Wen is the Women’s Environmental Network.
We are an environmental charity working on issues that connect women, health, equity and environmental justice. We take an intersectional feminist approach to tackling the climate and nature emergencies.
We support women and communities to take action, amplifying racialised and marginalised women’s voices, and advocate for change.
We cultivate grassroots projects, connect women to nature, create blueprints for just food systems and put gender and intersectional equality at the heart of the green economy.
Our vision is a world where women, communities and the planet flourish because our society is equitable, collaborative and caring.
We work to create viable alternatives to oppressive systems, to end the exploitation of women and the natural world, and have a long history of working collaboratively for systemic change.
We were the first charity to connect gender, health, equity and environmental justice. Since our radical beginnings in 1988, Wen’s groundbreaking campaigns have tackled issues from air pollution and plastic packaging to toxic chemicals in menstrual products and cosmetics.
Our Vision
A world where women, communities and the planet flourish because our society is equitable, collaborative and caring.
Our Mission
To work collectively to create viable alternatives to oppressive systems, to end the exploitation of women and the natural world.
Our Purpose
To build a world where women, communities and the planet thrive.
Our Unique Lens
Wen is the only UK charity with a focus on issues that connect women, health, equity and environmental justice:
Women
Our network is powered by incredible feminists from a range of backgrounds and all genders. Our work seeks to centre the voices and liberation of people who experience gender, racial and social injustice. For Wen the most crucial thing is that all women, in particular racialised and marginalised women, are empowered and have substantive equality and that in all our work we fearlessly take an inclusive, intersectional feminist approach making power visible and raising up voices.
Health
For Wen, health is a powerful lens to think about the environment. We understand health to be beyond individualised physical health or absence of illness. We see health as a right so that people, communities and the planet can thrive. Taking an intersectional feminist approach exposes many of the oppressive and structural forces that come together to negatively impact women, communities and the planet’s health.
Environmental justice
Wen has a multi-layered conception of the environment, which goes beyond just thinking about the natural world. This includes our bodies, including the first environment we all come from which is the womb. It’s also about our homes, neighbourhoods and work environments as well as the wider environments, including towns, cities, bioregions, ecological and living systems, and the climate.
Equity
We believe that using equity as a lens, enables the specific needs of women, particularly racialised and marginalised women, to be provided for. This will help achieve fairness and enable women to flourish.
A note on inclusive language
Wen views issues from an intersectional feminist perspective and is inclusive of gender non-binary, trans and gender non-conforming people.
