loading . . . Women are going to save the world, right mom? Voices Across Waters is a living chain of conversations among ecofeminist activists from across the Mediterranean: Svetlana Balovska Đurković, Mariona Bonsfills Clotet, Noe Diaferia, Asmaa Elmalky, Simona Getova, Jasmina Husanović, Lena Penšek, Roula Seghaier, and Shereen Talaat. Through intimate and courageous dialogue, the series amplifies voices, stories, and political imagination rooted in care, solidarity, resistance, and transformation.
Across borders and struggles, each episode explores how ecofeminism challenges patriarchal, colonial, capitalist and extractivist systems while nurturing collective alternatives grounded in justice, dignity and ecological balance.
These are not just interviews. They are acts of alliance building towards collective liberation. They are conversations between commerades, between friends. They are hope.
In this episode, Lena reflects on ecofeminism as both a lens and a lived practice one that connects patriarchy, capitalism, knowledge, and care. From her early political awakening to climate justice organizing in Slovenia and Barcelona, Lena traces how ecofeminism expanded her activism beyond single-issue struggles toward confronting broader systems of oppression.
Together, the conversation explores autonomous women’s spaces, unpaid care labor, trust-building, and the radical power of storytelling. They reflect on the Mediterranean as both bridge and border: a sea of olive trees and tourism, but also of migration, climate crisis, and political fracture.
At its heart, this episode is a call to transform hopelessness into collective action, to build spaces where care fuels resistance.
Lena Penšek (interviewee) is a Slovenian activist and feminist, currently based in Barcelona. She organizes in the intersection between climate and social justice, transnational organising, degrowth, solidarity and feminism.
Svetlana Balovska Đurković (interviewer) is an anthropologist and ecofeminist queer activist from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the United States. Currently based in Croatia, she is a pioneer of the LGBTIQ+ movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina, now dedicating her efforts to environmental justice.
This podcast series is part of the Ecofeminism in the Mediterranean initiative and was developed as a chain-interview format designed to create relational dialogue across territories, experiences, and struggles.
An initiative by Research & Degrowth International: Research & Degrowth is an academic association dedicated to advancing research, training, and collective reflection on degrowth, ecological justice, and post-growth transformations. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, it supports critical thinking and collective action toward socially just and ecologically viable futures. Project coordination and leadership by Lena Penšek, activist and communicator of the Ecofeminism in the Mediterranean project, with visual identity and artwork by Alexandra Mestre Garcia. Find out more at https://degrowth.org/
Design and production by Efecto Colibrí: Efecto Colibrí helps create narratives that advance a just, diverse, and regenerative reality. It drives systemic change by transforming the stories that quietly shape our worlds. Through narrative research, co-design of systemic-change narratives, and story activation, Efecto Colibrí builds understanding, moves conversations forward, and equips teams to create change through narrative clarity in times of noise and polarization. Creative design by Ana Amrein, founder of Efecto Colibrí, together with Gonzalo Díaz, architect and editor. Find out more at: https://efectocolibri.com/en/
If this conversation resonates with you, share it and help these voices travel further across the Mediterranean and beyond. https://www.spreaker.com/episode/women-are-going-to-save-the-world-right-mom--70589877
