A few years ago, when I was solo travelling the world and crossing paths with women travellers who felt like sisters, I would tell them about my glorious secret dream. My dream to acquire a small island and start a community of only women citizens. There, a few hundred of us would live, create and thrive together. In this utopia, men would only be allowed to visit our country on weekends. We would be a democratic society shaped by extraordinary women where every single citizen’s need for a fulfilling life would be integrated into policies and practices.
As I get older and grow more disillusioned – with good reason as our world goes to shit due to an increase of misogynistic right-wing governments, the severe impacts of climate change, and multiple atrocious wars and genocides – my dream fades further and further into my imagination. However, I aim to create and find solace in the beauty and safety of women’s spaces wherever I can. An entire country of women is ambitious, but solid communities of women are entirely possible.
There have been very few men in the spaces I have inhabited for my three decades of life. I have no brothers and mainly woman cousins.
During my childhood, I remember strange conflicts with my male cousins. I once did not talk to one for what felt like three months because he took guavas from our tree without asking. Another would always demand I get him water whenever he asked, threatening to throw out all my Barbies if I did not. When I finally summed up the courage to refuse, he placed all eleven of my dolls in a row outside on the lawn.
Their entitlement crawled under my skin.
On an afternoon stroll when I was 11 years old, a mentor of mine casually said to me how happy and fat women would be if we kept all men underground and only used them for breeding purposes. At the time, I laughed awkwardly – taken aback that she would propose something so radical. The older I became, and the more interactions I had with men, the more her proposal started to make sense to me.
My university course comprised of 95 percent women, and my first job was at a women’s non-profit organisation. This was the time I began to find my feminist voice, recognising the manifestations of patriarchy and squeezing out the splinters of internalised misogyny from my epidermis. I loved working solely with women. Power dynamics and conflict existed, as in any workplace, but to spend seven hours a day in a space without sexist microaggressions and harassment created a desperately needed sanctuary.
Interacting primarily with women has always been natural to me. It has made sense with regards to both my physical safety and emotional comfort. In the presence of women, I can fully express my personality, including the qualities that society has labelled as intense or hysterical.
Having so many women in my spaces without being conscious of the male gaze, without being mansplained, has made me a vocal advocate for increasing the number of ‘formal’ women’s spaces. These spaces should exist, and regardless of a woman’s age, race, religion, income, sexuality or ability; these spaces should be accessible.
I felt the magic and revolution that intentional women’s spaces can bring when I went to a three-day women’s-only festival in a forest in Victoria that brought together thousands. In the beautifully curated workshops, amongst the trees, consumed by body movement and music, I saw women crying unapologetically, howling, stripping off their physical and emotional layers, dancing with their eyes closed, touching themselves, and sharing their fears and desires with strangers that they welcomed into their hearts as sisters.
I sat amongst earth fairies, moon children, witches and priestesses at the festival, bright silky clothes cascading off their vegan bodies, a halo of stars around their heads – women whom we all secretly or openly envied for their ability to skip through life with magnificent ignorance and/or meticulously crafted realities.
However, the majority of women who attended the festival were actually very average women. They came from regional suburbs around the country, they wore sweatpants and sturdy shoes, and they had stress lines on their faces. In our societies where women are expected to juggle household, caretaking and workplace responsibilities flawlessly, at the expense of their physical and mental health, women’s spaces like that festival are self-care solace. A place where women can just be, and no one expects anything of them. These women were tired, they had neglected their hearts and bodies for too long, and they were desperately in search of healing all the light and dark facets within themselves.
In workshops about healing relationships with our mothers, dealing with trauma from sexual assault, overcoming depression, exploring our wild sexual desires, becoming fearless leaders, and embracing the darkness of our subconscious, I saw women around me opening up, expanding through their unique growing pains, and then transforming. I felt it all around me. It was incredible. The energy in those workshops could fuel all the ships needed to get to my women-only country.
Women-only spaces are not a new nor Western concept. They have existed in societies across the world for centuries. In the Global South, women’s spaces are often not formal.
In a slum community in Jaipur, India I observed women gathering in small groups outside their homes on a daily basis: exchanging everything from disciplinary suggestions for their children to remedies for illnesses and updates on the popular television serials.
In Morocco, I experienced women’s spaces inside hammams, or bathhouses. It was an important part of Moroccan women’s self-care routine to get undressed with ease and scrub the backs of strangers while chatting about every facet of their lives. My Moroccan friend shared that the hammam was her space for solace, the only place where she could experience peace and solitude outside of her house of 11 people where every single thing was shared.
In my hometown of Kathmandu, Nepal, after observing how male-dominated the nightlife and entertainment industry is, I founded a collective to organise events and experiences exclusively for women and it has been very popular.
In our patriarchal world, any intentional effort to create an exclusive space for women is viewed as radical.
“Why aren’t there men-only spaces?” they cry out in anger.
Because the entire world – every country and community – is a man’s playground, and it always has been.
Public space is not public at all – it is the man’s domain. Whilst men loiter happily in public spaces, we avoid eye contact, because they stare at us like we are intruders in their home. When women are alone in public, we are hyper-aware of every movement, sound and glance. Our autonomy over our bodies hangs on a thread. We do not smile or allow ourselves to relax because men feel entitled to the time, energy and attention of women who are alone in public.
If the entire public space belongs to men, then women should be allowed to experience the freedom that comes with gender-segregated spaces too. Society naturally gives men this right, but we have to actively create it, prove the value of it, and make a concerted effort to maintain it. We are entitled to gendered spaces more so because when we aren’t in them, the risk of violence and assault against us instantly rises. Women’s spaces are literal safe havens.
The simple act of calling ourselves feminists is still considered defiant, and advocating for and creating women’s spaces is seen as shockingly radical. Men simply cannot comprehend that we may want to live outside of the realm of their imposing presence and violence. Solidarity and sisterhood are integral to our survival in our patriarchal societies, and women-only spaces can preserve our sanities and protect our souls.
Cover by NEOM; inset by Vlad Tchompalov