In order to make lasting change, the collective WE needs to bring us all together to create a movement.
Health Equity alone is an incredibly important topic, as it’s the attainment of the highest level of health for all people. Everyone deserves the fair chance to have a healthy life, regardless of their socio-economic or geographic situation. Standing alone itself is incredibly important and worthy of a life’s work and an entire movement.
But the impact it has in conjunction to the movements of our time amplify it’s affect.
Achievement of Health Equity for Women, of Women’s Rights, of Women’s Empowerment, of Women in STEM, of Women not having to take sexism, of Equal Pay, and of the hundreds of other movements and issues of our time create a powerful statement and stand. Alone, they are powerful, but together they are an explosion. Each movement cannot and does not stand for one singular ideal. Without the collective, there is no whole.
#HealthEquityforWomen + #MeToo + #WomensEmpowerment + #EqualPay + #… = #Equality
For the entirety of our existence, women have been playing the second fiddle to man, and men have capitalized on that. And finally, as a collective, all at once, women have said ENOUGH. We are the same, deserve the same, and demand the same.
Each movement is significant and has its place, time, and value. Each movement has its own spin on the Equality affect. And now as a collective we can work to get there… together. Hand in hand with the women, AND men, who are supporting our voices, our vision, and our rights. We all can do this separately, as if the others don’t exist, but that will take a tremendous amount of effort without possibly creating the true change we want to produce.
Using the collective WE, the collective voice, and the collective effort, WE can achieve each of our separate movements faster by working together. Health Equity for Women doesn’t stand alone and separate, as it is greatly affected by the Healthcare 4 All movement. MeToo doesn’t stand alone without the Women’s Empowerment movement.
In the book, The End of Power, it states “Power has become easier to get, but harder to use or keep”. One movement alone cannot keep the power it achieved, as they feed off each other and need each other to grow. In today’s world, it’s not enough to inspire action, you have to do something with it. You need to have a plan, have an action, and work to achieve that action though specific and detailed strategies.
Clarity of purpose and shared values are a way of capitalizing on that power and turning it into real and specific action. In the HBR article titled “What Successful Movements have in Common” author Greg Satell states that “while we usually notice successful movements after they have begun to attract large crowds and hold massive demonstrations, those are effects, not causes, of successful mobilization. It is when small groups connect — which has become exponentially easier in the digital age — that they gain their power.”
The Power to take action and put that action to work is where true change happens. Through the work of changing laws, of getting healthcare to the people who truly need it, of putting perpetrators in jail, of paying equitable rates for equitable work, and of putting more women in position of power creates meaningful change that can change society. Women in positions of authority stand up for other women. Women advocate and fight for those around them and their own families. Women mobilize a movement and thus change society forever.
Health Equity for Women is fighting for what is fair and just, just as all of the other movements of today are. Without each one, Equality cannot be achieved, which in the end, is the point of what we are all fighting for. EQUALITY.