Social Transformation
Living Grail: Bernice Belair Sisson
“I guess you can say I was at the right place at the right time,” Bernice Belair Sisson said, recalling how she started her work as an advocate for battered women in the early 1970’s. No laws had been created yet to address the issues of domestic abuse and almost no one was talking about violence against women.
In St. Paul, MN, where she was living, she was part of a loose collective of women who, with a grant from a local attorney, had started a hotline offering support, legal advice and information about women’s rights and divorce when it became clear they were facing a horrible reality. The women they were talking to were victims of domestic violence and needed a safe place to go. Two years later, in 1974, that crisis hotline evolved into the nation’s first women’s shelter, Women’s Advocates, Inc.
Bernice, who came to Grailville in 1944, was one of the co-founders. She has been working with victims of domestic abuse ever since.
She stayed with the shelter as a volunteer until the late 1980’s when she was asked to create a support program for women leaving the shelters, through the St. Paul Intervention Project and the Community Advocacy Programs. Always aware of the struggles a woman might be facing as a victim of domestic violence, she created programs for daytime and nighttime, making them accessible for young women and mothers to attend when they could.
In the late 1990’s, Bernice observed a different and growing trend: elderly women were attending support group meetings. These were not young women with young children; these were women married for 40 years, with grandchildren. She realized that there was an age group affected by domestic abuse that no one had ever thought about before.
But reaching this age group would be different. There needed to be something to draw these women together, that didn’t scream “attend a support group for battered women!”
The guilt and shame is multiplied significantly when women have experienced domestic abuse for 30 years or more. It is just one of those topics women didn’t discuss. Especially those married in the 1950′s or 1960′s.
A quilters group was created. It was a lot easier for women to converge over making a quilt instead of discussing their abuse. Bernice said not all the meetings centered around discussion of domestic abuse and violence; they included positive things like creating a quilt. In addition, she said, creating something of beauty creates beauty in your personal life. This was a project that created positive self-images and confidence among the group and many women came to work on that quilt for years.
Bernice also created two support groups that met twice a month on alternating weeks in different areas of St. Paul. She made a point to schedule these meetings in the afternoon, since “older women usually do not like to drive at night.” If they took the bus to their sessions, they were reimbursed for the bus fare. It was important that there be nothing to keep them from coming.
“The Grail has been an inspiration and the base for my whole outlook on life,” Bernice said. “It gave me my start in the life-long work for women and girls.”
Bernice left Grailville in 1946, and went on to the headquarters of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference in Des Moines, IA with Mary Jane Brady. At the NCRLC, she and Mary Jane planned and organized two national conferences and published the periodical, Land and Home. In 1948, Bernice came back to Grailville to marry her beloved husband, John. She now lives with her youngest son and his family in the St. Paul home she shared with her husband until his death in 2005.
Bernice’s work with battered women grew into a movement that eventually gave a name to a silent epidemic, created much-needed legislation and empowered not only the champions of the abused but empowered the victims, giving them a voice.
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CSW and Climate Change: A Work in Progress Kate Twohy
With great trepidation, I accepted an invitation to moderate a caucus planned by the Sub-Committee on Women and Climate Change during the annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW55) meetings. It is the 55th gathering since the UN began. Caucuses on subjects of special interest go on for two weeks parallel to the official UN deliberations, where member states discuss and vote on the “agreed document.” Experts from around the world have testified and UN-recognized NGO’s have submitted their thoughts in the run-up to CSW.
Our sub-committee had made several recommendations, including steps to address the impact upon women of climate change. Statistically, women are impacted most severely among agricultural and fishing communities, in flood and drought regions and wherever the infrastructure is unable to cope with increasingly extreme weather conditions. Women are marginal to power and isolated by elites. We need their skills, their representation, and the voice of their community’s women as plans are made for disaster relief and adaptation.
Members visited the Bureau which is a selected group of about a half dozen representatives of member states from the major regions of the world. Our visits were well-received including by the Chair of the group and we thought that our presentation had made an impact. However, not one of our suggestions made it to the draft document. In Article 12 of the agreed conclusions, only a brief reference to “climate change” appeared among a list of issues to be addressed. Concluding the CSW55, a strong resolution from the Philippine delegation was presented that called attention to climate change and its impact on women. Even this intervention did not bring climate change into the theme for next year’s CSW56. It remains:
The empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication, development and current challenges.
Needless to say, efforts will be made vigorously to impact events next year so that women and climate change becomes an advocacy issue.
During the CSW, our sub-committee sponsored two caucuses and a parallel event on The Green Economy, presenting examples of development with low carbon impact. Attendance at these events was encouraging, with overflowing rooms, women seated on the floor and windowsills, giving evidence of the urgency of the subject. In a small group process, participants took various sections of the draft document and suggested appropriate references to women and climate change. These suggestions (admittedly late to the draft-document process) were submitted. None of our input appeared…so more strategies will be developed for our advocacy.
In the second caucus, for which I had accepted responsibility, we asked for testimony from the grassroots. Thanks to GROOTS/Huairou Commission (a global membership and partnership coalition that empowers grassroots women’s organizations), a very dynamic group working worldwide since the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women, we heard of the work of two women from the Philippines and Uganda, followed by a spirited exchange with the over 45 women present. In my preparations for the caucus, I had hoped for a meeting in advance to guide women selected by GROOTS (Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood) to plan a more directed discussion. We had even planned a cozy dinner meeting at Joy Garland’s Manhattan apartment which had to be cancelled due to the GROOTS women’s heavy schedule. Their presence at the caucus, however, gave witness to the great challenge of bringing their stories to bear on policy and practice.
We heard from one remarkable woman, an experienced organizer from South Africa and participant in GROOTS. She said the upcoming 17th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban, South Africa, has made no room for groups like hers to speak to their issues. Women who know that their experience will make a difference in adaptation at the community level feel left out. It remains a challenge for the UN and its commissions to afford opportunities for our most vulnerable women to be heard.
Empowerment and participation is the goal of our Grail work. We want to share this with you and invite you into the dance.
