“My body, my choice” is a rallying cry for feminists worldwide, but unfortunately, this simple statement is yet to be realised around the world.

A feminist future of justice is one where this statement becomes the reality for women in all their diversity the world over. Why is it that certain individuals are deemed more worthy of this right than others? Why is it that trans, gender diverse, and intersex bodies are not afford this same right? How can we speak of justice if we exclude those at the margins?

My hope for the future is one where we can say the phrase “my body, my choice,” with confidence. That rather than being a statement of aspiration, it will become an affirmation of truth.

By Lily Dong Li Rosengard (they/them), Senior Specialist: GIESC, ILGA World

In the future, we will have access to safe abortion all around the world, without the need to prove xyz just to have a medical right to our own body.

Head coverings for Muslim and/or other Religious women will not be shunned or prohibited in the West, but will also not be enforced or used as a means of control in the East. Women will be presented with equal opportunities as men, without our nuances going unaccommodated.

Further research into our physical health is endeavoured, and the differences it has in comparison to men’s; no more doctors brushing off our pain with paracetamol.

Our ancestors gave us the right to vote in 1918, so we must continue to use our voice, not only to help ourselves, but especially to aid women whose voices still go unheard.

And after this, we will have recognised that these issues do not solely affect women, but rather, all who society deems as women; which will be the final patriarchal fabrication we dismantle.

By Coral | she/they

As Black diapora feminist, we come from a long line of women who had no choice but to hold onto their imagination and hope in order to create new possibilities. Generations before, scattered by wars and instability across the world, carried visions of different futures, despite when the conditions around them offered very little.

For us in the diaspora, we continue to navigate spaces that were not designed for us, shut out from table of discussion, spoken for and over.

Yet, as frontline actors working alongside local communities in responding to crisis, we will continue to hold onto the torch of hope passed down through generation. We will turn our margins into sites of radical perspective, re-imagination, resistance and solidarity, spaces where we will continue to cultivate and exchange ideas, co-design out global south feminist agenda, and strengthen our connection across context.

Our future depends on our ability to build and deepen our Global South Feminist Solidarity movement, intentionally, collectively and across borders.

Sagal Bafo, Global South Feminist,
IMatter Women's Rights Campaign Consultant

Body As Archive

I send this from the fractals of the future, where bodies remember themselves as libraries. Every scar, every curve, every heartbeat archives a rebellion. Our movements are protests; our breath, a manifesto.

We have learned that autonomy cannot be legislated, that it must be inhabited, practiced daily, like sunlight threading through leaves or song rising from the earth. Machines pulse in rhythm with us; they do not dictate. Our pleasure is strategy, our grief a map to liberation.

You, reading this, are both ancestor and witness. The choices you make in the quiet of your body, the resistances that feel invisible, are already building the world we now inhabit. There is no divide between sacred and political; each gesture of care, each refusal, each embrace of joy, writes the future into being.

Remember: autonomy is contagious. Tend it in your flesh, speak it to the air, plant it in your neighborhoods. Your body is both shield and seed, and we are flowering in the soil your courage has prepared.

From the future, where we dance,
where we remember,
where we rise.

By Tafahri Munjatta, Nairobi, Kenya

We may come from different places, hold diverse beliefs, come from vastly diverging economic backgrounds or like our food in unique ways, and it is our human ability for compassion that allows us to relate to each other and lets us agree that everyone should be able to make decisions about their own bodies, lives, and futures, never mind our differences.

Today, reactionary politicians and groups are transforming this reality into something warped. Many keep obsessing about the bodies of women — as well as those of trans, gender diverse, and intersex people — dictating what we may do with our bodies and how much space we should occupy in society.

For me, the ideal future looks like a space in which we have full agency over our lives and can decide about our bodies. Where respect, understanding and compassion replace judgement and scrutiny. Where everyone can show up for their communities and feel safe to be who they are.

By Julia Ehrt, Executive Director, ILGA World

How do we dismantle the structural barriers that limit bodily autonomy and reproductive justice? It cannot be done alone.

To create our imagined future, we must collectively act together, now. This means rejecting the heteropatriarchal norms that define whose bodies matter, who we get to love, and who gets to reproduce and produce life.

Together, we must challenge the capitalist systems that force us to commodify our bodies and regulate our time in return for subpar healthcare, childcare, housing and mobility.

How can we thrive where economic survival is precarious? It cannot be done alone. We need to organise for conditions that support accessible healthcare and community-based care networks, and tear down systemic inequalities.

As a collective, we must build sustainable community structures that co-create bodily autonomy. This cannot be realised as the individual, but through collective support, mutual aid, and solidarity across the divide.

By reimagining our relationship with each other, outside of the rigid gender roles and compulsory norms, outside of the public/private divide, outside of the capitalist structures that commodify our labour, we can live the future that we imagine. Collective present-tense action will create our imagined future.

By Amelie Eckersley, she/her, Germany

Dear Sisters, Siblings, and Allies!!!

On this International Women’s Day, I write to you not just with a message of celebration, but with one of unwavering solidarity and defiant hope.

Today, we look around the world and see a landscape of breathtaking resilience and heartbreaking challenge. We see women leading protests for freedom in Iran, demanding the right to simply exist without a male guardian. We see mothers in Gaza sifting through rubble, embodying the fierce strength that ensures survival. We see women across every continent fighting for bodily autonomy against a rising tide of authoritarianism that seeks to control and confine us.

This is the world we inhabit. And it is precisely because of this world that International Women’s Day remains as vital as it was over a century ago. It is not just a day for flowers and pastel-colored marketing campaigns. It is our day to collectively bear witness.

We bear witness to the women who came before us, the suffragettes, the labor organizers, the unsung heroes of every civil rights movement. They were the first to understand that the personal is political, that the struggle for a fair wage is inseparable from the struggle for safety in our own homes, and that the right to vote is hollow without the right to live without fear.

We bear witness to the sheer, dazzling diversity of womanhood. The experiences of a Black woman in the American South are not the same as a trans woman in Argentina, which are not the same as a Dalit woman in India. A feminism worth its name is an intersectional feminism. It fights for the most marginalized among us, knowing that until all of us are free, none of us are free. We must actively listen, uplift, and cede the floor to those whose voices have been historically silenced. Our movement is not a monolith; it is a glorious, complicated, and powerful chorus.

We also bear witness to the struggles that persist in the shadows. The epidemic of violence against women, the gender pay gap that punishes our labor, the lack of access to healthcare and childcare, the climate crisis that disproportionately impacts women in the Global South. We see the quiet, daily heroism of the single mother working two jobs, the woman navigating a hostile workplace, the girl fighting for her education.

So, what do we do with this witnessing? We turn it into action.

To my fellow feminists: Let today be a day of reckoning and re-energizing. Celebrate the victories, yes, but let them fuel the fire for the battles ahead. Check in on each other. Mentor a young woman. Challenge the casual sexism you hear. Show up for the rights of trans women as if they were your own. Our liberation is bound together.

To our allies: We see you, and we need you. True allyship is not performative. It is using your privilege to amplify our voices, not speak over them. It is holding other men accountable. It is sharing the domestic load. It is being an active participant in the conversation, not just a bystander.

Today, I am thinking of the girl who is told she can’t be an engineer, the woman who is afraid to walk home alone, and the elder who has fought this fight for decades and is weary. To you, I say: We are with you. We are the ones you have been waiting for.

Our fight is not for a seat at a broken table. It is to build a new, sturdier, more inclusive table, where everyone has a place. It is a fight for a world where our daughters can inherit more than just our hopes, but a reality where those hopes are no longer necessary.

So, let us march. Let us organize. Let us shout. Let us whisper words of comfort to the weary. Let us build a future, together.

In love, rage, and relentless hope...
A Feminist

Dear Feminista,

I hope this missive of mine finds you well.

Today, on IWD, I write to you from a future we once only imagined. A society where bodily autonomy is unquestioned.

Here, every woman and girl grows-up knowing her body belongs to her and has the freedom to make decisions about her body and life without stigma.

I often think about Shekwoya, who suffered in silence after being denied sexual reproductive care by judgmental providers. In this future, her daughter visits a community PHC staffed with respectful providers who listen without judgment.

I think of Hadiza, who was forced to drop out of school at the age of 13 to face marriage and the strain of pregnancy. She became a mother before she could understand her childhood. In this future, none of that defines girlhood; marriage happens by choice, pregnancy is planned, and safe. Practices that once harmed girls are no longer justified in the name of culture and or religion.

Slowly, the change came, thanks to your brave activism against injustice, your pushbacks against oppressive systems, and collective community action. Today, girls have learned to own their own space and make their own choices.
With hope and solidarity

By NAYA Nigeria

Dearest sisters of tomorrow,

May you be spared of my sorrow.
And of our collective horror.

May you bleed life with pride,
May you never have to hide
The fluid from your insides.

May you only know the pleasure,
Of touch, and all its treasure.
And never not consensual.

May you walk home late at night,
Gazing at the moon, so bright.
Without clutching your keys in freight.

May you freely choose to abort,
Legally and in comfort
Without stigma of any sort.

May your body be your own
One that you can make moan
Loved in all shapes and tones.

By Heidi Monk, Oxfam-Québec, Canada, she/her

Amada sobrina,

Te escribo desde la memoria y la esperanza, para que recuerdes siempre que el mundo que hoy te abraza fue defendido y transformado por mujeres que se atrevieron a imaginar un futuro distinto y trabajaron colectivamente para hacerlo posible.

Si hoy puedes caminar con libertad, decidir sobre tu cuerpo sin miedo y nombrarte como quieras nombrarte, es porque antes hubo muchas mujeres que nos precedieron, tus ancestras fueron abuelas, jóvenes, trabajadoras, artistas, campesinas, estudiantes que desde su rebeldía resistieron y cuestionaron las normas impuestas.

Mujeres que marcharon, que escribieron y reescribieron la historia, ellas denunciaron, cuidaron, y sobre todo se organizaron en comunidad para que tu mundo fuera distinto al que ellas heredaron.

Hubo un tiempo en que aun existiendo leyes no eran una garantía para tu autonomía, aun se disputaba el derecho a decidir ser madre o no, incluso amar a quien se quisiera amar, era motivo de juicio, violencia o silenciamiento. Desde la incomodidad se crearon futuros imaginados para que tu generación no tenga que pedir permiso para existir ni que espacios ocupar.

Transformaron la manera de entender el amor dejando de romantizar el sacrificio o dolor, reconociendo que el amor habita en la amistad, en el estudio, trabajo, en el cuidado colectivo, en la risa compartida, en la comunidad que la sostiene y en la lucha combativa, reescribiendo la narrativa que reducía a las mujeres a cuerpos sexualizados recordando que somos pensamiento, creatividad, fuerza política, ternura, inteligencia, contradicción, deseo y autonomía, aceptando que nuestro valor no depende por un sistema creado por hombres para hombres, las desobedecieron, las desobedecimos.

¡El mundo comprendió que No es No! Una frase corta pero llena de poder, amor y consentimiento.

Lo que parecía una lucha individual se volvió fuerza colectiva entendiendo que frente a las múltiples opresiones se podía construir un futuro mejor para las nuevas generaciones.

Si hoy respiras un aire más justo, es porque hubo resistencia
Si hoy puedes elegir, es porque muchas antes que tú se negaron a obedecer

Si hoy puedes soñar en grande, es porque muchas se negaron a aceptar un destino pequeño

¡¡¡El feminismo no fue solo una lucha, fue una forma de amar la vida con libertad!!!

Con esperanza, fuerza y ternura,
Bolivia

Dearest Feminist Reader,

It has come to this Pan-African Feminist's attention that while the grand conference and negotiation halls of power glitter with declarations of progress, the true battle for our feminist collective future is being waged in far less visible chambers.

There is much talk of justice. There is an endless ceremony in its name. And yet, what is justice without bodily autonomy? What is access without the fundamental right to one’s own body? Until we dare to root our shared vision of the future in bodily autonomy, we build colonial and patriarchal palaces upon our bodies.

From the perspective of those who labor within our Political Leadership Incubator (PLI), and from the years of work crafting the Nalafem Academy, a most inconvenient truth emerges: to change the system, one must not only protest at its gates, but enter its corridors, sit on its tables, befriend its members and shift power through shifting thinking, data and values. It means refusing fragmentation. It means recognizing that justice negotiated in New York shapes lives in Addis Ababa, Brussels, Panama City, and beyond. It means understanding that solidarity is not sentimental. It is structural!

For years feminist organizations and activists, and especially young feminist movements, have organized from the outside. Each year we are swept into the whirlwind of side events and parallel convenings, rarely invited into the closed negotiations where Member States hold the pen and draw the lines that shape our realities. In Africa particularly, feminists have been holding the line without always being allowed near it.

Meanwhile, anti-rights actors grow bolder. Resources grow scarcer. Narratives once thought settled are now reopened with alarming ease. All the while between whispers that Africa must retreat to the national. But let us be clear! What is “national” is dictated by the regional, and what is regional is shaped by the global. If Africa does not lead in those spaces, Africa will be led. And so it is not withdrawal we require, but leadership. Political Leadership! African feminist politicians, young and old together in intergenerational co-leadership. Setting regional and global agendas, not merely responding to them.

In Europe and North America, future leaders are being cultivated with impressive polish, yet often with little reckoning with the histories that position them where they stand. Colonization is not an anecdote of the past; it is a living architecture of power. To ignore it is to reproduce it.

We require politicians in the Global Minority who understand this history, not abstractly, but materially. Politicians who practice decoloniality as value and method not rhetoric. Politicians who work alongside African counterparts, carry the same commitments. The role of PLIs, then, is most strategic. To shape both future and current politicians who are willing to shift power.

In the year 2026, the Africa Group still seeks to remove the word “all” from “all women and girls” in negotiated texts. A single word, some may say. But language is power. “All” is bodily autonomy. “All” is access to justice. “All” is the line between universality and exclusion. To strike it out is not administrative. It is patriarchal. It is colonial. It is anti-justice.

If we are to build a future worthy of its name, we must dare to root it in bodily autonomy, to work both outside and inside the system, and to ensure that “all” truly means all.

Yours in action,
Dr. Syeda Re’em Hussain
Nalafem (Nala Feminist Collective)

To: thepastme@21stcentury.com
Subject: Overwhelming peace

Hi, Gabi!

I am thinking of the eighteen-year-old you, and it’s wild to think about how much you have been sweating the small stuff. Picking a life feels like choosing a permanent suit. And you have to get it right, don't you?

Well, I have to tell you what's up here nowadays. I have good news: we don’t really pick anymore, we just evolve. It’s actually kind of funny how stressed you were about getting it right when the whole point of where I am now is that you can’t get it wrong. I mean, you can, but then you just change, try a new you again.

It's not a piece of cake, tho. Living with this much freedom is honestly a bit of a trip because there’s no NO to push against. Family is the people we choose to be around and in the format we want it to be. Gender and sexuality aren't a thing that concerns a government or a religious leader. Careers are for everyone to build, no matter who you are or where you come from.

It’s definitely a little overwhelming to have every single door wide open, and sometimes the amount of YES in the world makes your head spin. But that also means we can change our minds and rebuild who we are. No need to apologize for anything.

I am sorry you are stuck in a world where a few choices supposedly define you forever. I know it's not yet how it is here. But I strongly encourage you to pick some battles, fight for your right to be whoever you want to be and to change. Your small rebellions made this world I live now.

So, thank you. And keep choosing a bright moving life. For you and for the me I get to be.

xoxo

By Gabi Juns (she/her), Lamparina, Brazil

Dear people of today,

I am writing to you from a future we once dreamed about.

In this future, every person has control over their own body and their own life. No one is forced into silence, fear or shame because of who they are. Women, girls and people of all identities live with dignity and freedom.

Here, equality is not just a word in speeches. It is something we see in our everyday lives. Girls go to school without barriers. Women make decisions about their bodies and their futures without pressure or violence. Communities stand together to protect each other. Instead of judging or controlling others, people listen and respect different choices. Laws protect rights, but more importantly, society respects them. Looking back at your time, we know that this future did not happen by accident. It happened because people like you spoke up, challenged injustice and believed that a fairer world was possible. Some of you protested. Some of you educated others. Some simply refused to accept discrimination as normal. Every small action mattered. Because of that courage, the world slowly changed. Today we live in a society where bodily autonomy is respected and justice is real. And we remember that this future was built by the hope and determination of people in your time.

So keep going. Keep speaking. Keep believing.

Your actions today are the reason our future exists.

With gratitude,
A voice from the future

By Farhat kabir, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh

To my sisters of the past,

I write to you from a Benin where the "Agoodjie" spirit, our ancestral strength, is no longer a battle cry for survival, but a song of self-determination. In this future, bodily autonomy is the heartbeat of our nation. From the markets of Dantokpa to the schools of Natitingou, a woman’s body is her first and most sacred territory.

How we got here:

• The Village Circle: We moved the conversation from Porto-Novo’s halls to the heart of every community, transforming consent from a legal term into a cultural value.

• Economic Sovereignty: We broke the chains of dependency. By securing land rights and digital financial tools, we ensured no woman has to trade her dignity for her livelihood.

• The Legislative Shift: We didn't just change laws; we changed the hearts that wrote them.

Today, a Beninese girl does not ask for permission to lead, to heal, or to choose her path. She simply does. Your struggle was the labor pains of this world. We are the harvest of your courage.

By Fanny Fanou-Ako, President Women Empowered-Benin

I write to you from the feminist future we dreamed of. And here in Laos the future we once dared to imagine.

A society in which women are able to have equal participation in driving conversations about issues that matter the most to us. A world women can lead economic conversations without question, and where men & women share care work, recognizing it as a fundamental human responsibility and skill.

In my time, women, girls and LGBTQ+ in Laos as well as other corner of the world walk freely with dignity in proudness to be themselves whether they are Gay, Trans, Bi and +. Communities value our voices. Bodily autonomy is respected as a right, not a privilege. Equality is not a slogan but a normal part of everyday life in families, in schools, in fields and factories, in offices and leadership spaces.

By Thena

I am writing to you from a future that once seemed impossible.

Here, bodily autonomy is not debated. It is simply understood. Respect for every person and every body has become part of the quiet infrastructure of our societies, like clean water at home.

Girls today cannot imagine that someone might reach under a stranger’s skirt on public transport. Women struggle to believe that a former partner could once threaten them with private messages or intimate images. Not only because protection systems now respond immediately, but because society itself has lost its appetite for humiliation.

No one is asked to justify their sexuality, their relationships, or their decision to have children or not to have them. Whether someone is married no longer defines their worth.

Sometimes we read stories from the past with disbelief. Recently, historians discussed a case where a group of men tried to restore what they called the “old order,” claiming that women must belong to husbands and could be controlled by force.

What shocked us most was not only the violence, but the response. The women who sought protection were turned into a television spectacle. Their stories were broadcast in detail, yet no real help followed.

Today we understand something clearly: telling a story of violence without offering care is another form of violence.

The world we live in was built by people who refused to accept that reality.

Perhaps by you.

By Oksana, WCU, Ukraine

“Survival”

With the chaos of wilderness,
and the broken wings of motivation,
trying to fly past the miseries
to rest above the darkened storms,
amid the crackling threads of lightning.

Yet courage longs for flame
a flame that ignites hunger for power,
not to linger within fading memories
but to dress the soul in silence,
turning every shadow into ashes.

Leaving marks of bleeding scars,
bearing the weight of wounded battles,
they fall like sacred pieces of calm
into the scattered tranquility of light
and we call it survival

By Zubair Ahmed
(~ the Mr. Astrologist)
from Faisalabad, Pakistan

E ancora c'era chi pensava che i nostri corpi possano essere normati.

E ancora non si era vista la potenza della materia-corpo che travalica un sistema effimero e debolissimo di regole imposte dalla razionalità.

E ancora si stava comodi nella somiglianza dei corpi piuttosto che eccitarsi della pluralità.

E ancora si resisteva alla costante trasformazione che il corpo è e che porta tutto a scomparire per come lo conosciamo.

E ancora si credeva che il corpo fosse lo spazio per l' imposizione di potere piuttosto che un luogo di emersione di potenza.

Poi tutto è cambiato.

By Associazione Culturale Immaginare Orlando