I grew up in a world that told me to stay quiet, to obey, to accept things as they are. My family, my community, my school, they all operated under the same unspoken rules: men lead, women follow, and the systems that hold this up are natural, inevitable, even holy. But even as a child, I felt the weight of those rules. I felt the suffocation of patriarchy, the erasure of my voice, the slow poison of coloniality that had shaped my world long before I was born.

When I found feminism, I found a language for my anger. I found a framework for my discomfort. And when I stepped into climate justice work, I thought I had found my calling. I believed that fighting for the planet was the ultimate fight, that if we could just stop the glaciers from melting, the storms from raging, the seas from rising, we could save everything.

But I was wrong. Or rather, I was incomplete.

The Trap of Silos

Very quickly, I learned how the world likes to categorize “issues.” Climate change is one box. Gender equality is another. Human rights, economic justice, peace, health- each sits in its own neat compartment. Organisations, governments, even some of the most well-meaning NGOs, treat them as separate problems with separate solutions. You go to a climate conference, and they talk about carbon targets. You go to a women’s rights forum, and they talk about legal reforms. You go to a peace rally, and they talk about disarmament. Each space speaks its own language, follows its own agenda, and rarely looks sideways at the others.

But on the ground? In our villages, our cities, our homes? These issues are not separate. They are one.

You cannot talk about climate justice without talking about gender justice. The women, especially First Nation &  Indigenous and poor women, who are on the frontlines of climate impacts are the same women who are denied land rights, education, and political voice. The communities being displaced by rising seas are the same communities still reeling from the violence of colonialism, the trauma of genocide, and the ongoing threat of militarism and nuclear testing. The economic systems that are burning the planet are the same systems that exploit women’s labor, that privatize water, that push people into poverty.

Climate change is not an environmental issue. It is a justice issue. It is a human rights issue. It is a feminist issue.

Finding My Fire in Feminism

For a long time, I felt lost in the silos. I would sit in meetings where we discussed “gender mainstreaming” as if it were a checkbox, not a radical reimagining of power. I would listen to experts talk about “resilience” without ever naming the systems that make people vulnerable in the first place. I felt like I was shouting into a void, trying to connect dots that everyone else insisted on keeping separate.

Then I found DIVA for Equality.

DIVA is not just an organisation. It is a home. It is a space where feminism is not a theory, but a practice, rooted in care, in accountability, in intergenerational accompaniment. Here, I learned that my anger was not just valid; it was necessary. I learned that my experience of growing up under patriarchy and coloniality was not a personal failure, but a political reality shared by millions. And I learned that the fight for climate justice is inseparable from the fight for bodily autonomy, for land rights, for peace, for liberation and JUSTICE!

Working with the Deep Ecological Network (DEN) has shown me what it looks like when women, in all their diversity, young people and gender diverse people, come together to defend the living planet. We work on climate justice, yes. We work on disaster risk reduction, on biodiversity protection. But we do it in a way that refuses to separate these from the larger struggles for decolonization and re-indigenization. We listen to the communities, to the constituencies. We center their knowledge, their wisdom, their demands. And what we hear, again and again, is a call to dismantle the systems that have caused this mess in the first place.

Calling It What It Is

We cannot solve the climate crisis without confronting neoliberal capitalism. We cannot protect biodiversity without honoring Indigenous sovereignty. We cannot build resilience without addressing the legacy of colonialism and the ongoing violence of militarism. These are not side issues. They are the core.

Feminism taught me to see the connections. Feminism gave me the tools to name them. And working in a movement that is grounded in care and accountability has given me the hope that another world is possible.

To the young feminists & activists out there who feel the same frustration, the same anger, the same longing for something more: you are not alone. Your instincts are correct. The silos are artificial. The interlinkages are real. Keep asking the uncomfortable questions. Keep insisting on the whole truth. Keep fighting for a justice that is intersectional, interlinked, and intergenerational

Because the planet cannot wait. And neither can we.

Written by Ilaisa Kauyaca, Deep Ecology Network Projects Officer, DIVA for Equality –  for all who are fighting for a just and feminist future.