So, just what is Gather The Women…..really?

Gather The Women is just that:  We gather the women. We create opportunities for women to come together, to inspire, to be inspired, to connect, network and support one another.   WE ARE AN INVITATION!

We invite women to come together to bond in our sisterhood, to put an end to competition and mistrust.  We invite women to create a new model of feminine leadership that will bring our gifts to the world, in full partnership with men and not having to hide behind the guise of a man’s way of doing business. 

Our purpose is to activate the power and wisdom of women.  We support her to bring her perspectives to the table - kitchen table, board room table, the cabinet tables.  We encourage women to speak out for justice, compromise, relationship, understanding, and acceptance, and we urge women to speak out for the children, at home, at work or wherever we may be! We invite each other to BE the change we want to see in our lives and the world around us.

The Bahai’s have a saying:  “The world of humanity is possessed of two wings – the male and the female.  So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly.”  The patriarch has been flying with one wing, and it is going around in circles!  Our work and our message is to strengthen the other wing so that women may enter into equal partnership to solve the issues we face today.  Actually, I would go a step further.  I believe that these two wings reside in each of us. When the female embraces her own masculine energy, and the male embraces his feminine energy, we come to one another as whole beings in full partnership.

GTW is part of a growing world wide movement, a new feminine wave of energy seeking to shine a light on all that is feminine. Imagine what it would be like to give the feminine voice authority in the world.   Imagine what it would be like to raise a generation of children who would embody these qualities of reverence, respect and empowerment.

• Beginning with the Mother herself, the Earth, we could not continue to abuse and deplete her resources. 

• Rape and abuse would no longer be a weapon used in war, violators would be outcasts, their acts considered shameful and cowardly. 

• Domestic violence towards women and children would be unheard of.

• Women who still feel self-hatred would find their healing, honoring emotions and tears as valuable and not as weakness.

• Men would be honored for their feelings and sensitivity allowing them to respect and give voice to their own feminine side without shame and embarrassment.

This is our message, this is our invitation. How do we communicate this?  How do we raise awareness?

We network the networks, bringing individuals and organizations together to discover ways of collaboration and new models for feminine leadership.  We have for too long had only a male model for success.  We invite women to create or join on-going women’s circles where activists can be nurtured and women who have not yet found their expression or value as a woman will find healing and become alive again.  We create gatherings in our homes and in our communities where we invite women in to go beyond social talk and explore the deeper conversation of what is meaningful to us, our families and our communities.  We examine how we can manifest change together. 

While we do not take stands on political or religious issues, we are spiritually based and DO encourage each woman to take those stands on what is important to her, to join in collaboration with others of like mind.  But above all, we recognize and understand that our motivation, our wisdom and our personal attitudes are just as important as the cause we may take on.  We do not try to change minds, we seek to connect hearts from which common ground can be discovered out of relationship. 

So, we encourage women to first take themselves on, look at where women give their power away, and be willing to pay the price of retrieving it again.  Here are some of the things we have initiated or participated in to further these ideals:

National and global:

• We currently have 42 regional coordinators across the U.S bringing GTW to their communities.

• We are part of a campaign to create the 5^th Women’s World Conference as promised by the U.N. after the last one in Beijing in 1995.  Now overdue!

• Some of our women have been participating in the current dialogue on the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations in New York.

•We have created GTW Congresses in Australia, Africa and Canada along with two international Congresses here in the U.S. in Dallas and San Francisco and have launched GTW in those counties.

• Recently  GTW co-sponsored with the University of California at Irvine, a trans-partisan conversation with some 80 women involved  in politics in So. California.  Women were invited into a conversation that crossed political parties.   Plans are underway to evaluate this gathering and to offer this model to the regional coordinators to be used in their own county or state.

• We stood in silence, with a  group called Standing Women, a partner organization, on Mother’s Day

• For the last six years we have created a celebration of International Women’s Day around the world.  These celebrations have been as small as a potluck in Alaska or a group of 200 women who gathered in the Congo.  St. Cloud, Minnesota, and my own Nevada County have held the largest events, consistently drawing nearly 300 women.  We share a common theme but invite women to express the voices of their own communities.

Not bad for a small group of women who had a vision just six years ago, and today have touched women around the world.  Kathe and I used to joke about being the Wizard of Oz…a small group huddled behind the screen…..projecting……. Our database reaches some 10,000 women.  We have made friends - real friends, across the U.S., Canada, Australia, Africa and Nepal.