Women and renewable energy share a common denominator: despite their presence throughout history, neither science nor philosophy found a place for them.

For hundreds of years, we’ve been raiding the planet’s resources like oil and coal. The consequences are the exhaustion of nature and the unquestionable climate crisis threatening the future of humanity. Meanwhile, the Sun, water and wind remained unused, patient and infinite since the beginning of time, awaiting their opportunity – to demonstrate they are the energy alternative of the future.

History has also obliged women to remain in the margin, on the outside looking in. A long tradition preceded us, where training and development was strictly a male preserve. Except in rare cases, women were not allowed to participate in intellectual and scientific fora. We failed to use 50% of our potential.

But this paradigm is changing. The use of renewable energies - the planet’s inexhaustible resources - is pretty much accepted now, and we are progressing toward female leadership in order to return to civilization the other half of its potential. Once they had in common the fact that they were silenced, now they are both simultaneously coming to prominence.

Homeward Bound, is one of the opportune initiatives championing this change today. And it does so by linking these two themes: that of female empowerment, against the backdrop of climate change. Let’s look into this a bit deeper.

Something similar to this phrase must have been in the mind of the Australian social entrepreneur and leadership activist Fabian Dattner when she had the idea for Homeward Bound. Wielding science like a sword, and demonstrating a profound sense of insubordination toward the rules framing society, she set up this pioneering, renegade program as a protest against the lack of female presence on decision-making bodies. But what is Homeward Bound?.

Homeward Bound is a program supported by ACCIONA that capacitates professional women from the scientific and technological communities to captain the response to the climate crisis devastating our planet. It officially began in 2016 with an ambitious objective: assemble over the next decade a network of 1,000 women armed with the tools and aptitudes to lead policymaking, research projects and alternative practices that will ensure a more sustainable world. “Mother Nature needs her daughters” is the motto.

Every year, Homeward Bound selects around 100 women associated with science to receive year-round training on scientific leadership and communication and how to research global warming.

The culmination of the program is a three-week expedition to the Antarctic, to study, in one of the most vulnerable regions on Earth, the effects of irresponsible natural resource management policies.

A new edition of Homeward Bound has just ended.