Working for an organisation about to shut down is a pretty good prompt to start thinking about what it means to work in your sector.
For over two decades, Equality Rights Alliance (ERA) has been a site for feminist collaboration and policy engagement. As one of the National Women’s Alliances we represent over 70 organisations working on gender equality in Federal policy from all around the country, each bringing their own specialist expertise. By the time this article is published, I will be both Acting Convenor and the only remaining staff member at ERA. ERA itself will close its doors at the end of the year.
When I joined ERA, I was looking for a way to turn my frustration at the slow pace of change into a meaningful career. I was tired of working in jobs that felt disconnected from the rest of the world, or that felt like distractions from the social issues I saw in my own life. Like many of us who work in advocacy, my professional passion was fuelled by my personal experiences.
After growing up in an environment where acts of violence were minimised and dismissed, I felt deeply drawn to spaces which ask you to name the problems. Entering a field that tells you to speak up after a lifetime of being told to keep quiet seemed incredibly empowering.
The end of ERA feels both significant and predictable, the cost of doing business in a sector categorised by instability and insecurity. Working in the gender equality space can be a source of real joy, but it can also be isolating. The most common response I get from other women in the sector when I ask how they’re doing at work is something along the lines of “oh you know, I’m hanging in there.”
Is it really any surprise that it has been difficult to fill front line positions? One colleague recently recounted to me the important life events she missed after months of endless work with little support, and another shared the frustration she felt at being routinely pushed to burnout as though it were normal. The passion that helps us excel also encourages us to pretend exhaustion is simply to be expected. As ERA wraps up, I have found myself reflecting on what a different version of the sector could look like. Surely we can all do better than just hanging in there.
ERA recently hosted a Gender Equality Symposium – three days of robust feminist discussion at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne, featuring contributors working on gender equality from across government, the community sector, academia, the corporate world and more. In many ways this was our early going away party, attended either in person or online by over one hundred participants from around the country.
What stood out as the Symposium wrapped up was not just the quality of discussions, but just how many people thanked us for creating a sense of community. It was the common theme in almost every conversation I had after the event. One activist privately remarked that it felt like a place “for us to exhale.”
Multiple people said they had found new friends, others new collaborators, and one contributor said it had reminded her of what it felt like to be part of a feminist community again. Watching these connections form made me wonder – what happens to this sense of community when movements are professionalised?
We have made incredible gains during ERA’s tenure – decades of achievement from dedicated feminists working through political landscapes steeped in structural and cultural misogyny. The efforts of our many member organisations, their individual representatives, and the ongoing support of YWCA Australia is evidence of advocates’ willingness to keep showing up and doing the work.
But what happens to those sites of friendship, collaboration and strategizing as feminism slowly shifts from outsider political resistance to clusters of formal workplaces? Of course, in some ways we are still outsiders, and unpaid advocacy is very much alive – but how has this professionalisation of our work changed how we relate to each other? When does that interpersonal element of a movement get left behind?
We have never had feminist spaces without tensions and inequities – and so much of our progress has been won by the most stigmatised and marginalised advocates. But a moment of transition is the time to reflect on what could be different. As I wrote this, a statement from one of our panellists, Elena Rosenman, kept returning to my mind. She said: “it is hard to think of an idea that is further from my day-to-day experience and those of my colleagues than the [idea] of sustainability.”
So many of the connections we witnessed being made at the Symposium were between people who should have already met. How many examples are there of people working on the same problems who don’t even know the other was out there? After every panel I heard someone say that some aspect of a discussion had changed how they think about their work, their organisation, or their role in a broader feminist community.
There is a hunger for common meeting places, for shared ground where we can gather in person and grow together. Where we can challenge each other and begin to bridge gaps we might not have known existed.
Even with the knowledge that ERA was ending, as we closed out the event the first thing I thought was “how do we make this happen again?” So much of the most critical work ERA has performed has been relationship building – work that was never fully recognised by government contracts. How often do the informal meetings, coffees, and chats at events that lead to critical reflections end up in our annual reports? At ERA we have often talked about the need to “bring people in” to challenging conversations – to sit down and work through complex (or just new) issues with grace and time.
Our staff time is often split between our formally recognised advocacy (government submissions, senate evidence, meetings with parliamentary staff and so on) and quiet but critical conversations that we cannot quantify. Even when we value this interpersonal work as part of feminist practice, our principles do not translate into bureaucratic recognition and funding. I wonder if finding more opportunities to foster community might be one pathway to rebuilding both individual and sectoral resilience. How much easier would it be to find solutions to problems if we had more spaces to talk through them as a community? It doesn’t fix everything, but it at least gives us somewhere to talk about that.
When ERA closes its doors this November it will leave a gap, but it will also leave space for something new. I hope we can keep finding places to meet each other in our advocacy, to find time to experience the joys of community alongside all our hard work. I believe we will all be better off for it.
- Please note: Picture at top is a stock image (Adobe)
Madeleine Clark is currently Acting Convenor of the Equality Rights Alliance. She has Masters’ degrees in both Political Science and Art Theory from the Australian National University, and in her spare time works as an independent researcher.
