Women Transforming Cities works to dismantle intersecting systems of oppression and promote genders and movements that are equitable, in order to transform where we live into places where everyone can belong, participate, and have social, economic, and political equity.
We work in cities, towns, local communities, and neighbourhoods. We collaborate locally, nationally, and globally as part of the larger movement to transform cities.
We work with equity-deserving genders, including women, girls, trans, genderqueer, non-binary, Two-Spirit, LGBTQIA++ and allies. We are committed to continuing to learn and evolve our understanding, language, and actions around gender inclusion.
VISION
The mission of Women Transforming Cities is to transform our cities into spaces that work for all people by empowering self-identified women and girls in all their diversity. We promote community engagement, inclusion and equitable representation by applying a gendered inter-sectional lens to policies, programmes, budgets, funding, staffing and governance of city governments, and call for the use of disaggregated data.
PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVES
All our work adopts a lens of intersectional feminism, anti-oppression, anti-racism and decolonization. We have been successful in influencing policy change, amplifying the voices of those less heard, and advocating for system change for a more inclusive and representative civic environment. We have a variety of ongoing initiatives, but in summary we accomplish our work by:
• Educating through workshops, mentorship, and knowledge sharing.
• Investigating the systemic barriers that prevent equitable civic action and participation.
• Advocating for radical policy changes that address all forms of inequity.
• Organizing to create a more inclusive and representative local civic system.
• Collaborating to strengthen our impact.
KEY PROJECTS
• Hot Pink Paper Campaign. We gather the ideas of women and marginalized genders and ask municipal candidates to adopt their recommendations.
• Cities Organize. These trainings enable women and marginalized genders to create change in their local communities.
• City Action. Workshops in partnership with community groups build understanding and confidence to engage with local government.
• Reconciliation in cities. We organize action research to understand the barriers to, and support implementation of, municipal truth and reconciliation calls to action.
• Watch Council. Volunteers track, analyse, and take action on all Vancouver city motions to ensure they apply an intersectional lens.
Women Transforming Cities International Society,
PO Box 21575, RPO Little Italy
Vancouver, BC V5L 5G2, Canada
Co-chairs: Ellen Woodsworth and Dr Joy Masuhara