It's our third birthday! 🎈

A note of gratitude as this newsletter completes another year

Dear Readers,

#WomenLead turns three today!🎈🥳🪩

via GIPHY/Pawmojis

The special milestone triggered a few days of quiet reflection for me: while #WomenLead was born out of my curiosity to understand and determination to document important developments related to women in politics, it also ended up as a product that transformed me as a person.

Running this publication has required me to constantly upskill on many fronts - from the technicalities of different political and electoral systems, to the bouquet of skills needed to build and run a publication of this kind - writing, editing, research, social media, design, interviewing, translating, management, product thinking, and a host of other things (that I’ve had to do and which I probably don’t realise!). 

I’ve grown along with #WomenLead’s often-very-steep curves and learnt a lot along the way - not only about the world of politics and women’s representation, but also about the world of work, and what it takes to build something independently. Not to forget that #WomenLead is a child of the pandemic - it was born in May 2020, in the early weeks of Covid-19 - a time that reshaped our idea of working and community in profound ways. 

Image via Unsplash/Priscilla Du Preez

Sustaining #WomenLead independently has been an exercise in discipline and persistence, nourished by the love and support of #WomenLead’s readers, spread over 77 countries (as of today), multiple professions, languages and worldviews, who have often gone out of their way to drop in a word of encouragement, gently helped correct inadvertent errors, gregariously shared #WomenLead with others, and have generously purchased subscriptions allowing me to make small investments in this publication. 

Thank you, dear readers, for everything. For stopping by, staying on, and carrying us till here. This is as much your publication, as it is mine. 

As #WomenLead begins its journey of year 4, this community is on my mind and at the heart of the vision I have going forward – taking #WomenLead from being a platform that documents, reports and archives, to a place that can spotlight, collaborate with and amplify the work of others in the community. I hope when I write this birthday note to you next year, I have stories to tell on that front too!

If you have some thoughts, comments on this vision, or just want to say hello, please write in at: womenlead.project@gmail.com

Every day is a good day to support #WomenLead, but today might be extra special. You can support this publication by upgrading to a paid subscription. Choose a payment plan that suits the contribution you’d like to make: 

And if you want to support but cannot pay, how about a little PDA? 🥰😍 Give your favourite newsletter a shoutout on social media and help us take our work to more readers around the world! Thank you! 

I’ll see you over the weekend with all the news and updates from the month of May!

Love and gratitude,

Akshi  

p.s. It was a serendipitous delight to find myself in the Women Experts in Democracy Directory put together by the team at Represent Women, and released only yesterday. (Thank you for this honour, and the birthday gift!).