I really look forward to this time of the year. There is something about spring that feels inclusive, as though a space opens up for everyone, flowers, plants, tree branches of all shapes, size, form and colour. Something wonderful in how the rays of the sun are touch us all and everyone feeling a bit more welcome!
The first months of 2025 have provided a much needed space for reflection and growth for me. The world events felt troubling at times but I sensed the need to focus on finding my agency and voice. I felt compelled to engage with themes that I have wanted to explore in a deeper way for a long time, particularly as an Asian woman finding my voice and feet in study and work spaces I go in and out of all the time. Themes that resonate deeply with my own identity and help me connect with others at the most human level while also acknowledging our differences and our uniqueness.
Being in charity and development spaces, the one thing we all witness and are so deeply aware about is how not level the playing field really is. People can feel excluded from society at so many different levels be it age, gender, ability, health, race and more. While there is much talk of equal opportunity and meritocracy, equitable service access and equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI or DEI) policies, these do not seem to always stick or make the impact they really should for those who face exclusion, long for acceptance and genuine empowerment.
I have been engaging with the more reflective and quieter parts of myself, attending weekend trainings being offered by people who have the lived experience of leading lives confronted by ableism, gender inequality and exclusion and ethnic and colour bias. It has been emotionally intense, evocative, eye-opening and humbling to say the least!
One of these trainings brought a childhood memory flooding back to me. I remembered my raw emotions as a seven year old living very near to a residential school for blind and partially sighted children in Delhi in India. As I saw those children go in and out of their school or playing in the school grounds which I could see from outside the gates, I often wondered about their lives. Were their other senses making up for the absent one? Did they have any support from their families? What will they grow up to become? Will they ever be teachers, doctors or astronauts? Or will they be those that struggle? Those who become faceless or ignored.. My yearning to know more how they saw the world and how they felt seen has only deepened.
My recent learnings taught me that we have such a long way to go when it comes to establishing basic human rights and freedoms. That our policy frameworks are like bumpy roads with a ridiculous number of pot holes and gaps where people just keep falling through. The recent movement to overturn EDI and gender equity frameworks across the Atlantic, slashing of disability benefits in the UK, or banning Pride in parts of Europe seem to signal how much we seem to be regressing in terms of our ideals as a more inclusive society. How there is systemic oppression everywhere around us and how ignorant a lot of us (myself included!) are about our own privileges.
I learnt and heard how…
- … society’s views of gender, disability and race start as young as primary school
- … needs and privileges need to be reframed and thought about differently
- … we try to treat everyone the same and in doing so forget to consider barriers people really face.
- … we impose our cultural values on different abilities, racial and gender identities
- … language and terminology is so contextual and often far from inclusive
- … medical models often try to fix what is not a problem and simply a difference
- … how intersectionality and layering of minority identities can lead to cumulative bias and a multiplier effect
- … having to constantly ask and be noticed and considered can be demeaning
- … internalised oppression can make it harder to confront social injustice !
When challenges feel so insurmountable, then coming together as change makers, seizing our agency, raising awareness, going step-by-step and persevering seems to be the way to go. A big part of changing the status quo has to be about bridging the divide of ‘us and them’ and becoming a ‘we’. To be ensuring we create the right spaces for those with lived experience to co-produce research and to advocate together to collectively shift the needle on attitudes and agendas.
We cannot afford to be immobilised by our discomfort in what feels awkward. Shared ideals of empathy, connectedness in our differences, and freeing ourselves from the straight-jacketed models of operating that we may have grown accustomed to feels necessary. Listening is so important and yet by itself not a magic bullet by any means. We need to be noticing carefully who decides the process of inclusion, who convenes, who gets invited into the room, whose voice gets heard and how we address and shift those deep and entrenched power imbalances!
Here’s to re imagining a society more inclusive and one, where we embrace celebrate and embrace our differences, and all of us feel we can belong, no less, no more!
As someone once said, ‘even if one person around us is not free, none of us are free’.
