Over 15 years ago, 1 Million Women was just one woman: Natalie Isaacs.
A former cosmetic manufacturer, in 2007 Natalie realised the world was shifting, especially after watching the documentary An Inconvenient Truth about Al Gore’s campaign to educate the masses about global warming. After searching for organisations that focused on climate action to no avail, Natalie decided to form 1 Million Women.
In the beginning, the heart and soul of 1 Million Women was about empowering women to make individual changes in their own households – reducing food waste, not buying fast fashion, and cutting down the power bill.
It was different then, as the climate discussion was both less considered, and less controversial.
‘1 Million Women is empowering women to live climate action through everything we do,’ explains Natalie. ‘How we live, how we consume, how we vote… we have climate in our hearts.’
Women would sign up and have access to an activity centre. In that first year, 40,000 women joined the initiative. Now, 1 Million Women has hit their goal of one million participants, and has shifted its focus from individual behaviour to worldwide policy.
Recently, 1 Million Women released its newest goal: to have one million houses electrified by the end of the next government term.
‘We were just in Canberra a few weeks ago, a delegation of one million women,’ says Natalie. ‘We had 26 meetings from politicians, independents and Greens, Labor and Liberal… asking them to commit to the initiative.’
Helping households to electrify involves government help, through battery storage roll out or finding schemes for renters that landlords can be a part of or incentives to have solar installed.
‘Only people that afford it can have an induction cook top or swap out their hot water system… we need to make energy affordable for everybody. It is ambitious but it must happen,’ says Natalie.