Since I created Women's Power Circles in 2007, I have witnessed a rise in women being drawn to sit in circles with each other. Sheryl Sandberg created Lean In circles, Chantal Pierrat founded Emerging Women and Gloria Steinem devotes an entire chapter in her latest book My life on the road on how talking in circle enables women to create the changes they want. And back in 2007 I was not alone with the idea of creating a space for women to gather and create social change. Circle Connections and Gather the Women were already hard at work trumpeting the value of sitting in circle, inspired by Jean Shinoda Bolen's book The Millionth Circle. And devotees of Anita Diamant's book The Red Tent were inspired to create Red Tent spaces for women to share, talk, and empower themselves, like Kim and Amy Sedgwick, the Red Tent Sisters.
So what is drawing women to sit in circle with each other? Why does sitting in a circle, rather than in rows listening to a speaker, make a difference to women? I believe that the answer to these questions is that women are sick of being talked at, told what to do, left out of the discussion, and defined by others people's standards. The experience of having an equal voice, where your ideas and experiences are just as valid as the next person's feels attractive. And I believe that the rise of the circle movement is women tapping into their ancestral voices that are instructing them to tell their stories and redefine what it means to be female after generations of patriarchy telling our mothers and grandmothers who they are and what they cannot do.
We are at a pivotal moment in our evolution where women are rising up and claiming their voice and rights. Women are demanding an equal say in how their family, workplace, and country is governed. No longer are women happy to sit on the sidelines and cheer men on as they make all the decisions and take all the glory. They are no longer willing to fit in, make compromises that deny them their rights and needs, and be content with crumbs of attention and snippets of power. And women are realizing, as I did back in 2007, that this kind of empowerment cannot be achieved alone. Women need to support each other to say 'no' without guilt or explanation, to demand to be heard without any doubt of their right to be heard, and to have their needs inquired and honored without question. Alone, women are vulnerable to being made to feel guilty for challenging age-old beliefs and norms. Alone, women are vulnerable to not realizing the sexist beliefs they have internalized and normalized. And alone, women don't always realize what they don't know and what is possible for them.
On this 2016 International Women's Day I urge women everywhere to make space to gather with their womenfolk. I ask that you gather with your mother, grandmother, and female relatives and/or your girlfriends and female colleagues to talk about your shared generational experience with sexism. As I wrote in my Huffington Post Blog "Why do Mothers and Daughters Fight?", women's generational experience with sexism is a key cause for mother-daughter relationship conflict, and for all female relationship conflict. I would like to give women on this International Women's Day the experience of hearing what I hear every day in my work, how the sexism of women not being heard, of women's needs being denied, and women's choices and freedom being limited by sexist gender roles is causing misunderstanding, jealousy, and conflict, and how this sexism is universal. Underneath the differing contexts of our lives, we all come from generational families where mothers and grandmothers were not heard, their needs not inquired after or honored, and their personhood was defined by restrictive patriarchal gender roles. But as I write in The Silent Female Scream;
"As with other female-led revolutions, like those led by the suffragettes, when women gather to empower themselves and each other, a great wave of entitlement is unleashed that will not take no for an answer; a mighty and massive wave that will not subside until our voices have been heard and are treated as normal."
Here are some questions to help you get started:
1. Do you remember your mother and grandmother being asked what they felt and needed?
2. If not, how do you think your mother and grandmother were affected by this emotional silencing?
3. Do your friends and family members listen to what you feel and need?
4. Did your mother and grandmother realize their dreams and potential outside of the traditional caregiving role?
5. If not, why not? And how do you think it affected your mother and grandmother?
6 .Muse in your circle about what your family would behave like and feel like if women were asked what they felt, needed, and wanted, and your family treated these conversations as a normal part of everyday life.
7. What support do you need to awaken the conversation that inquires after and listens to what women feel, need, and want?
Good luck! Rosjke