 Thank you and good morning everyone and I'd also like to acknowledge that we meet on the lands of the Ngunnawal people. My feminist utopia is where the project of feminism encompasses a diversity of feminisms and I use that in the plural. Women of colour, disabled women, trans women, old, young, indigenous, women of all faiths and none. Currently feminism has been criticised as a white middle-class, ableist project. To ensure its strength and its sustainability it needs to be open to intersectional experience and accommodate diversity. My research, part of my PhD, suggests that Pacific feminisms are creating these new spaces for talk and shared action across diversity. We must ensure that the Feminist Advocacy Platform is speaking for more, especially in the face of the backlash against women's rights. Feminism should be an inclusive and broad church and not just a movement for the few or an unaffiliated collection of splinter groups all calling for different things. We need greater numbers and collectivity and unity across diversity. I developed this utopia drawing on my engagement with Pacific feminist civil society. There are of course contested notions of feminism in the Pacific and civil society is working across diversity to generate a shared vision. We need to continually encourage western feminists and I use those quotations quite deliberately and in interest of time we could have a whole session just on what that means but I'll just put in quotations to engage with non-western feminisms to see evidence of the practical application of unity in diversity and intersectional feminism in practice where identity is fluid and constructed and reconstructed through dialogue. Today I'll provide empirical evidence of such dialogue taking place within the Pacific feminist movement redefining feminism to be inclusive and embrace its diversity. I'll focus on fieldwork findings from participant observation of the inaugural Pacific feminist forum which was held in Suva Fiji in November 2016. Now it's not a rosy picture of feminist utopia in the Pacific. Civil society is up against traditional views, cultural constraints and governments not making headway in gender equality a priority. The Pacific region has the lowest representation of women in parliament in any region in the world. In Tonga for example no women were elected in the 2014 general election despite a record number of women standing as candidates. In Vanuatu no women were elected in the 2016 national election and in P&G no women were elected in the 2017 election. Practical initiatives are designed by feminist civil society and new coalitions to change this position. My case study the Pacific feminist forum brought together a hundred feminists from 13 different countries and its aim was to share stories and build the movement and map journeys and its outcome was a charter to increase action and advocacy. The forum was designed as a civil society space of collaboration and respect and diversity and intersectionality and intergenerational leadership and activism. This forum sought to respond to the question of marginalization within marginalised groups in the feminist project. It focused particularly on civil society activists advocating for women's rights around sexual orientation. Recent Pacific regional efforts have gone into trying to stop marginalisation. For example women who identify as lesbian, trans, bisexual or other sexual orientations are often not protected when women's rights are being discussed at national or global fora. So for example at the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN in New York it does not include sexual orientation or gender identity rights language in its political declarations or its agreed conclusions and this was something I experienced firsthand in 2015 and year after year language around sexual orientation and gender identity rights are submitted to CSW only to be outright dismissed or left teasingly to the end and then when cutthroat negotiations are having at two o'clock in the morning they're traded away for other words. So to challenge this I've observed that Pacific feminists are shifting the focus from this global level where they're experiencing a deficit to the regional level and exploring whether and to what extent marginalised women find representation at the regional level. My empirical findings from the Pacific feminist forum outline how this marginalisation is being addressed by diverse leaders jointly mobilising support across the broad women human rights defenders and feminist movements, the trans women's movements and the lesbian movements and this mobilisation aims for the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity rights to ensure nobody left behind and this mobilising work is in the context of constitutional democratic instability so you look at Solomon Islands, Boganville, Fiji and this instability has led to the creation of informal spaces and alliances in the absence of formal mechanisms through which progressive democratically inspired voice can be heard. So the Pacific women's movement has been active in the informal sphere around claiming women's rights for example against this backdrop of hostility towards sexual orientation claims for increased women's representation and leadership there's been a failure in some countries to sign the CEDAW Convention and there's as I've mentioned low levels of women's political representation. So this Pacific feminist forum is an important case study as it illustrated some of the factors that can enable enhance the role of Pacific regional civil society in achieving gender equality and findings from interviews I conducted in the margins of this forum suggest the importance of these informal spaces when no access can be gained to formal spaces. So one woman I spoke to was connecting young activists against different NGOs into a political space and she had established an informal network she said and I quote at the time formal spaces were being monitored and intimidating we've been able to organise sessions which we funded ourselves because one of the reasons to form an informal group having political discussions and we can't get a permit. So these interviews suggest that informal spaces can be used as leverage to get to formal spaces. So another woman and I quote said we've been able to get through to some formal spaces through this informal space we've created enable each other to attend spaces. I think at first our real intention was just to get out of our civil society space because we were junior staff doing the run around and we couldn't engage each other. Of course my PhD research will also look at the limitations of what to some extent was just to see if it was a truly Pacific wide initiative or some countries for example were only able to send one representative and there was no translation for the French territory so I'm not sending this up as a utopia but this is a work in project an idea of a feminist utopia. So for example religious and cultural contestation still had to be overcome to find a common strategic road but despite this what was utopian about my experience in the Fiji forum? Taking time out to immerse oneself in a feminist forum is good for the spirit. Sharing storytelling and song is uplifting and powerful and brings women together and that's why I'm so excited that we've got song here today. New strategies for self-care were discussed because feminist activism as we know can be tiring and dangerous and lonely. The diversity of the feminist project can be found in the Pacific with the full on inclusion of trans women. Deliberation can form strategic alliances across diversity if time and respect is taken to hear objections religious concerns for example and faith can sit side by side feminism and a regional sisterhood is possible at the intersectional level so if we use some of these lessons from my case study when we want to build our own feminist forum to be truly complete in a feminist utopia if we use innovative practice will open up new spaces will incorporate practical and everyday action beyond formal spheres to allow for the inclusion of new voices this will enhance a shared vision to more effectively achieve change and I've seen Pacific feminists are effectively finding strategic ways to overcome barriers to participation with new spaces emerging for strategizing and re-energizing to hear multiple voices in the Pacific there are practical democratic innovations in informal spaces being achieved much faster than informal spaces and just to reflect the multimedia aspect of today's forum I just want to close by showing you some pictures of this burgeoning feminist utopia so there were so many different sessions on different topics across feminism climate change and humanitarian work and how to do feminist and civil society led research we talked about the practicalities of organizing in rural spaces we had open mic to ensure that young women's voices were heard we had sessions about how to do coalition building climate change of course is a very mobilizing factor for women in the pacific we had a real range of different workshops so there were theater style word cafe style you had to do dramaturgical responses to questions we had very deliberative knowledge circle work this is the deliberative knowledge circle sitting around and everybody spoke their truth young women old women indigenous women lesbian women women living with disabilities all had a round of speaking their truth and then the second round was a response to what you'd heard and this is really just a focus on not the words but the images just to show some of the different women from different countries that participated in this forum this was the conclusion of the charter where we had achieved strategic vision and vision and built a roadmap for future action thank you very much