The National Youth Agency: Comment - Consciousness raising

We were at one of those conferences dominated by male speakers. The talk was gender blind - it was a bit of a blast from the past. The difference was that the women sitting near to me shared and understood what was going on. We had the confidence to smile, rather than to challenge. Our common experience gave us the strength just to concentrate on what was relevant.

Life is full of those moments, and not just for women; men too are disenfranchised on occasion. The power relationships of race, clan and gender remain fundamental to society and to our work with young people. Young people have to live through the complexity of being an adolescent in the 21st century and still manage these other dimensions of power. What I learned through those difficult years helped me to understand power, diversity, injustice and complexity. I learned that life is not fair and people are not always reasonable. I also learned the real pleasure of sharing life experiences with others, the joy and humour of the common bond. But that period was not only about philosophy and politics; it was also about pragmatically doing things that made a difference - hence the poem: learning stock answers to stupid statements like "girls can't play pool", so you could deliver the rote answer while working out how to manage the situation; changing decision-making in large organisations, by pleasantly sending in a request a day to management, until they felt that devolved decision-making might be a good thing; realising that not all women were feminists and that powerlessness was not just a female prerogative; and finally, understanding that the real test of success is in the strength and achievements of those you have supported, the people you bring with you, and not in reaching an isolated pinnacle of power.