The World is changing. What kind of ancestor do we want to be?

In today’s post, Brianna Delahunty and Tasha Ritchie pose and explore critical questions about the lack of accountability to future generations in the institutions, organisations and movements that shape our society. Bri and Tasha are members of the Young Women’s Advisory Group of the Equality Rights Alliance, which is closing at the end of this year. Read and reflect on their call to action, and follow the link at the end of the post to their survey to help them shape a new collective movement to drive positive change for young women and gender diverse people in Australia. What kind of ancestor do you want to be?

In July 2024, we were given the honour of celebrating the 20 year legacy of Equality Rights Alliance, which is coming to a close this year. It is a huge loss for the feminist community, and as members of the Young Women’s advisory group, we have been trying to understand what this loss means for us, and for the other young people who are coming up behind us. What kind of legacy do we want to leave them? How can we protect them? How can we make sure that we are making the world better for them?

Bri: One day, last year, I was working on a project with a lady that I admire very much. The project was focused around on equipping workplaces to support victims of sexual harassment in the workplace.

We were talking about some small detail or another and she suddenly slammed her glasses down, looked at me and said, "I really thought that my generation would have fixed this for you, I mean, how are we still talking about this?"

And she’s right.

Tasha: Four years ago, I was working for a youth-focused organisation. In my first performance review we spoke about how my KPIs were tracking, how my colleagues viewed my contributions and the various measures and metrics that everyone had agreed constituted organisational success and impact.

And yet, missing from the conversation was the very thing I valued most; the reciprocal relationships I was establishing with young people. Genuine partnership with young people was the reason I had sought out the role in the first place, what motivated me and also, at times, what challenged me the most. Despite existing to serve young people, structurally, this relational intelligence and impact didn't matter to the organisation. Aside from the personal, relational accountability I felt in myself, tangible accountability to young people didn't exist.

What are will our legacy look like?

Layla F. Saad acknowledged that, “the primary force that drives my work is a passionate desire to become a good ancestor.”; this sentiment is also central to many First Nations cultures. The idea of working towards a collective future that enables better outcomes for the generations coming up behind us is what accountability to young people now, and to young people of the future could mean.

Many of us may experience personal, relational accountability to the young people in our lives or resonate with the idea of becoming a good ancestor or seek to create communities of care. But structurally our organisations, movements and institutions aren’t set up to meaningfully engage with young people and are certainly not set up to create genuine accountability to future generations.

Recently, the Federal government rejected the notion that there is a duty of care to future generations to protect them from the harms of climate change. Also recently, at the Equality Rights Alliance Gender Equality Symposium 'Working Together for Women'‘ in July 2024, leaders across the feminist movement gathered to respond to the national Working for Women Strategy - a strategy which mentions 'young people' a grand total of 4 times. It mentions ‘youth’ a total of 0 times.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Social justice does not function like linear time, we can’t trust that we are automatically moving forward into a better future. There are issues that deeply impact one generation more than the other. For the younger generation, the climate crisis is a looming existential, and arguably, apocalyptic disaster, that will disproportionately impact younger women globally. The proliferation of violent masculinity and the alt right rhetoric across the internet has poisoned the only real ‘third space’ we have left. Misogyny influencers are spearheading a violent pushback against gender equality and feminism and championing the kind of rigid gender norms that would have seemed a bit much even in the 1950s.

Social change has always been a collective movement, and when taken at a macro level, generations of feminists and activists have been chipping away at the same issues. Reproductive rights have been consistently under assault for decades, intimate partner deaths have increased by 30% in the last 12 months alone, and women still lag behind in political participation globally. Women are globally poorer than men and are still systemically underpaid and undervalued in the workplace. Even in art, Women have historically been the muses and subject, but when it comes to claiming agency as the artist, they are often marginalised completely.

While some of the material conditions of these issues have changed, the underlying cause is the same. It can be easy to split issues down any kind of demographic line, and specific issues do affect specific age groups differently, but when we isolate these issues, and, in a sense ourselves, from the collective, we lessen our power.

On an individual level, yes, while we are statistically living longer, becoming better educated, and becoming healthier, it doesn’t mean we are moving forward with social justice.

Toni Morrison forces us to ask, "what will we think during these longer, healthier lives? How successful we were in convincing our children it doesn’t matter that their comfort was wrested and withheld from other children? How adept we are in getting the elderly to agree to indignity and poverty as their reward for citizenship?”

How can we accept that our Elders are living in poverty or suffering of indignity? How can we stand by when the progress of our ancestors and work of our mothers is systematically ridiculed and undervalued? How can we tolerate the increased violence and uninhabitable environment we are leaving to our children?

We would all be in a different position today if the leaders and decision makers of the past were accountable not only to their funders, to government, to the law, to their strategic plans, but had been accountable to young people (shaping their organisation) and future generations. Where might we be if the organisational leaders of the past codified and responded tangibly and meaningfully to an accountability to young people, with as much rigour as they attended to their shareholders?

Our feminism must be intersectional to have any kind of impact, and it also has to be intergenerational. We want to talk about the power of organising and movement building across generations, about the great potential for transfer of knowledge and experience through intergenerational dialogue.

Younger feminists voice feelings that their predecessors - older feminists - are not willing to make space for them and acknowledge their presence within movements; and older feminists concurrently express feelings that their efforts are under appreciated and that their historical contributions are being marginalised by younger feminists. Despite the perceived 'threat of the younger woman' or 'ignorance of youth', as young women we seek to be neither threatening nor ignorant. But nor do we wish to be excluded or experience erasure.

What do we owe each other?

As young women, we have been told we can ‘have a say’ on particular topics at particular times that suit particular organisations - it could be voice, participation or even co-design processes with young people that are extractive, surface level or tokenistic. We and others have been treated as window dressing or ring ins when, late in the process, someone realises that no young people are in the room.

In the show The Good Place ethics professor Chidi Anigone asks ‘what do we owe each other’? And Antonio Gramsci talks about the optimism of the will, the belief in the human capacity to meet new challenges, overcome them and move society forward, a confidence that we can make our own history, even if not in circumstances of his own choosing.

Surely, we can collectively raise our aspiration; it’s what we owe each other. We can raise our aspiration to embed genuine accountability to young people and future generations - the mechanisms, practices, tools to embed accountability to young people do exist or are being created. Intergenerational feminism, where we collectively respect and acknowledge that we owe each other community and love, is life giving. Intergenerational feminism is uplifting and nourishing, and at its best, it's about mutual acknowledgement, respect, appreciation and growth.

We can shift the way our organisations, policy processes, collective advocacy and institutions face - away from ‘how’s it always been done’ towards ourselves being the way we wish the system would be.

There is an accountability void, in our society and in our feminist movement. There is a lot missing between what we promise young people and their lived realities. Working differently to solve this accountability void gives us the opportunity to build relationships across generations as equal learning partners who bring different experiences.

We, as young feminists, seek to honour the work that others have done, the shoulders we stand on, the paths they have carved for us. We are asking now that the adults in our movements, organisations and institutions raise your aspiration beyond just hearing young people’s voices or building our capability, towards building your own capability to become accountable in your work to young people and to future generations. Who are we doing this for? What ancestors do we want to be?

As the Equality Rights Alliance closes at the end of 2024, so too does the Young Women's Advisory Group. As current custodians of this important national mechanism for young women, we are seeking intergenerational support to reimagine YWAG from 'advisory' to 'accountability'. We are seeking to build a feminist movement that is accountable to young people.

If you are interested in the new YWAG, fill out this form here

Content moderator Sue Olney

GenderPower to Persuade31 July 2024young people, women