Pat Mitchell on the Interconnected Fight for Gender Equality & Climate Justice
The future is female. To tackle challenges that define the future of our planet – like climate change, food security, global health, and gender equality – Pat Mitchell is uniting the efforts of women leaders and sparking action across the globe.
Mitchell has been a witness and a participant in the story of women’s challenges and accomplishments. She broke countless barriers as a journalist, news anchor, television host, producer and media executive, and she created new pathways for women, uplifting their stories, and increasing representation at every level.
For the past several years, Mitchell has co-led, along with Ronda Carnegie and Hafsat Abiola, an initiative called Connected Women Leaders (CWL), founded on the belief that if women leaders, across generations and geographies, are given opportunities to share stories, experiences, ideas and insights, they can and will collectively shape solutions to the world’s most pressing issues.
How is your work helping address issues of gender equality and women’s rights?
From my earliest memory, growing up in the rural south of the United States, I recognized the inequality of expectations and opportunities that were open for girls and people of color. I wanted to do whatever I could to change this reality, which limited not only individual potential, but also progress to more equal rights and access.
For me, the path to greater equality has to include understanding where we have been – respecting the ways that women have sustained their families and communities by sharing learnings and supporting each other. But the stories of women’s contributions through history are largely untold and uncelebrated. I prioritized telling those stories for the inspiration needed to continue the struggle toward true equality.
Much progress has been made in my lifetime, but there is still no true equality in the U.S., or in most other countries. Looking forward with the inspiration of what has been accomplished, there is so much evidence of the differences women make when they have access to equal education, financial independence, and representation at all decision-making tables. Women bring different qualities, life experiences, and problem-solving approaches that are needed everywhere.
In 2017, with the first Connected Women Leaders Forum at the Bellagio Center, a diverse cohort tackled the challenges of good security, access to affordable health, and the global climate crisis. With this unique opportunity to collaborate and connect across silos of work, we focused on all these issues and the urgent need for women to take leadership.
In subsequent forums at the Bellagio, with the encouragement and leadership of Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland and the current Chair of the Elders, we made our priority the climate crisis. It is the “mother of all issues,” as Mary reminded us, and we must have a habitable Earth for everyone in order for all other social issues to be addressed. Supporting solutions that would lead to a climate-safe world for everyone had to be our collective goal.
When you bring smart, experienced women leaders together and give them the opportunity to share and problem-solve, they will. “Women lead, action follows” is our theory of change.
