, a more traditional kind of leadership where it's, you know, like there is a vision of the leader and then there are, like other people, kind of supporting the leader to achieve that vision, but it's more like people coming together understanding that their values align or, if it does not align completely, kind of understanding. They're always room to not negotiate your values, but there is always room to kind of understand and adjust your values according to other people.
Speaker 2:Suju has experienced this kind of professional synergy of values at her organization, Women Lead Nepal 2. She looks back at the year 2017. She looks back at the year 2017 with some nostalgia. Sometimes the right people in the right place can make all the difference.
Speaker 3:As much as I love my team members right now, I would say there was a point of time where we were at like sort of a peak and that was because of the individuals that came together and were so aligned in what they did and were so like in coordination with each other, were so supportive of each other, were there to understand things that worked, things that did not work. There was like not one single dropout in the course that we ran that year. So I would say I've seen how, when people come together as like a value based leaders and not just like, oh, I'm here to kind of do my job, I've seen how things have worked.
Speaker 2:It is often easier to talk about one's personal values than to create a system that puts them into practice. Suju believes that failures of leadership happen when people don't pay attention to the process they are following.
Speaker 3:People aren't usually bad. They're just sometimes, I think, blinded by passion or something, but they don't understand that the vision that they have may not be including the other people. Creating more leaders is always amazing, but I think you also need to understand how, like other people come into it, how you kind of understand others' ideas, how you incorporate those ideas into your lives. There are times when I feel like it's so easy, when it's in theory, so it's people. It's so easy to point out when other organizations or other teams are not functioning well, but when you're putting that into practice, it really takes a lot of effort and a lot of patience and just a lot of like empathy.
Speaker 2:Suju's advice for organizations trying to foster a culture of, and space for leadership in young women is simple Listen to them actively and involve them in every step of the process.
Speaker 3:There are a lot of times when older people think like they know what's best because they have had a certain life that they have lived, they've had many challenges that they have overcome, and I see this in a lot of older feminist circles as well, where they think like, oh, we've done so many things before, so we understand this more than anybody, but there are so many new things coming up. These things change each and every day and you just have to understand that you don't know the best and you have to be there and listen to these young people and where they are coming from.
Speaker 2:It's not enough for organizations to just include women as a gender. They also need to make sure that there is more than one kind of woman coming in with intersectional diversity.
Speaker 3:I've seen some movements, some organizations, think that they have given chance to young women. But because the young women were again from the same upper class or upper class people were given the chance, I've seen some of the movements feel because then they don't understand that just them being on the top as a woman does not help the cause. They need to understand that they might have been the first, but if they're not pulling in more young women to their side, if they're not helping or uplifting more young women, especially from marginalized communities, they cannot sustain or they cannot last.
Speaker 2:Patriarchy, suju says, is a global force that makes it hard for young women to become leaders, and this distrust and lack of self-value gets internalized by women too.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, not believing in themselves enough is something I see a lot in young women and hence kind of it therefore kind of reduces their chances of being in leadership positions, right, because then they are like, oh, I'm not good enough for this position, I don't think I can assume this position, I don't think I can handle people. And I understand where that comes from. It comes from, like, oh, you know, years of conditioning, years of telling you that you're not good enough, years of telling you that you know you are a girl so you should not be giving your opinions. So I understand where all of this like self-underconfidence comes from. But these young women are amazing, like they have some amazing ideas and thought processes that have not seen in like older people.
Speaker 2:Over her years of training young women and working with feminist movements, suju has also observed some missteps that new, inexperienced leaders can make.
Speaker 3:I don't know if it's like too much of passion or it's just that you know there's so many things you have to go through as a young woman every day. Sometimes I just see that they're not planning enough.
Speaker 2:right, Like it's just like action, action, action At times, of course you have to be very action oriented, but outcomes are better when things are planned and organized properly and when you take the time to understand where different people are coming from.
Speaker 3:I've seen some movements, especially when it was during the COVID and everything. There were like a lot of small movements that came up and I see that some of them were led by young women and some of them have failed now because it was so like on the point, on the go, and there wasn't like long term planning. So I've also seen that.
Speaker 2:Suju says. The other danger young women should be cautious about is assuming that there is only one kind of feminism and that they know everything there is to know about a feminist approach to issues.
Speaker 3:I remember when I started out, when I was really young, I thought, like you know, there was like this one kind of feminism and everybody had to fit into that box. Whoever did not fit into that, into that box, were not feminists. But but that has changed now because I understand that you know, it is not about putting everyone into one box, but understanding that there is different thing that works with different people and there are different needs for different people. So also like these kind of things, you think, when you're very young and when you're just getting into this feminist circle, and when you and when you don't have, like, the right resources, the right kind of people guiding you throughout, I understand that sometimes it can get a bit messy and you know you don't have the full picture.
Speaker 2:That's where intergenerational leadership and active mentoring comes in. She says she's seen firsthand how mentoring has been a game changer for many young women.
Speaker 3:So I understand that. So I think that older people also should, and the institution should also, have these systems in place, where there are, where they are being mentored properly, where these young people's ideas are being sharpened, where, where they have, where you provide them resources but also you understand that they might know what is best.
Speaker 2:It's equally important that young women accept mentorship and not reject the input of older leaders from a spirit of ageism or place themselves in opposition to men in a gender essentialist way.
Speaker 3:But I've seen sometimes this hesitancy, almost where they don't trust all the people or they don't trust men, which again, I understand where it comes from right. They've not really been the best people for a long time. But I think it's important to include like for lack of a better word maybe those people who actually, who have hold these positions for such a long time, like men, like all the people, not necessarily in everything, but not like ostracizing them for just being men or for just being like someone from a different generation. So I think young women should also understand that it's not us versus them, it's everyone of us versus patriarchy.
Speaker 2:There are many young women doing remarkable things in Nepal, and Suju is enthusiastic about sharing their stories. One of the organizations she talks about is Duluva Outdoors, which was set up by five young women. Duluva means wanderlust in Nepali, and these women wanted to encourage women to experience the pleasure of traveling.
Speaker 3:And in Nepal, I mean in worldwide, especially in South Asian countries. It is really difficult for young women to get out of their house just for like traveling. But for a Nepali woman like myself, who was not encouraged to travel when I was young, I think it's huge and I think the upcoming generation would benefit a lot from that. So these young women are doing a fabulous job of helping not just young women, just not just young women, but just like targeting every Nepali women and they're encouraging Nepali women to travel. They're encouraging Nepali women to explore and understand that these experiences, these traveling experiences, which was like very, you know, excluded for men, is so empowering and can be so encouraging Duluva.
Speaker 2:Outdoors hosts podcasts inviting Nepali and other South Asian women travelers to share their stories, and they recently awarded travel fellowships to several Nepali women who wanted to explore remote parts of Nepal.
Speaker 3:I think it's an amazing, fabulous way for young, for Nepali women, to understand that it's not too late to travel and that, like you know how these travel stories for different women have worked out for them, how they, how these travel stories have helped them explore themselves more, have helped them understand themselves more.
Speaker 2:Another group that Suju admires is called Azir Qatiy Sahane, which translates into how much more should we tolerate In 2020,? During the height of the COVID lockdowns, these young women organized public protests against sexual violence.
Speaker 3:So at that point of time there was also this Chilean viral song happening the Rapist Is you. So what they did was they kind of adopted that format where they brought like young women together and then they like, they made a song which was called Baladkari Ho-Stong, which actually means you are the rapist. So they brought like activists together and then it was peak COVID time, but these young women, oh my God, fearless, they just came together, they did like a flash mob.
Speaker 2:The group started in Kathmandu, but the campaign spread to other cities in Nepal and they would do a flash mob and then follow it up with conversations about sexual violence. Where they would do a flash mob and then follow it up with conversations about sexual violence, they went on to have meetings with various officials in the National Human Rights Commission and with parliamentarians. Eventually they presented a seven point agenda to Nepali authorities.
Speaker 3:So it is demanding change in rape laws in the country, like making it inclusive to every gender, as well as demanding stricter laws and provisions against those who tamper with evidence in rape cases. I'm pretty sure these seven point agreement all have not been agreed to right now, and they are not. They will still take time for it to kind of become a law at the end of the day, but I love that it was. I think it was a great start to show that young people have the power. Young women have the power to change things.
Speaker 2:The last story Suju shared with us did in fact result in legislative change.
Speaker 3:There was this ridiculous law that was proposed by some, obviously by, like, the Department of Immigration, which has like a lot of upper class, upper caste, old people, men in particular, who kind of proposed this law that would basically ban women for traveling abroad, women, that would ban Nepali women from traveling abroad until then unless you didn't have this permission from your families and also the local government officials, which is ridiculous and just like plain unconstitutional. But the women just came together and then they did this like whole march and then they were like so they called out so many people, they called out people who proposed this ridiculous law and all of that. And you know this law was not finalized.
Speaker 2:Basically, so did you? Herself participated in the protest even though it was 2021, and her family was worried that she would get COVID.
Speaker 3:But I was like I don't think this is the right time to think about if I get COVID or not, because if I survive, I may potentially not be able to travel abroad until unless I'm married or I have my permission from my family or I'm traveling with my husband or all of that. Things right.
Speaker 2:This kind of fearless challenge to authorities is something that Suju really respects in today's generation of leaders. She notes that young women today are vocal and unafraid to call people out when they see a violation of rights.
Speaker 3:So I love that. You know, because of that, people are not tolerating the same old maybe like the same old mindset where it's like, oh, at least there is a woman on top, so it's okay. But that is not okay. Just having a woman is not okay. That woman should work for the cause that you believe in, work for the, for the collective cause or for the collective vision that you have had when you started off. So I love that. You know people are calling those kinds of people out as well.
Speaker 2:Our next guest, yadanaar, is also currently in Kathmandu, where she is working with the United Nations Population Fund. She is originally from Myanmar, though, where she started out setting up one of the first safe spaces for adolescent girls. Yadanaar is an alumna of Rise Up, one of the flagship initiatives of World YWCA. She was part of the initiative funded by the Australian government.
Speaker 4:So 10 years ago, I was just an average doctor, a very recent graduate from the medical university, but I never I never know like how to, how to really critically analyse about the gender norms around me, or I didn't expect that I would be able to speak out if there is injustice or speak out for my rights. I didn't even know that I have my sexual rights or reproductive rights. And in May 2013, I clearly remember that I was in Bangkok for the Young Women's Leadership Training organised by World YWCA, where I met young women leaders from the Asia-Pacific who were very passionate, very active, very bold, talking about their life experiences and designing the interventions to pass on their experiences to the other young women in the region. And that was the moment that I realised if these young women can do it, I can also do it, and that was a very inspiring moment for me.
Speaker 2:Working in the area of gender rights in Myanmar these days is difficult because of the political conditions, especially after the 2021 military coup. Talking about sexual and reproductive rights is harshly suppressed.
Speaker 4:After the coup they have made announcements such as like teaching the sexuality education, especially gender transformative sexuality education, is now barred, is prohibited in Myanmar. So we can't really teach about the values, the gender equality, the human rights and also healthy relationships which actually empower the adolescent girls and adolescent boys to prepare them for the healthy adulthood, to prepare them to be the leader. And they target these people, the activists who talk about the human rights, who talk about the sexual rights. So we really have to be careful in what we do and what we say and some of the people have to use the pseudonyms, Don't really show your face but still push for the issues as a different identity, so that they cannot trace you and they cannot connect the dot of who you are and what you're doing.
Speaker 2:But even before the military junta took over the country, Yadinar faced many social and cultural challenges to her work.
Speaker 4:So the first challenge would be the gender inequality and equity at the places which are like, institutionalized around us, embedded in the social system. When I was walking at the United Nations, my main rule is to push for the gender transformative policy strategy plan with the ministry and with the ministry where the workplace is dominant mainly by the males. It was very challenging.
Speaker 2:Yadinar also believes young women are particularly impacted by the culture of reverence towards older people.
Speaker 4:And then the second thing generally in Myanmar and I think it might be true in Asia is the culture of hierarchy, that you have to really give respect and do not question whatever your elders say, whatever your seniors say, even if it involves like the languages which are not gender sensitive, or it might even be workplace sexual harassment, you are not supposed to get feedback and question.
Speaker 2:The third challenge she sees women having to grapple with is that of the second shift, the unpaid domestic work done by them in their personal spaces.
Speaker 4:The society defines you that you are responsible to do, to share the domestic work at all, and at the same time the states it is more widespread the concept of like super women that you must be able to do all the domestic chores and at the same time you must be excel at your workplace. That super woman concept somehow is also a challenge and set a high bar in expectation for the, for the young women leaders.
Speaker 2:One of the consequences of young women being empowered is that some of them will choose to use their power to align with regressive patriarchal movements.
Speaker 4:For example, even in Myanmar also, some young women may strongly believe in the, especially from the religious background. The sex before the marriage is the same and someone who have sex before the marriage is not really. It's a simple, simple person, but why you know very strong young women also hold dearly the traditional values, even if they are not gender. They don't support the gender equality. Then I will go back to the question, or go back to the discussion about the institutionalization that the teaching of you know that the norms, the gender norms and social norms and stereotypes are embedded around us.
Speaker 2:As Yadinar observes, the level of indoctrination of patriarchal norms changes not just from region to region, but also family to family.
Speaker 4:For example, I grew up in a household where the gender equality is really a core value, even though I still have a class ceiling, even though I still have other institutionalized gender norms. Since in the household I have a gender, gender, equal, gender equality as a value, then my values are a bit more towards the gender equality because I have the first hand experiences and the opportunity and privilege of being brought up in this, in this household, and then I have more supportive environment compared to someone who grew up in a really conservative and traditional household.
Speaker 2:There are four values that Yadarar follows in her work, which form the acronym SEED S is for social justice, e for equality and equity, another E for empowerment and D for diversity.
Speaker 4:And the first and foremost value is the social justice, the promotion of the social justice and transforming social structures and institutions. And then the second one is not only the equality but also the equity. So the worst off should have more privilege or more opportunity, so that the worst off will have, through this equity principle, will have the equality in the workplace, equality in the community.
Speaker 2:Empowerment is the value that has personally helped Yadarar find her path.
Speaker 4:She says this third value is the most important one of all, and I myself experienced that deeply in my life and without that component, without that value, I cannot be who I am today. So 10 years ago, if you try to, if you sent me an email to for this podcast, I might not have the confidence to speak like this. I might not have all these critical thinking and questioning about if this gender norms in my country, at my home, is really relevant, you know, to my life these days.
Speaker 2:Yadarar points out that one of the most powerful impacts of empowering young women is the ripple effect. She's seen how it works Women go on to influence other women.
Speaker 4:So the first young woman. Her name is Tata Yadarate and she and I worked very closely when I was working at the YWCA in Myanmar for the setting up of the adolescent girls safe space and she was she was my mentee, but in turn she was the mentor for the adolescent girls. So we work closely together. And then and then I left YWCA, but we still keep in touch and I met her again.
Speaker 2:That young woman has now become one of the leaders in the policy drafting committee in the Yangon region, as well as the Myanmar representative of the YPO Asia Pacific Organization.
Speaker 4:Whenever I talk about her, I'm really happy and I'm really proud of who she became and then how she's passing on her experiences to hundreds and thousands of young people in her community and the key word here is the ripple effect and because of the empowerment that they grow and received through the YWCA program.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, the difference between feminist leadership and traditional ideas of what a leader should be comes down to the values we bring to the process. As Yadar points out, traditionally leadership has been limited to completing a task or meeting a target. The rise up transformative model takes a leap with the value of feminist based leadership.
Speaker 4:In the feminist leadership. We work with our heart, we work with our passion. So when we compare the exercise that we always do like we use the head and heart and hands. Of course we also use the head and hand, but the main component is the heart. We work with our heart. We work with the empathy and passion towards the social justice. We make sure that the people are diverse, people are included. We make sure that the decisions are made collectively and not really just one leader making the decision.
Speaker 2:Yadar sums up her philosophy with a quote from the great black feminist Maya Angelou.
Speaker 4:I have learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you make them feel. And for me, this is the essence of the feminist leadership we work with our heart, we try to understand other people and we work with our passion towards the social justice and gender equality.
Speaker 2:Our final guest is Regina Neopane, who is also working with the YWCA in Nepal. She joined as a young woman working on various initiatives connected to goal 2035 of the YWCA movement to mobilize young women and girls.
Speaker 1:Currently I am a rise up lead in Nepal, but I have been personally engaged with various leadership initiatives of old YWCA and YWCA of Nepal, including the Young Women Leadership, Cohert and the reproductive rights and mental health initiatives supported by the feminist government.
Speaker 2:Regina has found the YWCA's vision around leadership matches what she wants as a young woman.
Speaker 1:The YWCA knows that when you invest in developing the leadership of young women and women, you can transform entire communities and the world for the better. As a global movement that engages with and mobilizes women, young women and girls, the old YWCA is committed to progressive community-based leadership, particularly through programming that is led by and for young women. When women and young women rise to become leaders and change makers in their lives and their communities, they can become an influential force, coming up with solutions championing social change far beyond their immediate surroundings.
Speaker 2:As a rise-up YWCA leader, Regina is proud to be part of a movement that creates more leaders from within the community.
Speaker 1:As I am a rise-up YWCA leader now I am proud to be working towards creating many more like me who are using our rise-up transformative leadership model and context, where leadership is often not heard as a term, living aside being understood. As a leader in Nepal, I work closely with so many young women from hard-to-rich communities, building their leadership, centering their voices and concerns, making sure they are at the center of the design and implementation around their rights and needs in communities, and I see the other young women leads from Bangladesh, india, myanmar, salman Island and many other countries do the same. Our work is in contexts that are often hard to capture and reach, but where leadership of young women is most needed for a better world, for a more sustainable and bold women's movement that works for gender equality as a norm and not an exception.
Speaker 2:In fact, Regina considers Rise-Up to be one of the success stories of the YWCA's methodology and philosophy around young women's leadership.
Speaker 1:My personal experience showcases how, within the different ways of work, various programs, ways we engage young women, do social media and campaign work, or even operate as organizations across the world. We are feminist, progressive, community-based, intersexual and intergenerational, focused on including the most marginalized, resilient, responsive, transformative and reaching and meeting community women, young women at the levels of capacities they are working with, be it the leadership cohort, where I got to not just grow myself as a feminist, social or bucket but a community-driven one, or the narratives changing initiative on reproductive rights and mental health. Centering young women is close to the YWCA approach. That is why the old YWCA invests and prioritizes on training and programs that focus on building skills, confidence and knowledge in young women and girls, providing resources for them to become advocates for their rights and to address the issues that they, their peers and their communities face so critically. We support and provide tools so that they can connect with young women and girls in other communities and inspire them to become leaders.
Speaker 2:Rise Up is a transformative leadership model of the World YWCA. It is one of the signature initiatives that is being supported by a number of funders and partners, now including the Australian government in Asia and the Pacific and the Netherlands government in Africa and the Middle East regions. Through the Rise Up transformative leadership model, young women are taking charge of the issues that matter to them, finding equal spaces and open platforms to not just further refine their leadership skills but practice them in real-life situations in marginalized and underrepresented communities. Young women are the future of any feminist movement and the World YWCA is committed to empowering them to take charge of their futures. Building a community of leaders who can influence their communities is the best way to democratize social justice.
Speaker 2:The World YWCA is a global women's rights organization engaging millions of women, young women and girls around the world each year, across cultures and beliefs, to transform lives and the world for the better. With a presence in over 100 countries, our work is grassroots driven, grounded in local communities and rooted in the transformational power of women. We provide support and opportunities for women, young women and girls to become leaders and change makers who not only protect their rights and impact their communities, but inspire their peers to do the same. We are focused on building a strong intergenerational network of women and young women leaders, with programs led by and for women and young women in response to the unique needs they see in their communities.
Speaker 2:Our goal is that by 2035, 100 million young women and girls transform power structures to create justice, gender equality, human dignity, freedom, a sustainable environment and a world free from violence and war. Leading a vital YWCA movement inclusive of all this podcast series has been funded by the Australian Government under the Rise Up Young Women's Leadership and Advocacy Initiative in the Asia Pacific Region. You can find out more about our work on our website. Our handle is World YWCA on all social media. A Sonologue Production.