by Nina Somera

Achievements of DOHA
It is widely known that there was a big frustration among women's movements and gender equality advocates from the gender blind text of the Monterrey consensus. The Doha Review Conference text totally turned this around. If there is a small gain that social movements obtained, it is certainly in the area of gender. But the victory on the gender front is actually a bitter sweet victory. Because many of the fundamental changes on the macroeconomic systemic changes and financial issues were not addressed. Overall, the text was a big disappointment even while within it, there were many substantive references to gender as well as to some counter cyclical policies. Governments could have been more decisive towards alternative economic governance systems where finance capitalism can be disciplined but they elected not to do so.

Expectations from the victory of Barack Obama
I don't think there will be a major shift in terms of a radical rupture from the political support of the United States for trade liberalisation as well as for the use of weapons and its own military clout for pushing the multilateral system towards a particular direction of its own choice. What will change will be how the Obama administration will manage such direction. I see a lot of policies of the Clinton era being used by Obama particularly since the Secretary of State is no less than Hillary Clinton whose own political maturation was honed by her husband's term in power. But at the same time, I also see that some policies promoted by the Bush administration, particularly its anti-terrorist policies as well as its projection of US military might in certain so-called axes of evils will remain in Obama's administration although this military might will be clothed by a veneer of very sophisticated diplomacy. This is precisely how the Clinton administration was able to push for trade liberalisation, very much promoted hand in hand with a limited human rights framework.

Within the United Nations, I foresee the Obama administration [to be] open to more agreements, moving more closely towards the EU, being less stringent, arrogant, isolationist, self-protected government that the Bush administration had projected itself to be. This shift is actually more in tone and tactics rather than in very substantive ways. So the challenge with the Obama administration within the UN, externally with its multilateral relationships, internally within its domestic policies is to separate the chafe from the kernel. What are we really seeing, what is the real meaning in the policies that Obama will be put in place when he assumes his administration.

Highlights of the recent AWID forum
The AWID has emerged as an important venue where one could go and step in to this site and feel that one is part of a diverse women's space. Such a feeling is very much akin to the spirit generated by Beijing and much of the women conferences of the ‘80s and ‘90s when the UN space was the sunshine space for everyone who was concerned with women’s rights and gender equality.

In that sense, AWID forum had certainly filled a vacuum. But the site itself is full of challenges. It is up to different women's groups and networks to creatively address these challenges. For one, it has become more and more difficult to convene huge international meetings without the participation of the private sector or private sector foundations when in the past, it was clear that women's activisms or feminist activisms were very much a part of civil society, which was quite distinct from the private sector. With the very aggressive promotion of social entrepreneurship by foundations and venture financing of socially relevant projects including venture financing of women’s activisms and projects, this division has blurred and we are now in a gray zone where it seems that we used the money of private companies and corporations and we combined that with radical feminist politics. We find ourselves again in a similar situation in the United Nations. We are there funded by donor governments and yet these donor governments are themselves promoting policies of trade liberalisation which turns its back on women’s welfare and women’s rights at the local level.

We need to also address in a radical and decisive way the issue of where the money is coming from in support of women’s activisms. I am not saying here that we should not get money from foundations linked to corporations. They have a role to play. But what I am saying is to be very careful when we get the good things and reject the bad things or those which are no longer compatible to our feminist activist values. We are able to put our foot down and this is up to where we are willing to go with [them].

The best part is the prominent role young women played and the spirit of supporting young women’s leadership. Again, I would like to say that this not just an AWID commitment. The space was also co-determined by many organisations, which in the last five or even 10 years, committed their organisational resources in advancing the capacities of young women everywhere as well as supporting the critical contest lodged by young women towards older feminist women. The forum itself is a site where many different feminist organisations contributed to. It is not as if it is only AWID that had been supporting young women’s leadership in the last few years but certainly we owe it to the organisations for the capacities and commitment and resources that they had put towards creating that space where everyone can just come and feel that they are part of diverse women’s movements.

The future of Southern feminisms
Being now the global coordinator of a South feminist network, I still think that a South feminist perspective is vital in this age and time of transnational processes, politics and movement-building. The inequalities and inequities arising from geopolitical realities that separate out countries, societies and peoples between what we now see as modified North and South relations is still there and remains a powerful defining identity and location for many feminists from the South. While we should remain creative and responsive to emerging and newer issues and be able to move our Southern politics in ways that are the same but similar, the same but different, the same but different from the past, we also need to put more serious effort in supporting the intergenerational sustenance of South feminist movements. In a period of globalisation, our two-pronged strategy of externally promoting and advancing a South feminist critique and search for alternatives as well as our internal agenda of nurturing South feminist movements and perspectives have to be addressed together and in a simultaneous and interlinked way.

The role of young feminists
If you ask those in DAWN, they would say that Gigi is a young girl feminist and her assumption of the global coordinatorship of DAWN is somewhat a passing of the leadership from one generation to the next. Clearly, among those young in actual number of years compared to my age, I would certainly be an older feminist from their perspective.

I have never left the feeling of being young, the desire to stay young, to be with the young day in and day out of my activist life in the past 30 odd years. The fact that I am also teaching young people and my one and only job is teaching, my interaction with young people on an everyday basis gives me a lot of hopefulness and incredible learning that have been helpful in my own growth and development.

The fact that young people are now challenging the old is part of the natural order of things. Those who are advancing in age and have led actively in different organisations and are entering a new phase of their lives are also wanting to move on, I am sure. And there are also young people who have in the recent past, developed more quickly their skills and capacities and are now more knowledgeable and informed about politics and about how to engage in politics which is more important. I don’t see this as a revolution of any sort. I see this as organic in movement-building. I see this as a product of critical thinking, of praxis, of contradictions and synthesis. I see this as one big important thread that keeps the movements alive. If movements are not able to shift their orientation and pass on leadership in an inter-generational way, then there is no future for that movement. We might as well lay these movements gently to rest. I am as I assumed the global coordinatorship of DAWN already thinking from day one of how, who, when to pass on the leadership to younger people.

The politics of LGBT
One of the more vibrant movements that have emerged in the last few years is really the LGBT movement. While it was actively supported by feminists and women’s rights organisations, in the end raised very strong critiques against women’s and feminist movements. And I think this is healthy. It is not just about wanting to create one’s own comfort zone but this is really about a challenge to perspectives, how we understand the construction of our identities, our bodies, our sexualities and our humanity. This is also about real politics. The fact that feminists have contributed to the early theoretical, analytical interrogation of sexualities have also not moved forward as much as this interrogation of sexualities has been moved forward by LGBT activists.

And it is not as if gender is accepted fully in LGBT analysis. And I think this is one of the myths and misconceptions that we have to address. Gender as a defining category which is important in the feminist analyses of patriarchy, is not a concept supported by all in the LGBT community. So there a need to continue to engage in that debate. There is also a need to exert more effort in linking with LGBT communities from women’s movements and feminist organisations.

What I am saying is that it does not come naturally as most people think it should. We should recognise the tensions. We should recognise that there are men in LGBT communities. We should also recognise that in many ways perhaps the focus of our advocacy will be different from time to time or moment to moment. So the intermovement dialogues which for instance, have been started by some women of the Feminist Dialogues in the bossom of the World Social Forum is one strategy that needs to be continued by the feminist movement.

Thoughts on sex
Sex is like coffee. I looooove coffee. I drink it as much as I can. I have a craving for it. But there are also different types of coffee, there is a coffee with vanilla taste. There is Arabica. There is Espresso. There are many types of coffee and it is the same with sex. There are many types of sex. Some we enjoy better than others. I am also one who when I fall for a brand of coffee, I would stick to it. I would usually stick to a favorite sexual partner, for as long as I enjoy and gain sexual pleasure from the intimate relationship.

But at some point, you may also find that the craving for it becomes less and less. But just like coffee, when sometimes you love it, when sometimes you don’t like it, when my heart begins to pulpitate and so I could not drink so many cups of coffee a day, the craving comes back. So we never can say no to sex full stop. I can probably say no to sex with you right here, right now, full stop. But that’s the best that I can do.

Thoughts on love
I have loved many men and women in a romantic way. And I have loved many more women as my comrades, colleagues, beloved sisters in the feminist movement, as my loving friends, members of my extended family and as feminist protagonists. I have loved many many women.

Love comes from a wellspring of perpetual flow of a spirit that makes one feels good because one feels connected with another human being. The more this wellspring gives out love, the more the wellspring becomes an endless source of love and inspiration. Love is really having a sense of linking with other people. It could be one individual, family, community, anyone I see on the streets, march with in protest rallies, young people I teach or work with in the feminist movement.

I am basically a person who is full of love. I fight a lot. I fight with my lovers [but] I am basically a loving person. The more I love, the more I am free. Because when you concentrate on loving only one person then the more bound you become to just a single individual. So I love my freedom and I love to love in order to secure that freedom. And I think that the best form of love is an unattached love. Love that at any given time, freedom could be given to the person one loves. It is not about being cramped and boxed in a suffocating situation. If there is one thing to describe me, it is really I don’t want unfreedom. And that is not just for me. It is for everybody.

Plans for DAWN
I don’t have any plans for DAWN. As the global coordinator, I am bound to a collective process in DAWN. DAWN is not about the global coordinator. We are about DAWN, a group of women. I can never imagine DAWN being just a single individual.

As a member of DAWN, I have been privileged to work with a fantastic group of women who share a lot of my vision for South feminist movement. I think this is the distinctiveness DAWN brings to the feminist movements and to the women’s movements in a larger sense. We stand by a commitment in nurturing South feminist women, young and old. And that we believe that a South feminist movement continues to be relevant and critical in moving forward towards alternatives.

Someone told me that in the summary of the AWID, the organisers had said that the success of the forum was very much coming from the participation of young women and women from the South. That is something that is inspiring and affirming for me, as a woman from the South. I think I would venture to say, correct because we continue as DAWN and one of the South feminist movements and networks to see the difficulty for Northern feminists to engage in a critique of a global order that they themselves had in fact been priviledged in. I am not saying this to create a guilt for Northern feminists. People have come to me and said “Gigi, I am not a white woman. I am not from the North.” I am saying, “yes, you are not . I am not dealing with you as if you are a white woman. I am dealing with your ideas and telling you that from where I come from the South, our standpoint, viewpoint is a little bit different.” We may share the same vision of equality, economic justice or gender justice but there would be always that possibility of addressing or approaching this vision in different or distinct ways particularly because there are differentiated locations or positions from where feminists begin.