1,000 Acts of Resistance For International Women’s Day 2027

Let’s Answer Back.

Creative resistance in ordinary life.

Every day women come across constraints and expectations of how they should look, work, give and behave. Be more assertive, but not aggressive. Increase your productivity. Be a perfect mother. Work on yourself. Improve your skills. Don’t show your age. Fit in better, don’t be difficult.

This is an invitation to answer back, to work on challenging the message instead of changing ourselves.

Take a demand or request directed at you. It might be an advertisement, a piece of advice, an instruction about the woman you should be, a gendered request from your family, and make an answer.

Write a poem across it. Paint over it. Cross words out. Cut it apart and put it back together differently. Make your disagreement visible.

Your answer might be fierce, funny, quiet, beautiful or untidy. You do not need to be an artist. You do not need to turn your refusal into something polished or inspiring.

You are not making yourself fit, you are not accommodating the request. You are answering back.

The demand and your reply

This project gathers photographs of creative refusals: ordinary women answering the messages, constraints and expectations directed at them.

The original demand is part of the work. Keep enough of it visible—or explain it briefly—so that we can see what you are answering.

Perhaps it is advice that makes you responsible for everyone else’s comfort. An advertisement selling you another problem with your appearance. An instruction to give more or work harder when you have already given enough.

You decide what you want to challenge, and how you want to answer.

Add your answer

Make your response, photograph it and share it using the form below. A simple phone photograph is welcome. What matters is that we can see the demand and your reply.

Selected submissions will become part of the gallery on this website, bringing our refusals into conversation with one another.

Not “look what we made”, but:

Here is something we are being asked to accept—and here are our collective answers.

[Button: Share your answer]

Submission form copy

Share your creative refusal

What was the demand or expectation you are being asked to accept? What did you make in reply?

Upload a photograph and tell us a little about it. A few words are enough; you do not need to write an essay or explain every part of your work or the demand.

Your name is optional.

What are we resisting?

The expectation that you will always be available?
The advice to become more resilient when the demands never stop?
The message that your body, personality or ambition needs fixing?
The assumption that caring means giving until there is nothing left?
The expectation to carry the mental load for your family?
The bosses’ expectation to have a staff meeting at the time you need to pick up your children?
The desire to apologise, use just, or say sorry?

You choose what to challenge and how to answer. You do not have to share a painful story or explain your whole life. Resistance is in your hands.

Why gather 1,000?

Because I want us to see the expectations and constraints that we are so often left to question alone, and the many ways women are already answering them.

One creative answer will not change everything. This project is about making everyday resistance visible, recognising one another, and opening up possibilities for living differently. Together our resistance is stronger, and we encourage each other to keep living lives containing small acts of resistance.

What we give, what we refuse, and what we protect for ourselves and one another can itself be a form of resistance.

Keep thinking with me

This project grows out of my writing about radical kindness and my book in progress, Radical Kindness as Resistance: feminist rebellion for ordinary life.

Receive my fortnightly letters as I explore what constraints women experience and how we can challenge those expectations in our ordinary lives, and take acts that help free ourselves and others from those constraints.

Button: Send me the letters

You are welcome to participate whether or not you receive my letters.