WOMEN RISING RADIO profiles women in leadership across the world for peace, ecology, civil society and women’s, children’s and human rights. The series offers them prime air time to speak about their work, their issues, their dreams and visions.  We invite you to get to know all these women, and to educate yourself to the issues they are struggling to resolve. We also invite you to take a journey of self-discovery, so that you can consider who you are, what issues are most important to you personally, and how you personally want to work on those issues in this world.  So, listen to the voices of your sisters worldwide, explore your own options, and join in, participate in the work, the struggle, the journey.

“Nothing causes more trouble to the established order than women who struggle and dream..”

Those words from the Movimento Sem Terra, the Movement For the Earth, are prophetic.  When we women and girls dream, we transform the world.  And the transformation of this world for the good, for peace, for justice and for equality must be done by us.  We must make the trouble that brings the changes we need and want.

And we know, from looking around the world, that women are still not part of the established order.  Not that we don’t do our part. As the Chinese proverb says, “Women hold up half the sky”…but the way the game is still played around the world, we don’t have parity or equality.  Only 1% of the world’s assets are in the hands of women.  70% of people living in poverty are women. While women do 70% of the farm work in the world, we own less than 10% of the land. In developed nations, only 33% of managers and administrators are women; 15% in Africa and 13% in Asia and the Pacific.  There are only 5 women chief executives in the Fortune 500 companies.  And in media, only about 12% of broadcast media “experts” onscreen are women.

More often than not, the “established order” means war, economic exploitation of the many by the few, disenfranchisement of the many by the few.  Disproportionate among those many are women. Worldwide, women and girls are profoundly impacted by all forms of societal violence, from domestic violence, economic and cultural suppression, to the rape, murder, torture and displacement that are the tragic methods of war.  Even in peace time the paradigm of societies is still far from inclusive or egalitarian.  This we know.  So we struggle and dream.  And very many of us manage to accomplish triumphant victories… spearheading work that transforms and uplifts our societies, bringing peace, justice and well-being. And we have the potential to bring our own unique perspective to the work we do, changing the “old boy” paradigm of violence, greed and power politics.

WOMEN RISING RADIO  airs nationwide on about 200 stations including NPR, community, and college radio.  We are also broadcast in Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland and South Africa.   We are podcast to about 20,000 listeners.   We’re archived online at the site of our co-producer, the National Radio Project.  We have had a creative and productive relationship with NRP for almost a decade.

About the photograph above, from the Occupy! movement.  It says what we want to say, and what the great progressive activist Emma Goldman said:  “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution!”  We women will shape the yet-to-be-born society with our vision!

Here is a review of our program #IV (religious activists) from Dheera Sujan, producer of Vox Humana in the Netherlands. It was published on the Public Radio Exchange (PRX):