International Women’s Day #IWD 2025: Accelerating Action, Inspired by our Past.
By Ffion Fielding
Project Manager, ‘Hawlio Heddwch’: Women’s Peace Petition community project
100 years ago, 390,296 Welsh women signed a petition for peace, and sent it to the women of America. In 2024, we remembered their story, celebrated the centenary, and discussed ways in which we could realise their wishes.
We estimate that around 100,000 people across Wales visited an exhibition, took part in a workshop, or shared the stories of their foremothers as part of the celebrations, in all four corners of Wales.
Looking back on how the project celebrated International Women’s Day in 2024, I remembered that I joined a group of truly inspirational women, who all in one way or another work for peace in our communities in Wales as well as across the world, for what we ended up describing as a ‘peace flash mob’. For me this was one of the pivotal moments of our project. All were inspired by the story of the petition, and wanted to meet up and do . . .something . . .not sure what . . .but SOMETHING to make the world a better place, inspired by the actions of those women all those years ago.
So, what about International Women’s Day 2025? What can we do this year?
While I was thinking about ‘what happens next’, I thought I’d dig into the rich collection of documents and reports from the period held in the Temple of Peace, to look for other campaigns that celebrate their centenary in 2025.
The women’s peace petition was only one of several campaigns organised in the 1920s through the League of Nations Union in Wales, and grassroots membership and action continued to grow throughout the decade, to just over 50,000 by 1929.
It’s through these reports that we found out about the 1925 Churches Appeal to the Churches of America. Directly inspired by the success of the women’s peace petition, Professor Charles Webster from Aberystwyth University proposed an appeal that he hoped would bring the churches of Wales and America closer together in their common efforts for peace. All in all, 22 official representatives of Christian denominations in Wales signed the appeal, and this was presented the Federal Council of Churches in America in December 1925, by the Reverend Gwilym Davies.
Also printed in the 1925 report, was the following letter from Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, who had been heavily involved in the event to celebrate the presentation of the Welsh petition in New York in February 1924.
The report that she mentions, from the Conference on the Cause and Cure of War, was on the shelf next to the annual report in the Temple’s Library. This would seem to be a transcription of every word said at the conference, and may take some time to get through in full! Luckily however there is a summary of the report available online, and reading this, the parallels with the questions that we were grappling with a year ago at our ‘peace flash mob’ meeting are astounding. At this conference, representing millions of American women, the focus was not just on understanding how to stop war, but also the conditions within society that got rid of its inevitability.
In 2024, a piece of research commissioned by Academi Heddwch Cymru came to some remarkably similar conclusions. In the ‘Wales a Nation of Peace’ report, there is a description of the set of circumstances needed in order to maintain peaceful society. It seems that there is nothing new under the sun, and yet like our foremothers, we are living in an age when these questions become more pressing by the day.
So, in terms of that question of ‘what happens next?’ . . .this is how some of this work in 2024 has inspired us to take the next steps in celebrating the work of the League of Nations Union in a decade of centenaries, as well as getting to grips with the question of ‘realising’ the hopes of the signatories of the women’s peace petition:
The Welsh Women’s Peace Petition:
- Following the phenomenal work of transcribing all the names, completed in just over a year by over 400 volunteers, this year the plan is that little by little, these will be added to a searchable database. You can keep an eye on progress on the website of the National Library of Wales.
- We continue to collect stories about those women who signed the petition. We are growing our collection of stories on our page on People’s Collection Wales, and are always on the lookout for more. If you have time, and would like to contribute, guidance is available on the WCIA website.
- After successful visits to Aberystwyth, Cardiff and Haverfordwest, the exhibition of the chest, petition and related collections will make its way to Storiel museum, Bangor. Opening on the 12th of April and running until mid-June, there will also be an exciting programme of creative and learning activities – keep an eye on the museum’s website to find out more.
Churches Appeal
With support from Cytûn, Churches together in Wales, we will be further exploring the interfaith nature of this document, as well as researching more into its history. As part of this we will be producing a touring exhibition, and preparing a ‘toolkit’ for conversations about peace, based on the framework of the Wales as a Nation of Peace report. If you would like to find out more about this, please do get in touch.
Accelerating action: ‘realising’ the women’s wishes
On the 5th of June, Aberystwyth University will host a one-day conference, in partnership with Academi Heddwch, looking at the legacy of the centenary of the women’s peace petition. We hope to bring together an audience of those who have been inspired by the petition to find new ways of honouring the wishes of the signatories, building on the momentum that has been created in communities across Wales by this incredible story. In essence, growing the ‘flash mob’ and doing the ‘something’ that we knew was so important back in 2024! More details to follow, and please get in touch if you would like to find out more.
So, it seems that the project hasn’t really come to an end at all, but is rather moving into a new phase. In the current climate, it seems as though the women’s message is more important and yet harder to grasp than ever. But as the Urdd’s message of Peace and Goodwill stated in 2024, ‘Hope is an Action’, and we keep moving forwards, inspired by the actions of 390,296 women, 101 years ago!
For more information about any of the above, please contact me at ffionfielding@wcia.org.uk