#WOMENAREPOWER OLD

For decades, women have not only made history, they have written it. They fought for their rights, they showed courage and strength to make their voices heard, they united so that their daughters would never again suffer the same discrimination. Throughout the world, women have played a central role in enabling our societies to progress.

If we have chosen to call ourselves Empow’Her, it is because we are convinced that change will come from women themselves, from their power to recognise themselves as the agents of their own transformation and also that of their communities. Our name is a reminder of this intrinsic strength, this ‘power’ in which we believe deeply and which is reflected in the rest of the values that guide our daily actions: sisterhood (the power to act together), audacity (the power to dream), autonomy (the power to decide for oneself) and of course equality (the power to share).

It is the power of women that we are celebrating, those who, yesterday, today and tomorrow, are helping to build a more egalitarian society and defend our rights. Those who, through the diversity of their backgrounds, their commitments and their visions, make us rich and powerful together.

These women give us a glimpse of a society in which every woman can shape her own future, can dream and make her dreams come true, can control her own body, can act, can inspire and be a role model, can succeed, can stand up, can be represented, can be visible.

Women need courage, desire and determination to make their voices heard. “Empowerment” begins by no longer viewing women solely through the prism of the inequalities they suffer, but by recognising the capacity they have to change the established order. According to Vandana Shiva, to whom we owe the slogan of this campaign, it is the “power of ordinary women” that is the most powerful source of transformation.

Like her, we are committed to highlighting our individual and collective successes, to talking about our present and future struggles and to promoting a society in which women, all women, can realise their full potential and seize the power that is theirs. Because we are all powerful.