Building Global Solidarity through Feminist Dialogues
With the current geopolitical context of neoliberal globalisation, resurgent fundamentalisms and escalating war and militarisa-tion as impetus, alter-globalisation forces through the World Social Forum are consolidating their ranks. Around the world, regional and international women’s movements are organising and putting forward intersectional analyses and cutting-edge strategies through the Feminist Dialogues.
It was a visual and aural feast, a dazzling demonstration of the diversity of the world’s protest movements—the strength of numbers of a heterogeneous mix gathered in one place: militant Dalits, political exiles from Tibet, African delegates in their flowing robes, adivasi (indigenous peoples from India), digicam-toting Canadian media activists, sashaying trannies (transgendered people), and anti-fundamentalist Latina feminists in scarves and carton lip masks, all forming an overwhelming display of solidarity that challenges U.S.-led globalisation’s hegemony. These are the images embedded in my consciousness long after the 4th World Social Forum (WSF) last 21-25 January 2004 in Goregaon, Mumbai, India. Amid such diversity, how can one’s voice be heard above the babble of voices representing multiple advocacies and perspectives?
Our five-woman team from Isis International-Manila was at the WSF to ensure that our information-communication rights advocacy in this day of globalised and corporatised media and ICTs is advanced through a panel discussion, just one of the 1,200 conferences, panels, seminars, workshops and cultural and political activities of the WSF. But we had another agenda at heart. As feminists, we were taking part in an autonomous, pre-WSF event, interacting with other women’s international and regional non-government organisations (NGOs) on key concerns confronting women’s movements. Isis Manila was co-organising, transnationally, a momentous meeting called “Building Solidarities: Feminist Dialogues.”
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WSF as “alter-globalisation”* space
Initiated by a core group of grassroots activists from Brazil and France, the WSF is “a space for discussing alternatives, for exchanging experiences and for strengthening alliances between social movements, unions of the working people and NGOs.” With the vision that “Another World Is Possible,” WSF evolved as an answer to the snowballing international movement against capitalist-led globalisation. It was a historic event, auspicious even, since it “sprang from global activism on behalf of huge grassroots constituencies.”3 Initially held to challenge the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2001, participation ballooned from around 20,000 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where it has been held yearly since 2001, to 150,000 during the 4th WSF in India in 2004. This increase could be considered a testimony to the dynamism of traditional activist movements and culture toward more change, innovation, openness and creativity. While this new global resistance space that is the WSF also creates new problematiques and tensions owing to the diversity of frameworks and contexts among the gathered organisations, many remain hopeful. “The aim is never to come to some final agreement, rather to arrive at moments of consensus for particular actions and projects, and to clarify perspectives and visions strengthening the reality of a new transformative subjectivity,” suggests a paper by Transform!-Europe. “Any risk… is best avoided by remaining firm in our beliefs: in the deep crisis of the present economic and political system which, if not challenged, could produce a crisis of civilisation; in the radically new character of subjects of social transformation that are emerging to challenge the irrationality of the ruling order; in the impossibility of this new antagonistic subjectivity emerging and constituting itself through the existing political institutions; and finally, in the ability of these new movements to constantly renew themselves through struggle and conflict and in the process, to create new social and political relationships.”4 |
Impetus to Transnational Feminist Organising
While the WSF itself is a progressive undertaking, it still is, unfortunately, a male-dominated space, with the women’s movements initially inhabiting the margins. Candido Grzybowski, member of the WSF organising committee and Director of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses (IBASE), lamented the Forum’s limitation. “Women were just 43 percent of WSF delegates, although they make up over 50 percent of the world’s population!... Women are a ‘minority’ created by ourselves within civil society. With respect to that, there is no point in blaming capitalism, neoliberalism, globalisation, exclusionary states, etc. This is a major problem that is engendered, developed, and maintained in the culture of civil society itself.”5 On top of this marginalisation, the feminist movements—with their diverse perspectives, locations and experiences—are already faced with multiple challenges of globalisation, fundamentalism, war and militarisation. In the current geo-political context, there was a need to understand these phenomena that pose threats to women’s rights and to discuss the many dimensions of our identities and struggles as women, as well as to engage much more with other global social justice movements.6 The WSF 2004 in Mumbai was within sight, and a group of feminists believed that the time was ripe to move forward with transnational feminist organising7, not around specific campaigns, but to carve out a space for political discussions and sharing of analyses and common actions among feminist organisations. Transcending national boundaries, the FD is an effort towards strengthening the feminist movements’ abilities to organise and resist, to soften or even reverse the blows of globalisation. Thus was the Feminist Dialogues born.
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“We are here, because we were capable of co-ordinating work and ideas, and many dreams — those dreams are the ones that enable those of us here, and those who are not here, to build the movement, and a new world.” — Lucy Garrido, Articulacion Feminista Marcosur (AFM)8 |
While Feminist Dialogues agrees with the WSF principle of opposing neo-liberalism and domination of the world by capitalism, all forms of imperialism and cultural hegemony, it is an autonomous event that also stands against oppression and discrimination on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, class, caste, nationality and sexual orientation.9 Historically, the Feminist Dialogues is an offshoot of a 2003 Women’s Strategy Meeting that was held under a tree because of, ironically, lack of available space during the 3rd WSF in Porto Alegre. This meeting, which gathered over 50 women, came after the invisibility of feminist perspectives and concerns within the WSF was first articulated.10 Gigi Francisco of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) traces the Femnist Dialogues further back to the second WSF in 2002 where women in attendance held a “lightning rally” to draw attention to the implications of the Global Gag Rule11 on women’s reproductive rights. This demonstration brought the issue of abortion to the forefront of the WSF, which many of the (mostly male) members of the organising committee did not consider as a priority.12
The organising efforts of colleagues from the Articulacion Feminista Marcosur (AFM), who organised a women’s caucus within the WSF International Coordinating Council, and the intense lobbying of Indian women’s organisations gathered under the National Network of Autonomous Women’s Groups (NNAWG), enabled the core group to gain more visibility and inclusion of feminist concerns in 4th WSF. Slowly, these gains are being consolidated.
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“The Feminist Dialogues is an effort to bring a small group of women together to say, ‘can we listen to each other better and go deeper on some of the sticky points in global feminist organizing?’ These issues include: North-South dynamics; differences in the hierarchy of issues such as reproductive rights, violence, or economic justice; work at the local or global levels and the choice of work venues; sexual identities and rigid definitions of sexuality; the use of a human rights perspective; co-optation; and religious fundamentalisms and how people engage with religion—whether they seek to re-interpret it in feminist ways and gain space within a religious tradition, or whether they seek to challenge religious traditions outright. We seek to explore how neo-liberalism, fundamentalisms, neo-conservatism, communalism and militarism are linked at the current juncture, what that means for women’s rights, and how we get more strategic about our organizing.” - Carol Burton, Women’s Inetrnational Coalition for Economic Justice (WICEJ) |
The Feminist Dialogues Experience
The Feminist Dialogues was organised by a core planning team from seven organisations, namely, DAWN, WICEJ, AFM, NNWAG, African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), INFORM-Sri Lanka and Isis International-Manila, over months of formal and informal meetings, e-mail exchanges and marathon on-line conferencing. Feminist Dialogues represented an attempt to focus on a variety of concerns, from questions about state and non-state actors in shaping feminist agendas to experiences in feminist organizing and collective functioning, to the diversity of feminist perspectives of a range of issues—all toward a consolidation of a feminist politics of resistance.
Held from 14-15 January, days before the Mumbai WSF, the first Feminist Dialogues sessions gathered some 140 women from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America and Europe. The participants represented diverse feminist perspectives. During the planning process, the objectives articulated broadened to include those beyond the WSF, including the strengthening of transnational feminist organising for which WSF was only one space. Envisioned as a process and a space for political discussions and debates among feminists, Feminist Dialogues aims to contribute to movement building within feminist networks, the women’s movements and with other social movements.
Part of the meeting’s ambitious agenda is to deepen feminist theorising, surfacing new strategies “to avoid backlashes on women’s human rights” and “to make a dent in the isolation that women’s movements have been experiencing over the last few years.” The challenge of this task is that it can expose the fractures of women’s regional campaigns on issues like abortion and sex selection, war and fundamentalisms, where more and more women are being recruited by conservative or right-wing forces.13
The FD seeks to emphasise the multiplicity of strategies that women’s movements have employed in their everyday political practice. As AFM put it, “acknowledgment of the political differences and of the strategies in the feminist area is part of a process of growth of the movement that, undoubtedly, enriches the political plurality we defend for the whole society. Hiding those differences within a feminist sisterhood is de-politising and returns the conflicts and differences to a private and domestic area.”14
As such, even during the planning stage, the Coordinating Group consciously tried to ensure that the process would be an “an ethical dialogue” that would “highlight the diversity of feminist approaches and strategies.”
Part of the challenge of the process was trying to analyse oppression from an intersectoral positioning. The group identified four focus themes: (i) Women’s Human Rights (tensions at the intersection of globalisation and fundamentalism); (ii) Reclaiming Women’s Bodies (the struggle for reproductive rights); (iii) Challenging Sexual Borders and Frontiers (affirming sexual rights); and (iv) Beyond the Local-Global Divide (resistances in current geopolitics).15
Papers on these themes were drafted and circulated to the networks. At the four plenary presentations, panelists highlighted the focal points of the theme papers and why it was necessary to discuss them. Smaller group discussions questioned, clarified and expounded on some of the key questions raised (see sidebar on pages 14-15). The group discussions also saw intense debates, including those on the inter-connectedness of feminist struggles, regardless of regional locations. Instead of a report back, the main points of the small group discussions were summarized and discussed at the plenary.
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The Four Themes16
Theme 1: Women’s Human Rights Human rights principles have historically been key to struggles for women’s rights and a critical part of women’s activism for justice in many parts of the world. However, international aid agencies and multilateral financing institutions have played a role in co-opting the language and principles of human rights. Globalisation and the rise of fundamentalism have also distorted this campaign. The human rights discourse has been unable to challenge these forces. Within a neo-liberal, post-9/11 context where various forms of fundamentalisms have consolidated themselves, including those promoted by the U.S., human rights practice should be analysed in relation to the linkages between various political actors. The centrality of the state in any of our struggles, moreover, cannot be denied. “Human rights” is about creating an environment where women can affirm the right to live with dignity. The collective struggle is as important as the individual struggle, but the human rights discourse lends itself to dichotomisation of individual rights vs. collective rights. No one human right is above another; all human rights have to be enjoyed simultaneously. The need to conceptualise feminist strategies in relation to new challenges was underscored. The participants saw the need to examine the tensions between human rights discourse and neo-liberalism and how feminists have been working on the invisibility and interdependence of human rights in the context of their struggles. Participants also noted that many groups have been working on specific rights and specific themes that the women’s movements need to incorporate into an integrated perspective and strategy.
Theme 2: Reclaiming Women’s Bodies
The journey from maternal health to women’s health to reproductive health to reproductive rights represents a rich and challenging process that feminists from the North and South have undergone. Although they have employed diverse approaches, these are united, however, against neo-Malthusian doctrines. Globalisation creates macroeconomic policies that undermine and erode the indispensable enabling environment for reproductive and sexual rights.
Theme 3: Affirming Sexual Rights The control of female sexuality, restrictions and regulation of women’s sexual choices and the pervasiveness of heteronormativity lie at the root of patriarchal structures. The interlinkages between patriarchal moral codes and religious precepts make for coercive, and often violent, imposition of sexual control over women and girls. Within feminist movements, there are contentious and divisive debates surrounding the varying forms of sexual practice and sexual preferences. The intimate nature of sexual practices and choices makes these a sensitive and difficult subject to discuss. Our silences and self-imposed prohibitions are part of the problem.
Sexuality is defined by a series of interconnected and varied patriarchal formulations and by factors such as the state, legal systems, cultural precepts, religion, globalisation and market forces. Feminist critiques of marriage, monogamy, family and compulsory heterosexuality have helped define our thoughts and actions in different geographical locations. Yet we are often silent on matters related to our bodies and our sexual lives or pleasure. The manifestations of the denial of women’s sexual rights take a variety of different forms, depending on geographical, cultural and social contexts. The nexus between the state and religious institutions, even in democratic states, is undeniable. The local and global are often posited in opposition to each other. There have been many tensions regarding voice and accountability in political organising at different levels. Globalisation has made the local-global interconnections and dynamics more complex. The polarisation between the marginalised and the powerful has become more acute, yet the solidarity between global and local movements and resistances is also evidently growing. At the same time, social movements are also facing fragmentation in the face of growing challenges of globalisation. Indeed, globalisation is creating a need and paving the way for innovative and creative articulations of struggle and resistance. With women joining the fundamentalist and right-wing political movements in massive numbers, women’s movements must examine the impact of their political engagement. Feminist discussions should also take into account: power, intersectionality, diversity, alliances and inter-relations of individual, community and the nation-state. Feminists need to build much stronger coalitions. Strategies for movement building at different levels are necessary as fragmentation across movements leads to the weakening of all. One such strategy is to ensure that the feminist agenda is heard and addressed by other civil society actors such as trade unions, peasant organisations and youth movements. Funding was another area identified for further examination. Some participants observed that funding or the process and strategies around fund sourcing have caused tensions among women’s groups. |
While concluding the event with more questions than answers—along with typical logistical snafus— the organisers view “the process leading up to [Feminist Dialogues] and conversations it sets in motion (are) perhaps the most valuable part of the experience.”17 One of the long-terms goal of Feminist Dialogues, says WICEJ’s Carol Burton, is “how feminists can go into larger social movement arenas like the WSF with a more coherent feminist voice.”
Cross-fertilisation with the Broader Social Justice Movements
From the Mumbai WSF programme and the way it was conducted, it was obvious the women’s voices rang loud and strong. The WSF planners accepted the principle that all official panels should have gender parity. A major mass event for 25,000 people addressed patriarchy and war. Over 140 feminist events, including big inter-movement panels for Fundamentalisms and Sexual Rights were held. It was observed that one of WSF’s weaknesses is the unexploited opportunity to dialogue across movements, reinforcing the ingrained sectoralism of many groups. “It is supposed to be a big tent to bring together a lot of different social movements, (but) everybody tends to talk to people within their own track... There hasn’t been a lot of dialogue about how to build an integrated social movement that can have a greater impact and how are we moving beyond our own niches,” Burton said.18
A major idea that surfaced during the WSF was the desire of women’s networks to locate themselves in relation to other social movements (and other women’s movements) because that “cross-fertilisation” of analyses and alliance across these movements limited. In the current geopolitical context, women’s bodies become a battlefield and a scapegoat in multiple ways, which actually feeds and helps justify the resurgence of religious fundamentalisms, legitimise wars and terrorism and consolidates the “Empire.” Feminist perspectives have a contribution to make to other social perspectives and can add value to other analyses. “We will explore how groups join in the broader movements for social change while keeping the issues on their own agendas and bringing those into the larger struggles,” Burton added. 19
Indian feminists from NNWAG, for instance, organised, in collaboration with other feminist networks such as WICEJ, an inter-sectoral dialogue that brought together four groups: identity-based groups working around racial justice; unions; feminists; and gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender organisations. They also sponsored a major event on globalisation. Several regional and international networks also held did a session within the framework of the Campaign against Fundamentalisms called “Political bodies, the new emancipatory struggle to feed a radical democracy.”20
A long-term goal of Feminist Dialogues is to bring this feminist intersectional understanding to the social movements that are trying to challenge the current system. During the planning sessions for Mumbai, it became clear to the core group that Feminist Dialogues would remain an autonomous event but locate itself more firmly in spaces where global social movements come together as transnational feminist organising. All other alterglobalisation spaces that offer venues for an articulation of a feminist politics of resistance are equally important. Here, feminists can “make the bold case that you can not really understand the current dynamics in the world, in terms of the global economy, militarism, and the rise of the religious right in many countries and the impact these issues… on people’s lives, without a feminist analysis of patriarchy,” Burton said.
Consolidating the Feminist Networks
With a consolidated feminist strategy during the WSF, the common observation during an assessment of the WSF chaired by INFORM-Sri Lanka’s Sunila Abeysekera and attended by some 50 women that the visibility of women at the panels changed the conference outcome in a positive way, compared with the previous WSF in Brazil. The assessment also noted Isis International-Manila’s efforts to disseminate information on the WSF and the Feminist Dialogues, specifically the Feminist Dialogues listserv, which was, initially, instrumental in spreading word about the women’s events in Mumbai and coordinating the participation of the invited feminist networks in the Feminist Dialogues.21 The assessment participants unified on the need to continue with the Dialogues as these were a demonstration of the possibility of bringing together diverse groups with their diverse experiences and perspectives toward building up stronger and cohesive networking. They also affirmed the potential of the Feminist Dialogues as a strategising space to bring feminist agendas to other movements and spaces beyond the WSF.
Despite the participants’ differences in language and consequent translation difficulties as well as the varied contexts, analyses and responses among the participants, who came from as far wide as Brazil, Tanzania, Bulgaria, Fiji, Iran and Thailand, the Dialogues both struggled and revelled in their diversity. As the organisers said: “We believe we can get hold of this moment for transnational women’s movements to generate new dialogues across our differences and to explore the possibilities for common projects and larger coalitions—both among ourselves and with other progressive movements. With feminists from many perspectives working together and listening to one another, we believe a better world is possible.”22
Various shortcomings aside, particularly in methodology, that complicated attempts to explore convergences and divergences, many groups showed keen interest in continuing with this process after the Mumbai Feminist Dialogues. In a three-day evaluation of the Feminist Dialogues in Bangkok, Thailand in May 2004, the core group critiqued and reflected upon the event, agreed to improve on its methodology and political impact, and re-committed to the Feminist Dialogue process up to 2007. A core group member noted that outside of the women’s movement, feminists are not perceived to be allied with the poor and that one of the “inspiring factors about the Feminist Dialogues is that not only can it potentially radically transform the political space but also change people’s perceptions of feminists and revitalize the women’s movement.”23 The process is also seen as a space for articulation among feminist networks to move forward on the construction of global agreements.
Still, “we have a long way to go in terms of understanding each other’s realities and this was evidenced in the way we used certain terms and concepts, the priorities of our struggles in different regions,” said Lydia Alpizar, a participant from the Association of Women in Development (AWID). The Dialogues could also be improved in the following areas: regional balances in terms of representation, provision for translations, and more involvement and participation of the various networks in preparing and drafting the thematic papers.
The Bangkok evaluation also reinforced the premise that women are not a homogenous group but have multiple and layered identities and experience multiple oppressions, which are derived from varied locations within patriarchal and unequal societies. This insight surfaced along with two important paradoxes:
(1) While diverse feminisms and feminist perspectives, including some that may not describe themselves as ‘feminist,’ are recognised and respected, and while diversity of experiences is key to such a meeting, the Feminist Dialogues should ensure that this variety of locations does not create unevenness in terms of representation, discussions as well as leadership. The core group resolved to make planning and implementation of the Feminist Dialogues process more inclusive so that more groups and networks begin to see these as an significant site of collective strategising; and
(2) The hesitation on the part of each of the members of the coordination group to take collective leadership affected the participation and the quality of discussions. Issues of power, control and democracy within organizations and networks were identified as matters to be dealt with. The core group affirmed willingness to wrestle with power dynamics in honest and constructive ways.24
The Feminist Dialogues will hold on to its initially agreed upon principles of commitment to collective, collaborative, diverse, disperse and inter-generational processes; of seeking to create a participatory space of mutual exchange and learning rather than reliance on “experts” or well-known leaders; of structuring the dialogues in a way that allows everyone’s voices to be heard through group discussions and other inclusive formats; of working through differences in a spirit of respect, honesty and openness, and of recognizing the diversity of experiences and perspectives.
And therein lies the challenge and the paradox of the FD and other transnational organising efforts and spaces like the WSF: that amid great diversity, we seek to have tighter linkages; amid multiple advocacies we seek to focus our energies against a common adversary.
Along with its political objectives, the Feminist Dialogues experience will hopefully evolve a feminist ethic that includes respect, honesty, transparency, mutual accountability, flexibility, a spirit of collaboration and good humour—values with which we could take on, anytime, any neoliberal globalisation foes and with which to build another possible world.25
An IEC specialist with 16 years of experience in multi-media production work as a writer, researcher, trainer and producer, Mari M. Santiago <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> works at Isis–Manila.
(Footnotes)
1 For more details on the Mumbai process and the 5th WSF, visit <http://www.wsfindia.org> and <http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br>.
2 Mario Osava, “World Social Forum: 1968’s Heirs Seek to Pull Together,” Inter-Press Service.
3 Norman Solomon, “A Different World Is Possible: Porto Alegre vs. the Corporate Media,” <http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/ Periodicals_and_Newspapers/Fins-PaN-46.htm>.
4 “The New Global Resistance and the Emergence of the WSF,” <http://www.transform.it/newsletter/8920047189. php>
5 See <http://www.dawn.org.fj/publications/docs/cardosawsf.doc>.
6 Feminist Dialogues Global Proposal, 2004.
7 For more discussion on the possibilities and pitfalls of transnational social justice organizing, see Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink’s widely-read Activists Beyond Borders (Cornell University Press, 1998).
8 Quoted from a Network Women in Development Europe/WIDE report on the WSF by Martha Salazar, February 2004, www.eurosur.org/wide/Globalisation/WSF04.htm.
9 “Women’s Movements Get A Boost,” by the author, http://www.isiswomen.org/onsite/_wsf/fd-report.html.
10 FD Core Group, “Feminist Dialogues – Mumbai Evaluation Report,” Bangkok, Thailand, 2004.
11 The Global Gag rule, also known as the Mexico City policy, are restrictions imposed by the U.S. Government in January 2001 on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) overseas receiving international family planning assistance.
12 Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, “Beyond the Local-Global Divide: Resistances, Feminist Groups Examine Organising Strategies,” Isis International-Manila.
13 Martha Salazar, “Feminist Dialogue: Building Solidarities: Feminist Spinning of Social Movement Networks,” Network Women in Development Europe/WIDE.
14 AFM evaluation of the Mumbai Feminist Dialogues (Unpublished paper)
15 To review the 2004 documents including the Feminist Dialogues concept paper and critique on neo-liberalism, fundamentalisms and anti-democratic practices, visit www.isiswomen.org/fdpm.html.
16 Culled from the Feminist Dialogues evaluation in Mumbai, WIDE report and Mavic Cabrera-Balleza’s onsite report for Isis International-Manila.
17 AFM evaluation, op. cit.
18 Interview with Carol Barton, Women’s International Coalition for Economic Justice (WICEJ), <http://www.awid.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/17/1852201&mode= thread>
19 Ibid.
20 For a complete listing of feminist and women’s events during the WSF 2004, see <http://www.isiswomen.org/onsite/wsf/womenevents.html>
21 See <http://www.feministdialogue.isiswomen.org/>.
22 Mari M. Santiago, “Women’s Movements Get A Boost,” <http://www.isiswomen.org/onsite/_wsf/fd-report.html>.
23 Coordinating Group, Feminist Dialogues, “Mumbai Evaluation Report,” Bangkok, Thailand, 2004.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Visit <http://www.isiswomen.org/fd/FD_application__ Nov_4_2004_final_.rtf> to download the application form. Questions regarding the process may be addressed to Bina Srinivasan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> or Susanna George <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>.
Examining the Women’s Movement
As part of the its 30th year anniversary, Isis International Manila partnered with several global, regional and local women’s networks for a series of feminist debates on issues of critical concern to the women’s movement.
Earlier this year, Isis Manila collaborated with Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), Women’s International Coalition for Economic Justice(WICEJ), among others, for the international Feminist Dialogues (FD) that took place on 14-15 January 2004 in Mumbai, India. Held in conjunction with the World Social Forum, FD was an opportunity for women from a broad spectrum of political platforms and advocacy positions to meet and discuss on four thematic areas: Reproductive Rights, Sexuality, Human Rights, and Local and Global Movements.1
This was followed a few months later by a one-day forum entitled “At the Crossroads: Rethinking the Critical Advocacies of the Women’s Movement.” In April 2004, Isis Manila and the Women and Gender Institute (WAGI) of Miriam College, Philippines, co-sponsored a forum that examined and evaluated two advocacy agendas important to the women’s movement: Violence Against Women (VAW) and Gender Mainstreaming.
Building on the momentum from these two events, Isis Manila invited feminist from different regions to an online discussion entitled “Examining Feminist and Social Movements” last August. The discussion revolved around the following topics:
* How are the women’s or feminist movements faring in the social movements, and how does this relate to movement building?
* How do we push our agenda amongst social movements?
* How do we build stronger alliances with social movements?
* What is our analysis of global women’s and social movements?, and
* What are some possible strategies and recommendations for future action?
The discussion was moderated by Susanna George, former executive director of Isis Manila.
Participants
susanna1911: Hi everyone! We are just waiting for three more people to join the list. We can all introduce ourselves to each other for the time being. We are waiting for Marilee Karl, Sharon Bhagwan Rolls, Raijeli Nicole and Gigi Francisco. Annie, Vanessa, Bina, would you like to give each other a little intro of where you are from your past work, areas of activism, etc.
annieserrano2003: Annie Serrano: Am a Filipina. Used to work for United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), national commission on women in the Philippines, and an NGO on development communication—all Philippine-based. I just finished coordinating the Asia-Pacific NGO Forum on Beijing + 10. Getting ready for the High-Level Intergovernmental Meeting next week.
vangrif: Vanessa Griffen: formerly in Asia Pacific Development Centre, Gender and Development Programme. Born in Fiji, educated and active here in women’s, nuclear-free Pacific and anti-colonial movements. Now, at home here in Fiji, I want to write and reflect on our work as a movement.
binasr2001: Bina Srinivasan: I’m a writer and researcher, and have been involved with women’s movements in India and South Asia. I have worked on displacement, conflict, violence against women and religious fundamentalism. Right now, am also involved with something called the Feminist Dialogues, a transnational meeting of feminists, usually before the World Social forum
susanna1911: Susanna George: Formerly with Isis International-Manila, and before that with UNDP and Asia Pacific Development Centre. I’ve been active in the women’s movement for the past 15 years...
Marilee Karl has joined the conference.
marilee_karl: Marilee Karl here, the co-founder of Isis International in 1974 and served as Coordinator of Isis for its first 20 years. I am currently Honorary Chairperson of Isis Internatonal-Manila and continue my activism in the women’s movement and other movements for social justice.
susanna1911: All right. We have just managed to contact Sharon Bhagwan Rolls of femLINKpacific in Fiji and she tells us that she will not be able to join us today because of some urgent work that she needs to take care of. Gigi Francisco of DAWN has also informed us that she will be late and Raijeli seems to not be able to get online for some reason. Shall we get formally started?
Introductions
susanna1911: The second wave of the women’s movement has, in over three decades of efforts and strategising, managed to make significant inroads in influencing governance processes, and affecting at some deep level societal conscience regarding women, their roles and rights, and relationships between men and women in society. The results have in many cases been not what we anticipated or desired, and over years, many feminists have called for the need to review, take stock and renew the movement taking into cognisance new societal and global realities. One of the key discussions revolving within different feminist circles is how we relate to other social movements, and indeed given the growing strength of the wide-spread anti-WTO, anti-corporate globalisation movements, this is a crucial point of reflection and action. Once we have identified the linkages between the women’s movement and other social movements, on what basis, premises and ideological commonalities these linkages are formed, and the tensions, differences and challenges we face in forging linkages we will move on to discuss: a) how we push for our agenda amongst other social movements; b) how we build stronger alliances with other social movements even as we work to strengthen the global women’s movement and c) strategies and recommendations for future action.
Raijeli Drodrolagi has joined the conference.
raijeli_drodrolagi: Good afternoon, everyone. Sorry we’re late. Some unexpected tech glitches at the office. This is Raijeli Nicole, and with me are Mari Santiago and Necta Rocas, also from the Isis Team.
vangrif: Re Susanna’s intro, I was wondering about your opinions on the effect of feminist perspectives on other movements, e.g., the ones cited. I don’t have the experience to judge. In other movements here, despite women’s leadership on the ground, the “lead in action” and other such strategies are not influenced much by women. Any comments?
binasr2001: I feel that it is often a love-hate relationship between the women’s movement and other social movements. Some tensions are inevitable, and it is usually around issues of women participating equally in decision making, issues of violence against women and so on. While most movements will not deny the importance of feminist perspectives, there is often a gap in understanding these theoretically and putting them in practice.
annieserrano2003: So far, my engagement with other social movements have been as ‘resource person’ of their gender sessions. Because I was formally employed by the government and UN, that was the opportunity available to me. As I mentioned, I was recently with the labour unions—the Brotherhood of Asian Trade Unions (BATU). The national presidents or executive secretaries of national workers’ congresses were there. Because [the event] was high level, I decided to do a dialogue approach...
vangrif: Annie’s comment is interesting in itself. Is everything still along the lines of “adding a gender session”?
The Women’s Movement So Far
susanna1911: Perhaps we can start by reflecting on the women’s movement thus far, and what realities need to be taken into account today.
marilee_karl: Most of us older feminist were activists in political parties, liberation struggles or activist groups of some kind. We all know the story. Except for a few exceptionally strong women, we made the tea and coffee, did the cyclo-styling, and belittled so-called “women’s issues.”
vangrif: My experience is similar to Marilee’s, except not parties. And the movements then (which were anti-colonial, anti-nuclear, etc) were not feminism-savvy, but we did not have a perspective for action to add. Do we now?
raijeli_drodrolagi: We agree with Marilee. The women’s movement as it is right now has to do with our involvement in colonial resistance/national liberation movements 20-30 years ago. And in these struggles, women found that they were not only fighting the imperialist/colonial powers but patriarchy as well.
binasr2001: Yes, Marilee, that is where we as feminists bring in a richness, and perspectives that are much broader than most other groups, because ultimately, we also place feminist perspectives at the centre, while other movements might not.
marilee_karl: Can we reflect on what strategies we used to change that situation 20 or 30 years ago, because I think we learned lessons that are still valid today?
susanna1911: Marilee, would you start with some strategies that were employed?
vangrif: In response to Marilee, has the situation changed much since 20 years ago? Do let us know what you feel is different.
marilee_karl: Well, for one thing, we got angry! I think one thing missing from the women’s movement today is that sense of anger and passion that propelled us to take action. And yes, Vanessa, the situation has changed very much, but I think that our strategies in those times were what brought about that change! The obvious thing is that we formed strong women’s organisations and refused to compromise when we were told we were dividing the struggle. It was the strength of those women’s organisations that enabled us to make our demands heard and accepted. The issue of mainstreaming is important here.
annieserrano2003: My activism was developed in the dictatorship years in the Philippines. I was part of the movement led by the Church! So it’s hard for me to get angry at the Church! Whether it is that history or it’s just me (hopefully not a pacifist by heart!). But I have indeed kept the lines open with church-based groups. I keep my anger in check in the hope of influencing them.
marilee_karl: Annie, by anger, I do not necessarily mean closing lines to any group. I mean anger at the patriarchal system and a passion to change it.
raijeli_drodrolagi: Yes, that’s right. That “sense of anger and passion” has been transformed, appropriated and institutionalised. For instance, now, we have gender experts who do not carry the feminist transformative agenda.
binasr2001: Along with the anger and passion was the sense of solidarity. Now things have changed in the sense that it has become a much more complex and ‘specialised’ world, our understanding of the world and our organisations have also changed to become much more complex and in that sense just by being a woman today, you cannot automatically claim solidarity. Women are part of so many interrelated communities
vangrif: I also agree with Rajieli that gender experts today, or perhaps, interventions and gender implications, are very different from direct passionate involvement with the issues and being committed to pressuring for social change, rather than just voicing gender concerns for example.
marilee_karl: But then we gained the strength to make alliances with other social movements on our terms. Now we talk about gender mainstreaming and as Raij says, many gender experts are not even feminist. Gender mainstreaming often seems to be about gender equality without questioning patriarchy or social injustice. It often seems like just trying to get a bigger piece of the male-determined pie without changing the system. Or am I wrong?
susanna1911: So, that’s one very concrete strategy that Marilee has identified: we pulled out of the general social movements and formed separate women’s organisation to fight for and give focus to women’s rights. And now it seems as if, after having pulled away from the broader social movements base, to give a distinct identity to women’s issues, we have come full circle to see how we can influence those movements to take up feminist agendas. Would that be one way of looking at it?
annieserrano2003: The other strategy is indeed about the availability of “gender experts” to other movements for dialogue. Back to BATU or the labor unions, I meant to say two things: tapping into the so-called principles of their movement, e.g. participation, safeguarding the rights and interests of workers, etc., led them to see how discrimination against women, in the bigger society, workplace, and homes, is preventing them from participating in the unions.
binasr2001: Re. Gender experts… I feel that there is a certain conceptual value in gender as a term, but what has happened is that it has become completely co-opted and stripped of its meaning. Yes, it is true that many feminists have become gender experts and that they try to infuse the work of gender mainstreaming with more meaning. However, we cannot ignore the ‘larger domains’ of power, the structure and institutions of power. And that is what ultimately sets the agenda. The issue of funding is also important. Why is it that only mainstreaming gets so much money when small organisations working in villages on domestic violence do not get funding? Yet, the issue was of questioning patriarchy within movements and division of labour and inequality inside the home and so on, or even violence against women in these organisations. And that was where the tensions arose and often just ossified.
annieserrano2003: Certainly, some can accept it conceptually. But the deep-seated patriarchal beliefs reveal themselves at the end. I refer to some of the leadership on the labour movement, for example. Despite the problem of entrenched leaders and other issues in the labour movement, it is a movement that we need to interact with, especially in terms of globalisation and the much stronger power of capitalists.
raijeli_drodrolagi: We agree with Bina and Marilee. On Susanna’s point on strategies, what was working then was that patriarchy was at the core of our struggles. That was what united us in the past. But right now, these gender experts have taken the concepts but left the transformational elements for the feminists from the outside to work on.
susanna1911: I want to identify another strategy that Raijeli and Marilee have pointed to: In the early days of the women’s movement, there was a greater attempt to root out patriarchy and address the broader framework of social injustice. This seems to have dissipated over time, particularly with the institutionalised way in which gender has been interpreted.
annieserrano2003: Back on the gender experts. There is a need for a dialogue among us, we being the gender experts and the feminists. Indeed, there are those who have taken this as a career with insufficient grounding in feminist analysis and values.
vangrif: Annie, I agree with you, but what has been the experience of women activists there in the union movements? Do those movements come out in support of women’s organisations and actions when their support would be helpful? I see the opposite is more often the case—the women support other movements more than those movements support women’s issues (to use that correctly, not to belittle).
Solidarity With Other Social Movements
susanna1911: Before we get into a discussion on mainstreaming and gender experts, we may need to establish where we were in relation to other social movements before these terms were set in place? Can we go back a little to how solidarity was expressed in the pre-gender mainstreaming days?
marilee_karl: My experience is that many feminists continued to work within other social movements, trade unions, etc., but were strengthened by the support and solidarity they got from being part of strong feminist organisations as well. I loved what the Indian women did for the World Social Forum (WSF)—their insistence that gender parity at all WSF-organised panels. We need to demand that women form at least 50 percent of all leadership of social movements.
binasr2001: Speaking of India, women’s movements were always part of civil liberties groups or networks of environment groups. We were always and still are involved with trade unions and movements for self-determination.
raijeli_drodrolagi: Women have always been part of the social justice movements even before the so-called second wave. We never really left them.
susanna1911: We seem to agree here on two things: one, that we have always expressed solidarity with the issues raised by a host of other social movements, and two, that we have more often found ourselves supporting the agendas of other movements, without actually being able to transform the norms of these movements from within. To a vast extent, these movements have remained patriarchal in nature. Would you all agree?
binasr2001: Increasingly though, I think there is a realisation that no social movement can be an island unto itself and there has been greater emphasis on building linkages with other movements. Because we are up against some rather grim realities, and if movements have to survive, we need each other like we never did before.
marilee_karl: Bina, how do you think we could “un-ossify” the issues of division of labour, work in the household, etc. in these movements today?
binasr2001: Marilee, the only way these tensions can be un-ossified is through a process of dialogue and through a process of working together on campaigns and issues. For example, we have had discussions around patriarchy within labour unions, or violence against women. Again, through the years, despite tensions and so on, certain events have thrown different kinds o f movements together. The Gujarat violence, for instance, shook us all up.2
raijeli_drodrolagi: There was just a period when the women’s movement seemed to form a separate movement, but it was just essentially defining itself, a period of consolidation. Now, as Susanna said, we’ve come full circle, seeing the intersectionality of our struggles and integrating with the struggles of the other social movements.
annieserrano2003: The other thing that we in the “mainstream women’s movement” should be conscious about is support to the women in other social movements who are trying to change from within. Back to BATU, the women there complained that they felt sidelined in Huairou!3
raijeli_drodrolagi: Annie, what do you mean by “mainstream women’s movement?” Do you mean the women’s movement working in the mainstream?
annieserrano2003: No, I mean the women’s movement. People like us—full-time living and working in women’s discrimination and human rights issues.
vangrif: Susanna, everyone, I am really sorry but I have just been interrupted at home and have to go offline. My apologies.
susanna1911: All right, thank you, Vanessa.
Vanessa Griffen has left the conference.
Women’s Movement: The Agenda
susanna1911: Okay, let us continue. I think both Bina and Annie have made important points about the kinds of work that we need to do within other social movements: first, we need to close ranks with other movements because of the new global realities we face, and second, we need to more actively support women working in other social movements as they meet patriarchal norms and attitudes within these movements.
annieserrano2003: How about feminist dialogues with women in other social movements? That is something that we can organise?
susanna1911: Annie, I feel the women’s movement has so many different groupings—particularly those who work strictly in a local environment compared with those who choose to intervene in global and UN processes. There is a vast difference between the priorities of women working locally and those working in the corridors of the UN.
annieserrano2003: I understand. There are the feminist academicians, too, many of whom have helped articulate the analysis and insights of the practitioners. Everyone has a role, something to contribute.
binasr2001: Annie, I think that is very important. At the WSF, we had what was called the inter-movement dialogues. These were between representatives of trade unions and feminists—another example [of how to un-ossify the tension]. But we could also have a similar process with women in other movements that do not necessarily call themselves feminists.
marilee_karl: Perhaps we need to work toward a new convergence among parts of the women’s movement. One the one hand, it was great when the women’s movement became so big that we were able to specialise, but this has also led to fragmentation and lack of communication and interaction.
binasr2001: Very true, Marilee. In a way, this specialisation is in itself a problem. [The women’s movement] ended up losing political “rooted-ness.”
susanna1911: Marilee, didn’t we become fragmented because there were essentially some ideological differences that pulled groups apart?
marilee_karl: Partly, but we also became specialised in human rights, environment, peace, etc., not necessarily “ideological differences.” Besides, we can also have unity in diversity, no?
binasr2001: There are many reasons for the fragmentation, not just ideological differences. The world we live in has also become pretty fragmented, and this is reflected in our organisations, our styles of working. For many people, feminism has become a career, and when that happens, obviously, there will be an erosion of political content. We need to find ways through which we can negotiate the diversities and the differences while still maintaining that the bottom line is to stand together in solidarity. Does that sound very romantic!!!
susanna1911: I agree, Marilee. We are now at a point where unity in diversity has become ever more crucial. even as we recognise that we need to be clear about what we agree and disagree on.
annieserrano2003: About specialising without losing our political rooted-ness, what can we do to facilitate that? Any suggestions, Bina? What about the Feminist Dialogue approach, can that be expanded? Who are involved there?
raijeli_drodrolagi: The FDs represent a space created by feminists in the anti-globalisation struggle, mainly at the WSF, for a venue to discuss and strategise our work on these issues and our relationships with other social movements.
binasr2001: I think we need to set for ourselves very clear goals. Specialisation is needed; we need to understand law, so we need feminist lawyers. But we have to be linked constantly with communities of women—younger feminists, for example
raijeli_drodrolagi: Even though we have already debunked the myth that “sisterhood is global,” we should keep looking for commonalities, continue to dialogue, etc. like we did at the FDs/WSF.
marilee_karl: Raijeli, I agree, we have debunked the “sisterhood is global” myth and we have analysed intersectionalities—which I prefer to call inter-wovenness and this makes it in many ways easier to stand together in solidarity, because we are aware of [our] diversity.
Do we really want to say the principle/position that ‘sisterhood is global’ is a myth? Elsewhere in the discussion, the participants acknowledge “unity in diversity,” which suggest, however limited its context, some common ground. If you want, you could just delete the two pars. above by Raejeli and Marilee.
susanna1911: Let me try to summarise so far: we more or less agreed that the women’s movement, in the past and up to now, engages with other social movements, in solidarity and in various alliances for social justice. We have also said that we do not feel that there has been equal support for feminist issues from other social movements, and this indicates where patriarchal norms refuse to budge, and that we actually have not been able to make much headway. We have been speaking about gender mainstreaming, and women who work at different levels for the women’s cause. But more often these days, we find gender experts that are not grounded in the feminist experience, nor rooted in the women’s movement.
Gender Mainstreaming: Still a Viable Tool?
susanna1911: Can we try now to discuss in more detail the concept of mainstreaming, and what this means in relation to our solidarity work with other social movements? Do we feel that the concept of gender mainstreaming has been so removed from the feminist reality that it is no longer useful?
annieserrano2003: I think one culprit is the gender experts who are “not rooted in the feminist experience,” as you put it, Susanna.
binasr2001: Gender mainstreaming has to be de-institutionalised, if it has to have any feminist dynamism. For one, it has to be removed from the clutches of the sort of institutionalised discourse that we now see. This is difficult to explain, but bringing [the women’s movement] back to centre stage [the project against] patriarchy, inequality, social justice and all these concepts that gave us the cutting edge is important. To re-infuse gender with complexities is what is required.
marilee_karl: We need to change the mainstream. We need to question and analyse what gender is being mainstreamed into. Gender mainstreaming sometimes sounds like a new version of the old “integrating women into development.” We said no to being integrated into the male structures of development. Mainstreaming is only meaningful if we are strong enough to change that mainstream.
binasr2001: Exactly, Marilee. This is what I had said at the Manila meeting—that we have lost our critique of the state and development paradigms, and are now busy trying to get women into that very development project that we had rejected.
annieserrano2003: The current Beijing + 10 process could be an occasion to reveal the pitfalls of gender mainstreaming.4
raijeli_drodrolagi: Gender mainstreaming needs to be re-evaluated. Yes, Marilee is right, do we want to be “mainstreamed” or change the mainstream?
binasr2001: Yes, we have to say that we reject the mainstream.
susanna1911: I have always thought of gender mainstreaming as a very political project of feminists that got hijacked by development institutions and returned to us minus the direct call to dismantle patriarchy. It was reshaped and trimmed down so that it basically does not unsettle anything that meant anything.
annieserrano2003: Well put, Susanna! But don’t forget, we pushed it into the official agenda in Beijing!
raijeli_drodrolagi: In changing the mainstream, we have to link with other social justice movements [that seek] to change the mainstream. Gender mainstreaming has also become a donor-driven agenda.
annieserrano2003: The trouble is there is just so much to do and too few of us! So when the gender mainstreaming approach was institutionalised, we sort of forgot about it, to be hijacked by others!
susanna1911: But precisely, we keep pushing for gender to be mainstreamed and less and less do we have the ability to question that mainstream that we are insisting that gender be [assimilated] into. This is the reason I think that the anti-globalisation movement has gained power—because it has consistently attacked the mainstream and refused to back down.
marilee_karl: But is the anti-globalisation movement male-dominated?
annieserrano2003: That’s right, Susanna. But don’t you think we need to be realistic, too? The mainstream is THE mainstream. We need to engage it! Not reject it totally! Governments, businesses, churches — they define the agenda. We need to engage some of them, to help transform the mainstream. Is that realistic?
susanna1911: One of the reasons I think that the Feminist Dialogue organisers wanted to keep that discussion located within the broader anti-globalisation movement is precisely because there is a platform for broad-based critique of the mainstream and a direct [interrogation] of the roots of social injustice. What do others feel about this?
raijeli_drodrolagi: The mainstream today is the globalised, capitalist corporatised system and this is not the stream we want to be integrated into.
marilee_karl: Can we engage the mainstream on our terms? And how do we challenge the patriarchal aspects of the anti-globalisation movement?
susanna1911: I would like to hear what others have to say about Annie’s proposition that we need to continue engaging the mainstream, and Raijeli’s suggestion that this is not the stream we want to be mainstreamed into. Where does that leave us?
binasr2001: In a way, we are all part of the mainstream, whether we like it or not. We all live with our contradictions and our politics. The point is not to lose sight of our politics as we become more and more sucked into the mainstream. Yes, the anti-globalisation movements are largely male-dominated and patriarchal, and this includes the women in [the leadership] too sometimes. But we have to link up with them, and we have to ensure that feminist perspectives become an integral part of these movements. This is also part of the struggle, our feminist struggle.
raijeli_drodrolagi: The challenge of the feminist movement is working within the anti-globalisation movement because we are trying to transform the mainstream and work for alternatives.
susanna1911: I agree with you, Marilee, that the anti-globalisation movement is very male at some level. This is precisely why certain feminist formations have kept steady in that space, to try to influence it. We saw that influence clearly in the last WSF, don’t you think?
marilee_karl: Definitely, Susanna. That’s why I congratulate all those who worked to bring a feminist influence in determining how the WSF was carried out in Mumbai. We need to continue and strengthen this for the next WSF and all such gatherings.
annieserrano2003: Male-dominated—that is true for most social movements, no? This only reminds us the work is cut out for us: whether we walk the corridors of the UN, in government, or in business, church, anti-globalisation or labour movements, [we should raise] the feminist voice.
susanna1911: So, we seem to agree that we need to try to work on both changing the mainstream while transforming the patriarchal norms within other social movements. But what tools do we have for this? Is Gender Mainstreaming a viable tool or is this something that we should boot out, and start over again?
binasr2001: Not necessarily. In India the most celebrated environment and anti-dam movements are dominated by women. There are women in almost all leadership positions in these movements. We have our Medha Patkars5 and Vandana Shivas6. Ironically, they are not necessarily feminist though I would still like to understand what precisely being feminist is!!! But that is another discussion.
Dismantling Patriarchy
susanna1911: What are the feminist ways of dismantling patriarchy, in the final instance? Do you all feel that we still have that goal at the core of our work, or is that concept too archaic to frame in such a manner in this day and age?
binasr2001: Of course, Susanna, we have to keep our eyes on patriarchy and continue to look for ways that we can dismantle it. A new kind of gender mainstreaming would only be one of the tools.
raijeli_drodrolagi: Gender mainstreaming is still a valuable tool, but we need to bring out its transformative, radical elements that look at changing power relations and patriarchal systems and structures.
susanna1911: How do we bring out its radical elements, Raijeli? In concrete terms, within the UN, how can we do this?
marilee_karl: My question is: are we focusing too much on the UN? Maybe we should direct more of our energies to influencing the anti-globalisation movement? Don’t get me wrong. I think the women’s movement did a tremendous job and made enormous progress in influencing the UN agendas in the world conferences of the 1990s, but is this where we still need to be? To answer my own question, yes, we still need to be there, but maybe not to the same extent. Times have changed.
annieserrano2003: First: it is about clarity of our analysis. and goals. I just erased what I tried to write: a confession that I have been forgetting “patriarchy’ when faced with the daily rigors of work in the UN. But going back to Marilee’s point: Indeed, some of us should focus our energies on engaging the anti-globalisation and other social movements. These movements are counterpoints to the well entrenched institutions and powerful interest groups that certainly do not value the same things that we feminists value. We are better off working with them and influencing them as they also seek to change the course of events.
binasr2001: Yes, the UN has been the focus of so much feminist work. And what I find disappointing is that there is very little critique of the UN as an institution and as a system. Even as we work with the UN, it is important to continue our work with anti-globalisation movements.
annieserrano2003: Bina, that is what I probably meant when I talked about taking the opportunity of the Beijing + 10 process.
binasr2001: Ok, everybody, I will have to leave in five minutes. Was great to be part of this discussion. Hope we continue with this.
susanna1911: Bina, would you have some final statement on the direction you think the women’s movement should be heading for?
binasr2001: A final statement… sounds a bit daunting. I personally feel that women’s movements have to do some very honest and critical re-thinking and assessment. This can be done through discussions among each other, and through [soliciting] feedback from others, people outside the movement. We need to see how others see us, what the view from outside is. Secondly, all that we said about being a “live part” of other social movements. I agree with Marilee that we need to start easing out of the UN, at least to some extent. And of course, continue to organise more and more FDs!!!
susanna1911: Thank you so much, Bina, for your time on such short notice.
Bina Srinivasanhas left the conference.
raijeli_drodrolagi: Yes, gender mainstreaming has been tied to the UN so much that we need to critique it, too, but we [should also undertake ] some critical evaluation of how we in the women’s movement have been engaging in those spaces.
susanna1911: Annie, could you elaborate on what you mean by the opportunity of the Beijing +10 process?
annieserrano2003: Re Beijing + 10, to call the UN to account for what it has done to implement the BPFA and gender mainstreaming.
marilee_karl: What about the governments supposed to be implementing the platform?
annieserrano2003: Banging our heads on the concrete wall: that’s my imagery about working with government! The National Commission on the Roleof Filipino Women (NCRFW) in the Philippines has been at it for close to 20 years now! What have we achieved? The secretary for health just said that family planning is not his responsibility! Uugh.
susanna1911: I agree with Annie, and Marilee, that we need to keep a strong presence [in the anti-globalisation and other social movements], work together with, and mutually strengthen each others’ fronts of activism, but [this means] getting these social movements to understand feminist perspectives at a deeper level, and not at the level that gender mainstreaming has put forward women’s issues. Strengthening our presence in these other social movements is about actually being there in those discussions, and not in a diluted, compromised way. Too often, we curb ourselves from getting to our core agenda because we do not want to sound too strident. I agree with Bina that we should be a “live part” of these movements.
raijeli_drodrolagi: We have to bring back the radical elements—which were always there—[our take] of the different levels of discrimination experienced by women (race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.) and not just gender itself. This is what gender mainstreaming is about and when we work with other social justice movements, this is what we feminists bring in.
susanna1911: Yes, I fully agree Raijeli that we need to bring back into the discussion of the mainstream the issues that got cut out because they were too controversial for the level of governments and the UN. We need to not back down because we have seen in the past 20 years what gender mainstreaming has NOT gotten us.
marilee_karl: To take the example of the WSF in Mumbai, it was great to see strong women speakers on all the main panels, to have major events devoted to women and war, etc., but there were many, many smaller panels and events where there were few or no women speakers. Can we organise ourselves to have a strong presence and to speak up at many more events and panels?
Next Steps
susanna1911: Alright, we are getting close to the end. Let me try to summarise again: we have agreed that we need to bring back more radical feminist politics into the work that we do, our lobbying, be it at the UN or with governments or within other social movements. We have also said that mainstreaming needs to be radicalised to include not just gender but the other ways in which women are discriminated. We have also said that we perhaps need to pull away from a UN-determined frame of work, and to look at how to dismantle patriarchy in all its manifestations, and in all institutions and groupings. We have also said that the best way to move forward is to continue to dialogue among ourselves and among other groupings, and the best way to influence and radicalise these institutions and movements is to stay engaged. What else can we say about our strategies forward? What other thoughts would you like to add to this discussion?
marilee_karl: That we share examples of how we women have succeeded in carrying out dialogue, in pressuring, influencing or otherwise changing other social movements to question and change male domination and patriarchal attitudes.
raijeli_drodrolagi: Yes, dialogue, but also the recognition that we use different frameworks in applying gender mainstreaming.
annieserrano2003: That dialogues among feminists and gender experts be encouraged. How do we expand the ranks? I mean, I don’t know how well we are reaching out to the young women who will continue our work.
marilee_karl: Off the top of my head, Annie, would the “old-fashioned” consciousness raising groups with young women work?
annieserrano2003: That we tap the women’s studies groups because they are better able to reach the youth. Then, we have to think about the out-of-school. How do we reach them? I agree, Marilee.
susanna1911: I agree with Annie, that we need to expand our ranks as an important strategy, not just among the younger women of our own class, but more so with poor and marginalised groups of women, and getting them involved in a feminist struggle, which works in synch with their other struggles against other social injustices they experience. Sharing examples continues to be a very important strategy but I think we really need to look for feminist-inspired activism in unusual places. Feminist activism seems to very much be taking places in anti-establishment spaces these days. I feel there are now women, particularly young women, in communities that are staging rebellious acts, and anti-patriarchal acts that cannot easily be framed as activism. For example, the underground “zine movement” among young, angry women who are very much against the norms of society but do not feel comfortable in the more cautious spaces of the women’s movement. There are groups of workers, for example, here in the Philippines, lesbians in local government, that have organised for greater visibility of lesbians in government, but again, they are not a part as such of the women’s movement.
raijeli_drodrolagi: Agree, Susanna. You refer to areas that the women’s movement has given space to—VAW, reproductive rights, poverty. But we have not focused consistently on fundamental survival issues such land, water and food security.
marilee_karl: To reiterate an old feminist slogan: land, water and food are feminist issues!
susanna1911: Yes, I agree, feminist struggles are all those things, Marilee and Raijeli. I think we should disabuse other social activists of the simplistic notion that feminists are interested only in VAW or reproductive rights. About the forming of an informal network, I think the Feminist Dialogue process is one informal network and I agree with Annie that we should start more of our own dialogues—for example, feminists with the gender experts within the UN, or feminists with women in other social movements. Clarifying these issues and giving time to clear thinking and analysis will help us put the fight against patriarchy back at the core of our activism.
annieserrano2003: I like that, including, interacting with other feminists in unusual spaces.
marilee_karl: I am going to have to run to my “straight” job as consultant to FAO! It was great being part of this discussion. A real inspiration!
susanna1911: Alright, I think we should wind up here. Marilee, could you make a last statement on where you think we should be headed? Annie, Raijeli, Mari and Necta, could you also give your last statements before we conclude?
raijeli_drodrolagi: Continue to create spaces for analysis and dialogue. For example, at WSF2005, we plan a series of dialogues (and not just one workshop) with other players (usual and unusual) in the social justice movement. This online discussion is one of these dialogues.
susanna1911: I think Marilee has left the discussion now...
annieserrano2003: We are just but part of the broader movements for social transformation... fighting social injustice in its many forms. We do our share and we should try to do our best. One way is to strengthen our ranks and the support system, and maintain solidarity with women in the other movements.
susanna1911: Yes, good! I think that we can bring this discussion to a close. I just want to thank you all for your participation, especially Annie, on such short notice!
Footnotes
1 The Feminist Dialogues (FD) refer to an initiative of several feminist organisations that was held for the first time in conjunction with the World Social Forum (WSF) in January 2004. FD was designed to be space for feminist organisations, as well as feminists working with non-feminist organisations, to express their support to feminist principles, processes and actions. Another such event is planned for January 2005 in conjunction with WSF in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
2 This refers to the spiral of violence and recriminations triggered by the Hindutva fundamentalist attempt to demolish the Babri Masjid mosque in Gujarat, India, since 1990. The mosque was successfully demolished two years after by a crowd of fundamentalists that resulted in riots and more than 1,000 fatalities. The fundamentalist agenda to build a temple in place of the mosque has become more and more aggressive, claiming lives and property from all sides of the conflict.
3 This refers to the NGO Forum in Huairou held in conjunction with the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 in Beijing, China.
4 The Beijing +10 global review process refers to a series of regional and global processes to review the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, signed by 189 governments at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, in 1995. Coordinated by the UN Division for the Advancement of Women (UNDAW), this review process will culminate at the next UN Commission on the Status of Women meeting in March 2005.
5 Medha Patkar is an awarded and well-known environmental activist who founded and leads the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), a people’s movement organised to stop a series of dams planned for India’s largest westward flowing river, the Narmada. Patkar also helped establish the National Alliance of People’s Movements, a network of more than 150 political organisations across India.
6 Dr. Vandana Shiva is a well-known physicist, philosopher, ecofeminist, environmental activist and writer. She has led a movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seeds, and is globally recognised for her contributions to the fields of women and environment, biodiversity, biotechnology and intellectual property rights, and ecological issues related to agriculture.
Social Movements, Feminist Movements and the State: A Regional Perspective
Introduction
The task of defining a regional perspective on such wide-ranging matters as social movements, feminist movements and the State is challenging. First, it is necessary to address the diversity of South Asia, as well as the specificities of the social movements in the region. At the same time, it is also imperative to address the issue of ‘the State,’ particularly the complexities of the contemporary post-colonial State in South Asia, with the understanding that the concept itself is constantly being refashioned by political and social scientists, and by activists and practitioners, in the face of the contemporary processes of social transformation.
Social movements are processes of constant change and transformation. Despite their ever-changing nature, they have enabled the development of wide-ranging alliances that have led to tremendous social, political and economic change. Through women’s movements, women have built alliances and coalitions across the divides of class, race, language, ethnicity and other diverse identities, and have engaged in collective action that has changed policies and decision-making structures. A critical part of this activism has addressed the subordination of women. Understanding the experience—both action and analysis—that makes this type of collaborative work among women possible, therefore, is critical to developing women’s participation in political processes.
Social movements are generally described as conscious, collective activities to promote social change, representing a protest against the established power structure and dominant norms and values. A main resource of such movements is the commitment and active—often, unpaid—participation of its members or activists. Referring to the phenomenon that some academics and activists now call the ‘new social movements,’ Alberto Melucci calls attention to the ‘invisibility’ of those networks that help develop a sense of common interest, and facilitate collaborative work and collective action (Keane and Mier, 1989). According to him, contemporary social movements are no longer guided by the sense that they are completing a universal plan. Their agenda is not shaped by long-term or fixed goals, and the mobilisation they undertake is rooted in specific times and places. Thus, he refers to the actors in these movements as ‘nomads,’ dwelling entirely in the present. Leslie J. Calman claims that such movements are more easily able to embrace a diversity of ideological beliefs and choice of tactics because they do not adhere to one single, strict ideology, or demand that participants do the same (Calman, 1989). Melucci expands on the new social movements by identifying four key features that characterise them: treating information (both factual information and symbolic resources) as a resource; acting in the present; accepting the journey (the process) to be as important as the destination (the result); and striving for a complementarity between private life and public commitment.
Using these insights to describe and analyse women’s movements in South Asia in the late 1990s could, therefore, provide us with some understanding of the processes that shape women’s activism, as we move into a new century and a new millennium.
Feminist movements, or groups of women mobilising for change, have been constant, yet ever-changing, features of modern history. Actions organised by feminist movements in the early part of the century were focused at the national or regional level. By the second half of the 20th century, these movements had gathered force to become a global phenomenon. While differences in approach and analysis had to be accounted for, nevertheless, women across the globe succeeded in building networks on critical issues and in drawing public attention, at the international level, to their demands. Most of this activity has been based on a shared understanding of the need to make real changes in the situation of women. Those movements that have worked together in protest against violence against women, in favour of the recognition of women’s reproductive rights, and against trafficking and other forms of exploitation of women’s labour and sexuality, are amongst the best-known.
Theories of the State, of the processes of nation-State formation and of the relationship between the State and civil society are, again, many and varied. For purposes of this discussion, let me adopt the more orthodox definition of the State as a mechanism of government, and as an amalgam of institutions linked to the business of governance, such as the bureaucracy, religious and political formations, the military and other law-and-order mechanisms, legal structures and the judiciary. The State always represents the interests of one particular social group, more often than not those who are superior in number, or those with economic and/or political influence. The State also espouses an ideology that safeguards the base of those who have power. This is why theories and strategies of ‘overthrowing’ the State have formed the backbone of revolutionary and radical political thought in this century.
Feminists argue that the modern nation-State is founded on patriarchal attitudes and norms of behaviour that have led to the exclusion of women from the arenas of power. Carol Pateman has described the ‘social contract’ between the State and the citizen that is the principal foundation of liberal democratic structures as a ‘sexual’ contract, one that is based on the exclusion and the subordination of women (Pateman, 1988).
In the modern context, the process of globalisation also impinges on the authority of the State, especially in terms of an individual State’s ability to define economic policy or cushion its people from the onslaught of globalisation and its appurtenances like satellite television, for example. As the capacity of the individual State to ‘reign’ over its people shrinks, the citizens of these States experience economic hardship, social upheaval and ideological confusion. This is perhaps one of the reasons why issues of sovereignty have never been as much the cause of massacres and wars as they are today.
Historical Perspective of South Asia
A key feature of the history of the South Asian subcontinent in the past century has been the transition from colonial to post-colonial States, and from monarchy to democracy, through a process of widespread political and social upheaval. South Asia contains a large proportion of the world’s population, as well as some of its most marginalised, illiterate, unhealthy and pauperised people. The subcontinent seethes with political activity and is home to what some scholars have described as the world’s most vibrant democracies. Traditional leftwing political parties have exercised a fair degree of political power in the region, with Sri Lanka’s Finance Minister in the 1960s being an avowed Trotskyist, and the provincial governments of West Bengal and Kerala in India being traditionally held by communist and leftwing parties.
The shared history of the subcontinent is a critical feature that shapes the lives of all South Asian people. South Asia is home to the ancient Indus Valley civilisation and several other great empires and monarchies. It is the birthplace of two of the world’s most popular religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, and home to literally thousands of philosophies. The people of the subcontinent speak over a hundred languages, and worship a thousand gods and goddesses. Their lives are imbued with tradition and custom based on a multi-dimensional religious and mythical belief system. This fabulous diversity of language and culture, which stretches from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean, is unique and has captured the imagination of many travellers and creative persons from all over the world throughout known history.
In this century, the Indian subcontinent has been divided several times until, today, it consists of seven sovereign States—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldivian Republic. These divisions—the partitions of Bengal and the Punjab in the British era, the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971—were all initiated on the basis of differences, in languages and religion, in particular. The process of fragmentation on the basis of identity is very much a current political phenomenon in the subcontinent and will definitely shape the political future of the region.
South Asian States are all developing economies, with ongoing processes of industrialisation, and, increasingly, adaptation to new technologies. The impact of the neoliberal economic policies adopted by the international financial institutions have led to growth in some areas of the South Asian economies, while other areas face ruination. The fact that much of the population of South Asia remains dependent on agriculture for their survival constitutes a major challenge within these changing economic frameworks.
The South Asian States are all members of a number of regional and international bodies such as the United Nations (UN) and the Economic and Social Council for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). In 1985, they came together as the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC). The States of South Asia are also signatories to many of the treaties and covenants established by these bodies.
Social Movements in South Asia
Through the entire history of the subcontinent, there have been movements of certain groups or sectors of people seeking redress for grievances, or justice for a wrong that has been done them. Buddhism, which was a challenge to the caste-bound Brahminical society of the time, is one. But I will restrict myself to an overview of the broad movements for social reform and political self-rule that emerged in the Indian subcontinent during the late British period.
The processes of social transformation taking place in India during the late 19th century were rooted in an internal dynamism for change, as well as influenced by external factors such as European liberalism. Thus, there were various measures taken to educate some proportion of the ‘native’ population and draw them into the lower levels of the colonial administrative structure. In various parts of the subcontinent, there were movements against landlords and feudal social formations—for example, in Telengana—which were spearheaded by leftwing political parties that were active in the area at the time. Movements against the caste system and against the labelling of certain social sectors as ‘untouchable’ were strong, especially in the south of India. In erstwhile Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and some parts of India, the leftwing-inspired trade union movement was also strong.
Issues that were raised with regard to the status of women by these movements for social reform were of specific relevance to the upper caste communities—such as widow remarriage, purdah or the seclusion of women, child marriage, and sati or widow burning. The desire of these ‘reformers’ to transform India into a ‘modern’ society coalesced with the colonial agenda of preparing young South Asian women to be suitable wives for a new generation of liberal, Western-educated South Asian men.
Women were actively involved in some of the campaigns launched by social reformers for girls’ education. They fought against forms of seclusion and discrimination against women such as child marriage. The struggles to enable women to work outside the home and to win the right to vote were other critical arenas for the women in this period.
Just as the men in the nationalist movement represented the elite from different religious and regional communities, so did the women. In spite of the divisive nature of the nationalist movement, as Shaheeda Lateef says, one of the noteworthy features of the Indian women’s movement was the cooperation and unity between women of different communities on issues specific to women, despite, on the other hand, the unbridgeable political differences that separated the men of these communities (Lateef, 1990:88).
The immediate post-independence years on the subcontinent were ones in which the main preoccupation was, in India and Pakistan, dealing with the reality of partition and independence. Some male leaders of the nationalist movements moved into positions of political power within the newly independent States of India, Pakistan and Ceylon. A handful of women from elite families became members of the State legislative bodies. Consolidating their hold on the economy and creating a political system within which the divisions brought about by the very nature of the nationalist movement could be bridged were key preoccupations of the leadership of the time.
During this time, the women in northern India and East and West Pakistan tried to cope with the social dislocation and horror of partition, described by Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin as “a gendered narrative of displacement and dispossession, of large-scale and widespread communal violence, and of the realignment of family, community and national identities” (Menon and Bhasin, 1998:9).
There were many expectations that the new States would respond positively to the demands of their citizens, and a great deal of public goodwill existed for the new leaders of the independent South Asian States. In analysing the women’s movement and women’s activism in Pakistan during this period, the Network of Women Living under Muslim Laws (WLUML) points out, “Perhaps due to the successful alliance and overlap between those leading the Pakistan movement and those advocating women’s rights, women’s groups in the newly created State believed, for more than two decades, that the government would automatically expand women’s rights and open avenues for their participation... It was not until the Zia government (1977 to 1988) seriously threatened to rescind all women’s rights that women’s groups felt the need to establish an advocacy lobby for women” (Shaheed, Zia and Warraich, 1998).
The 1960s and 1970s
In the post-colonial phase of the 1960s and 1970s, the South Asian States were engaged in the consolidation of economic and social power. This was an era during which a State-planned and regulated economy prevailed in most South Asian countries.
Political upheavals throughout the region marked this era. In 1971, the subcontinent witnessed the war of liberation in East Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh. There were also a series of insurgencies during this period, perhaps beginning with the mobilisation of rural poor in what is now commonly referred to as the Naxalite movement. An insurgency led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) or the People’s Liberation Front erupted at around the same time in Ceylon.
Women were involved in all these radical political movements, not only as auxiliary cadres, but, sometimes, bearing arms in the struggle. In recent times, studies have attempted to look at the situation of women within these movements, taking into consideration the difficult interaction of patriarchal attitudes and revolutionary politics (see Stree Shakti Sanghatan and Ilina Sen).
During this period, in the mainstream, South Asian women were preoccupied with consolidating their achievements in education, employment and legal status. The principle of equality became the issue around which much awareness-raising took place, and formed the basis for the mobilisation of women in various struggles for legal reform.
Women were also active in several mass mobilisations during this period in India. Of them, the most vibrant and inclusive is perhaps the Anti-Price Rise Movement centred in Bombay in the early 1970s. This action was led by the Joint Women’s Front, comprising women from leftwing political parties, as well as women from a wide range of neighbourhood groups and community organisations. Over 20,000 women participated in some of the larger demonstrations of the movement, which ground to a halt only when a state of emergency was declared and the leaders of the movement arrested.
The development of what some academics call the ‘second wave’ of feminism in Western Europe in the late 1960s had its own resonance in South Asia. The development of ‘women’s studies’ as an academic discipline, and the holding of a number of national, regional and international seminars and conferences on women’s issues created an environment in which interaction between diverse women became possible. Issues such as women’s incorporation into export-oriented industrialisation, the undervaluing of domestic work, violence against women, and the criminalisation of abortion were shared concerns, which led to a proliferation of research and investigation into women’s issues in South Asia.
In the wake of the first Women’s Conference in Mexico in 1975, which exposed alarming inequalities and injustices to women worldwide, the concept of ‘integrating women in development’ emerged as the main thrust of change. This led to the prioritisation of women’s economic needs and the formulation of programmes for self-employment, skills training, and savings and credit. National governments subsequently created mechanisms to promote the advancement of women, putting in place institutions such as women’s ministries and bureaus. In Pakistan, in 1975, a National Commission on Women was appointed, which carried out a broad survey on the situation of women. A women’s bureau was established in Sri Lanka in 1977.
During this period emerged a range of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) and People’s Organisations (POs) working for the advancement of women in the region. There was an influx of foreign funding from both bilateral and non-State donor agencies for the establishment of community-based and constituency-based ‘non-political’ initiatives for development and social change, with a special focus on women.
The South Asian States also ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Sri Lanka was the first of the South Asian States to ratify the convention, without reservations. Although India, Pakistan and Bangladesh eventually also ratified it, their reservations against critical articles of the convention that address the issue of equality and non-discrimination render this ineffective in those countries. Nepal is the only South Asian country that ratified the convention on the basis that all its articles would pass into national law automatically and would not require separate and specific legislation in order to become a part of the national legal structure.
The 1980s and the 1990s
In these two decades, the full impact of globalisation of the economy and of communication became obvious in the South Asian region. Foreign investment flowed in, creating Free Trade Zones and other exploitative forms of employment. The ‘informal sector,’ where workers are most unprotected and which employs the largest number of women, expanded. Hundreds of thousands of poor women from urban and rural communities headed for West Asia from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan, in particular, to work as domestic help. Forces of conservatism became prominent in religious and cultural life and gave new energy to an image of woman as the bearer of the tradition and honour of the community.
The level of social differentiation on the basis of access to resources, power and also difference heightened during this period in South Asia. There were many instances of social mobilisation based on ethnicity, race and religion, which resulted in massacres and bloodbaths that left the subcontinent in shock. Among the worst examples that come to mind are the anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka in 1983, the anti-Sikh riots following Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, and the communal riots following the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque in India in 1992. At the same time, there were positive moments of social mobilisation—for example, the campaigns in Pakistan during the first elections after Zia-ul-Haq, the pro-democracy movement in Nepal and the evolution of an Indo-Pak People’s Forum for Peace. There is evidence of the active participation of women on both sides as participants in fundamentalist and anti-democratic groups, as well as critical actors in various movements for peace, democracy and respect for human rights.
The Present Context
If one takes a sweeping look at the history of the subcontinent in the 50 years since independence, it becomes clear that religious, linguistic, regional, cultural and ethnic differences have continued to play a critical role in both social formation and fragmentation. From the bloody violence of the 1947 partition to the civil war in Sri Lanka in 1997, South Asian communities have fought and died defending their identities. As the structures of governance grew more authoritarian and repressive in response to this turbulence, the societies became heavily militarised, and violence against women and members of minority communities increased. In the economic arena, South Asian countries moved from protectionist eras which emphasised the development of national industries and investments, to the ‘open economy,’ which is part of the neoliberal economic strategy espoused by global financial institutions.
In the early years after independence, different South Asian governments created different systems of ‘reservations’ or ‘quotas’ as a form of affirmative action in order to enable women and members of minority communities, including those of the so-called scheduled castes, to gain access to higher education and State-sector employment. During this period, the hope that the democratic structures of the State and governance would provide space and opportunity for all the marginalised and disadvantaged social sectors that had joined the struggle for independence was pervasive. However, the inability of the States to accommodate the different demands of various social groups and categories has led to much frustration, which has, over the years, expressed itself in sometimes peaceful, and sometimes violent, ways.
Although the governments of post-colonial South Asia have tried to build into their constitutions and legal frameworks different mechanisms and safeguards that would protect the rights of minority communities and disadvantaged social groups, these measures have been, for the most part, ineffective. Within this context, women, and members of religious, linguistic, ethnic and caste groups facing systemic and systematic discrimination, members of tribal and indigenous communities, and people living with HIV/ AIDS emerged as vibrant members of the ‘new social movements’ that form a part of civil society in the South Asian region.
Division based on religion is a major cause of conflict in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In India, although the principle of secularism remains enshrined in the constitution, it has been heavily eroded by the inability of society and the State to withstand different waves of communalism and religious fundamentalism. In Bangladesh, the secular principle was abandoned via constitutional changes in 1988, while in Pakistan, the Islamic principles on which the State was founded in 1947 have been re-interpreted in ever more conservative forms. In Sri Lanka, the conflict is related to ethnic identities, as in Bhutan. In the northeast of India and in the hill tracts of Bangladesh, conflict is related to tribal identities. In Kashmir, it is an inter-State conflict between India and Pakistan. Yet, the eruption of these conflicts in all their diversity is a reflection of the inability of the post-colonial South Asian States to develop a democratic framework of governance that would treat all citizens with equal respect and that would accommodate difference with dignity.
The processes of development have slowly improved the living conditions and status of some sections of the population of the subcontinent over the years. Yet, in terms of access to education and health services, or to basic amenities such as potable water and electricity, much of rural South Asia remains at a disadvantage, even today. According to the World Development Report (WDR) for 1998, 18% of South Asians live without access to clean water, while 64% lack access to proper sanitation.
The WDR has also designed two sets of indicators for measuring women’s status. One is the Gender Development Indicator (GDI), computed on the basis of women’s life expectancy, adult literacy, educational attainment and income; and the other is the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), computed on the basis of women’s representation in parliament, in administrative and managerial positions, and in professional and technical positions.
Comparisons of the two give an interesting picture of the situation of women in South Asia in the late 1990s. According to the GDI ranking, Sri Lanka rates highest, with a score of 70. Following Sri Lanka are the Maldives (77), India (128), Pakistan (131), Bangladesh (140), Bhutan (147) and Nepal (148). The rankings in terms of the GEM index are slightly different, however, and there are no figures available for Nepal and Bhutan. According to this ranking, the Maldives does best, with a score of 76. Next are Bangladesh (80), Sri Lanka (84), India (95) and Pakistan (100). The corelation makes it clear that health, education and income are not the only factors that can influence women’s capacity to move into positions of political authority and administrative power.
In addition, the breakdown of law and order, the rise in crime and violence, corruption, and the flagrant abuse and misuse of political power for personal advantage all contribute to make South Asia one of the modern world’s most violent and undemocratic regions. The comment contained in the 1999 Human Development Report that South Asia remains the least and worst governed region in the world is a pointed reminder of the complexities of the issues that South Asian women moving into the new millennium face.
Some Trends in the ‘Modern’ Women’s Movement in South Asia
Since women’s groups and organisations came to the fore as key civil society actors in the region in the 1970s and 1980s, the chief issues that have engaged women have been:
* improving women’s access to income, and empowering them to take control of their own situations;
* developing legal and social networks to deal with violence against women, including the issue of trafficking in girls and women;
* processes of legal reform, with particular emphasis on laws governing ‘family life’;
* focusing on women’s reproductive health, with emphasis on improving their health and nutrition status and enhancing their reproductive and sexual choices;
* evolving strategies to enhance women’s participation in political processes, including the establishment of quotas and reservations for women at policy and decision-making levels; and
* analysing the representation of women in mass media, and rejecting the perpetuation of gender-based stereotypes.
In addition, the consideration of diversity has led to a specific care and concern for the inclusion of women from various minority communities, including tribal and indigenous women, in the agenda for women’s advancement, and a focus on peaceful political resolutions of conflicts within and between nation-States in the region.
All over the subcontinent, women who reached certain levels of attainment, in terms of education and employment, have had to struggle hard to break through the barriers that impede their advancement, and working-class women have fought for the rights to equal remuneration for equal work, to paid maternity leave and benefits, and to participation in trade union activity on equal terms with men. At the level of policy and planning, women argued for the recognition of women’s work at home and in social reproduction, as well as in the ‘informal’ sector, as a critical contribution to national economies. Among the results of these were efforts to make national databases gender-specific, and data collecting processes, gender-sensitive.
The movement for reform of personal (family) laws in India paved the way for a range of legal and judicial activism aimed at eliminating discrimination against women in the ‘private’ arena—not only in India, but throughout the subcontinent. The Shahbano case, which led to legal reforms regarding marriage, divorce and maintenance for Muslim women, and the Mary Roy case, from which Syrian Christian women won the right to equal inheritance of family property, both established landmark standards for the equal status of women in the family.
In Pakistan, in the period following the overthrow of the Bhutto regime and the imposition of military rule, several women’s groups became active in the struggle for democratic rights. In 1981, the sentencing of a Pakistani woman, Fehmida Allah Bux, to 100 lashes in a public flogging aroused an outcry both within and outside Pakistan. The decision of the government to impose certain Islamic principles into law, such as the Hudood Ordinance and the Law of Evidence, resulted in the formation of the Women’s Action Forum (WAF) in 1983. WAF actively and publicly mobilised women to resist discriminatory laws. A public demonstration organised by WAF against the proposed Laws of Evidence in Lahore led to a brutal police attack on the demonstration, and made headline news around the world.
In Sri Lanka, in the free trade zones, women activists worked to organise the women workers, and there were several critical strikes in the early 1980s that paved the way for a broadening of women’s activism throughout the island. In the plantation and agricultural sectors, too, the efforts were focused on organising women into associations or unions that could demand better work conditions and better pay.
In Nepal, the active involvement of many women in the movement for democracy resulted in a very revolutionary achievement. One of the principles of the new Nepali constitution recognises women as a disadvantaged sector in society. Accordingly, taking steps to redress these disadvantages becomes the responsibility of the State.
Over the years, a number of regional networks that focus on women’s issues have emerged. Among the ones that have had the widest regional impact are the Asia-Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), International Women’s Rights Action Watch, Asia-Pacific (IWRAW A-P) and the Network of Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML).
The Process of Political Restructuring in South Asia
The process of political restructuring that we witnessed in South Asia at the end of the century was one in which States were losing their autonomy. ‘Globalisation’ is the word with which we now encapsulate this process. In terms of decision-making on the economy, the contemporary South Asian State has no choice but to move in concert with the demands and commands of the international financial institutions and other donor countries. Demands to ‘rationalise’ the State sector have led to waves of privatisation and the unravelling of the welfare State, which had provided the poorer populations with free or heavily subsidised public services and amenities. ‘Development’ projects that focus purely on the economic growth rate, rather than on the totality of impact on an affected populace, displace and disorient millions more, with tribal and indigenous communities being most severely affected. The rapid growth of the ‘informal’ sector means that many more workers are exposed to the most brutal forms of exploitation, protected neither by the State nor by international law.
These processes have been set in motion by States that have increasingly abrogated their responsibilities toward their people. The 1990s have seen the South Asian States move towards more repressive and anti-democratic forms of governance. The embezzlement of public funds takes place at the highest levels, and there is no control of corruption. All the South Asian States have special legislation that permits the suspension of the fundamental rights of their citizens. They also have anti-terrorism laws that give inordinate powers to the armed forces. These are a reflection of the reality that the only laws that the South Asian States have agreed to pass in recent years, within the ambit of SAARC, have been laws related to the control of ‘terrorism.’
The inability of the South Asian States to deal with the issue of the diversity of their peoples has led to growing intolerance and majoritarianism in the political arena. It has fostered the growth of all forms of communalism, racialism, and ethnic and religious hatred, manifested in violence of the worst and most inhuman kind. The principle of secularism as a means of affirming democratic praxis in a multi-religious society has been seriously eroded. As a result, modern South Asia is home to many different struggles for self-determination and autonomy within and across borders. Whether these involve Christians in India and Pakistan, or Tamils in Sri Lanka, or Buddhists in Bangladesh, or dalits in Bihar, throughout South Asia, one’s origins and beliefs can be the root cause of deprivation and marginalisation.
Since economic growth is not linked to social progress, and since political instability is linked to growing intolerance and violence in society, the process of social transformation in South Asia is varied and often retrogressive. The pauperisation of the so-called middle classes, who used to be the mainstay of society, is taking place alongside the growing landlessness of the rural population. The alienation of the mass of the people from their government and from formal political processes leads to growing cynicism regarding the existing form of ‘democracy’ in South Asia.
Women’s Position in South Asia in the 1990s
The position and status of women in South Asian society today is a reflection of the economic, political and social phenomena described above. Economic changes are pushing more and more women out of the house to work in low-paid and exploitative forms of work, where they are often exposed to sexual and physical abuse as well. The areas of work open to women are in the unskilled sector. Domestic work and home-based work remain the most available forms of employment. Women’s contribution to the household and national economy remains grossly underestimated and undervalued, while they continue to bear the burden of the household and family responsibilities, mostly alone.
The commodification of women’s bodies and sexuality leads to continued degradation of women in society. The globalisation of female/feminine symbols in the advertising industry homogenises gender-based stereotypes. Globalisation has also had an impact on the selling of ‘sex,’ making this ‘industry’ a far more critical aspect of women’s existence. The tremendous increase in prostitution and the trafficking of women in the region bear witness to this reality.
The rise in all forms of intolerance leads to an increase in violence, with women’s vulnerability to violence rising as well. The patriarchal nature of identity-based politics, prevalent throughout the subcontinent today, denies a woman her right to choose, especially in matters relating to her so-called ‘private’ life, and increasing restricts her autonomy and mobility. Violence against communities results in massive displacement and eventually, the disintegration of these communities. The threat of such violence creates an environment where women are pushed to play a special role as those who bear the identity of the community.
Well worth noting, however, is that the contemporary scenario for women in South Asia is not a completely bleak one. More women than ever before have become part of the workforce, and enjoy enhanced mobility, access to public space and a degree of economic independence, which also brings with it, on many occasions, a degree of autonomy. Women’s organisations and groups have proliferated in number, and more women are in public office and represented in public institutions. Various legal battles that enhance women’s equality before the law have also been won.
1995 and Beijing
In assessing the role and impact of the women’s movement in South Asia, the activism and enthusiasm generated around the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 can be viewed as a critical juncture. In each of the countries of the region, there were national preparatory processes within which women’s groups and organisations prepared situation reports and analyses of the status of women. Representatives of women’s organisations met at the sub-regional and regional levels. Some of them also participated in the official meetings which, in the Asia-Pacific region, were co-ordinated by ESCAP in Thailand. Over a thousand women from South Asia participated in the NGO Forum of the Beijing Conference, and all the regional organisations were present as well. Following the adoption of the Platform for Action emanating from the conference, different women’s groups have taken on different roles in monitoring the implementation of the document.
In India, the post-Beijing era has seen the emergence of the National Association of Women’s Organisations (NAWO) as the largest national women’s network. In 1997, NAWO organised the first National Conference on Post-Beijing Review. At this gathering, the main areas of focus were identified as: the political participation of women; peace; defence of the rights of dalits, tribals and Muslims; sustainable human development; prohibition of liquor; establishment of State commissions for women; better access to resources; and violence against women.
In Nepal, in 1997, women’s organisations held a mini-Beijing Conference. Over 700 women participated in the meeting, which was aimed at raising awareness of the Beijing Platform for Action and mobilising women to lobby for implementation of the commitments in the Platform. A National Plan of Action and Strategies for the Effective Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action was drawn up.
In Bangladesh, a National Conference of Women’s Organisations was organised by Naripokkho, in 1995. ‘Decentralisation of government’ and ‘devolution of power’ emerged as key issues. In 1996, the government of Bangladesh initiated a multi-sectoral programme to deal with violence against women, with the collaboration of women’s groups.
In Sri Lanka, the Beijing process saw the creation of a network called the Sri Lanka Women’s NGO Forum. This comprised over 40 women’s organisations from all over the island, representing all sectors of society. As a result of the activities of the Forum, over 40 women from Sri Lanka participated in the NGO Forum in Huairou, China, in 1995.
All these groups are actively involved in monitoring the implementation of the State’s commitments to the advancement of women through the Beijing Platform for Action. They are also a part of various State and non-State processes aimed at influencing policy and decision-making processes in order to bring about structural changes in society that would effectively change women’s lives.
Some Critical Contemporary Issues
The involvement of women in global arenas has created a concerted lobby for women’s concerns at the international level. The understanding that pressure for ‘gender mainstreaming,’ especially at the level of the UN, has to continue has meant that a number of women and women’s groups from the Southern hemisphere, including South Asia, have had to commit themselves to this work. This involvement has been sometimes at the cost of their work and involvement at the national and regional levels, and has led to various expressions of dissatisfaction within some sections of the women’s movement. This focus on the global has indeed created a set of ‘international’ activists and a process of international activism that could be divisive, if not handled with the awareness that thinking globally and acting locally must be necessarily, and at all times, intertwined.
A critical outcome of the involvement of large numbers of women in these processes has been the engagement of women with the State and State machinery, especially those relating to women, and their entry into the sphere of decision-making and policy-making at the national and regional levels. Women from the movement are involved in various consultative bodies and committees that prepare official documents for the UN bodies monitoring the implementation of the Platforms for Action from the various World Conferences. Women and men from the administrative services have been appointed ‘gender focal points’ in government ministries. There have also been proposals for the establishment of national commissions for women involving women from the movement.
These exercises in ‘mainstreaming gender’ have played a role in gaining more visibility for, and more acceptance of, women’s advancement at the official level. However, the involvement of women from the women’s movement in these State-focused processes has been heavily criticised from within the movement itself. The women who face charges of ‘co-optation’ from their colleagues argue that gender-aware women must occupy the spaces made available in the public sector. For the women opposed to such a move, however, the presence of women in such forums precisely masks the State’s sluggishness in moving toward the equal status of women in South Asian societies. The fact remains that, despite the establishment of various mechanisms for ‘gender equality,’ in most arenas of life and work, discrimination against women and the perpetuation of negative and gender-based stereotypes of women persist. For example, within many strands of the formal education system, the textbooks and curricula remain imbued with gender bias; in the health system, the primary perception of women is still that of ‘mother’ or ‘mother-to-be.’
The Challenges of Coalition Building
The prevailing political realities in South Asia have led to a radical re-thinking of the concepts of ‘difference’ and ‘diversity’ within the women’s movement. The recognition of difference is a key factor in the many initiatives for pluralism and multi-religious and multi-ethnic coexistence. In India, the formation of the Dalit Women’s Association and the growing awareness of the connections between caste-based oppression and women’s subordination have been a critical part of this process. In many areas of Bihar and Orissa, as well as in other parts of India, the movement of dalit tribal and indigenous people has become one of the strongest in the country and the region. Within these movements, the role played by women is significant, although this is more in terms of their engagement in organisational and mobilisation work, rather than in terms of the role they play in actual decision-making structures within the community.
In many ways, the encounters between women’s groups and others engaged in working for social justice from different perspectives have led to closer collaboration, as well as to conflicts and tensions created by divergences in priorities and agendas. Some of these differences in understanding are clearly due to the patriarchal attitudes and structures of many broad-based, mixed (male and female) groups that have a social-justice agenda. The fact that many women’s groups in the region have, in the past years, devoted more time and energy to developing strategies to deal with violence against women and other forms of exploitation particular to women has led to their alienation from other social movements. Thus, while there is always a display of solidarity when it comes to public demonstrations or campaigns on broad economic, social and political issues, women’s concerns are rarely an integrated part of the long-term agendas of other civil society movements. Nor are women from the women’s movement, in any way, key decision-makers in many of these organisations.
In the present context, the sectors that women’s groups are forging linkages with include: dalits; indigenous and tribal peoples; members of religious, ethnic and linguistic minorities; migrant workers; refugees and internally displaced people; gays and lesbians; and people living with HIV/AIDS.
These organisations, many of which can be described as a part of the tradition of ‘new social movements,’ are creating a space for articulating the needs and interests of their specific community in a way that focuses on discrimination, and the oppression and exploitation that accompanies such discrimination. Much of their experience is similar to that of women. Of course, the experiences of women within each of these groups are made far more complex by the several levels of discrimination they have to suffer. As a consequence of action-oriented interactions, many of these organisations now pay greater attention to the participation of women in their programmes, and to the heightening of gender-awareness within their organisations.
Using a Rights-based Approach
The emphasis on ‘human rights’ which has emerged within the women’s movement as well as within the UN system as a whole, has led to both positive and negative outcomes for women, including women in South Asia. On the positive side, human rights groups have begun to accept the need to be more gender-sensitive in their work. Women’s groups have also begun to re-frame their work on legal reform and legal intervention from the point of view of a rights-based approach. As a consequence, in the last five years of the decade, there have been innumerable initiatives aimed at re-defining legal concepts and legal frameworks regarding women’s rights at the international, regional and national levels.
Offences against women have been newly codified in ways that acknowledge the specificity of, for example, women’s vulnerable situation in contexts of conflict. Rape, forced impregnation and other forms of sexual violence against women in times of war have been classified as ‘war crimes’ in the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The work done by the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice at the ICC, which is a multinational women’s lobby group in which several South Asian women participate, has been invaluable in this process.
The appointment of Sri Lankan lawyer Radhika Coomaraswamy as the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women in 1994 can be seen as another extremely critical outcome of consolidated lobbying and advocacy work at the international level by women’s groups and human rights groups. Her reporting on issues that are crucial to South Asian women, such as trafficking, the use of culture and tradition to justify violence against women, and violence against women in conflict situations, has created a space for these issues to be raised at the national and regional levels.
However, the controversy around the proposed SAARC Convention on Trafficking clearly demonstrates the care with which one needs to venture into the process of law-making within States. The present draft legislation, which treats women as victims and objects with no ‘will’ of their own, can be viewed as a result of women’s interventions, yet it is not respectful of women’s rights at all. Different initiatives in India and Sri Lanka to create legislation on domestic violence that would incorporate aspects of both civil and criminal law need to take these concerns on board before draft legislation is developed.
The reluctance of most mainstream human rights groups in the South Asian region to intervene in family laws, including laws governing marriage, divorce, maintenance, custody of children and inheritance, is an indication of their conservatism in this area. Divisions on how to apply the principle of non-discrimination and equality in situations where minority communities, for example, feel under siege and therefore cling tightly to their identities and to the cultural, traditional and religious norms that define those identities, remain at the heart of this matter. Among other issues relevant to women that mainstream human rights agendas do not easily address are abortion, trafficking and sexual harassment.
Work in the area of rights-based legal reform has been mainly focused on violence and violence-related issues throughout South Asia. In India, the Supreme Court judgement on sexual harassment in the workplace generated concern and attention. In Sri Lanka, in 1995, changes to the penal code included the criminalisation of incest and sexual harassment, and the introduction of mandatory minimum punishments for rape. Although some women’s groups had been campaigning for such reforms, when they did take place, it was as a result of a State initiative. In Nepal, women activists have changed laws relating to the inheritance rights of Nepali women. However, the effective implementation of such changes in the law and in legal structures so that they would have real and immediate impact on women’s lives remains extremely difficult due to existing social and cultural barriers.
Poverty and Globalisation
The macro-issues of poverty and the strategies for its alleviation and eradication, globalisation, peace and demilitarisation, and democratisation are also areas of concern for women in the South Asian region. In many South Asian countries, women’s groups are part of broader alliances and coalitions that work on social-justice issues. The activism around the World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen in 1994 led to a series of debates on poverty and related issues. One result was the formulation of a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) policy document that states that poverty is a violation of human rights, and that looks at women as key ‘actors’ in strategies aimed at the eradication of poverty.
Women’s groups in South Asia are involved in campaigns against development projects that lead to deforestation, environmental degradation and deprivation of access to tribal land, which deeply affect the survival of tribal and indigenous communities. Large numbers of women throughout the subcontinent participate in programmes of action and research linked to a whole range of issues on sustainable development, particularly, initiatives to reclaim traditional healing and farming methods. In this process, members of women’s movements have had to define the objectives that they could adhere to, in common with other civil society movements that share the same perspectives and with whom they engage in collective actions. Key among these objectives is a vision of a just society where development is sustainable and all members of society are treated as equal.
Social movements in India and Bangladesh that have the active participation of women have been among the foremost to challenge the patenting of indigenous seed and plant varieties by multinational companies, and have launched major campaigns against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and several multinationals. The focus on organic farming and more ecofriendly farming systems that respect the biodiversity of the planet has been a significant feature of these movements, as are the protests against debt and the call from Southern countries for debt cancellation at G-7 meetings. Women researchers and activists have also worked extensively on issues related to the employment of women in the export processing zones that have sprung up around the region.
Within the women’s movement, especially among women’s groups that have focused on reproductive health issues, the question of re-strengthening traditional and indigenous health and healing practices has been another critical area of action and research in the past decade.
In addition, many thousands of women have been involved in popular agitation campaigns, such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan in India, which counts among its leaders the charismatic Medha Patkar. Several women’s groups are also involved in the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) in India, which was created in 1997 to bring together groups campaigning on issues of food security, globalisation, exemption of agriculture from the WTO negotiations, and debt cancellation. Within the NAPM, groups have also taken up some specific issues that have special impact on women, including those of equal wages, property and inheritance rights, and the provision of basic heathcare.
Throughout South Asia, there is a debate regarding the efficacy and ultimate result of many programmes aimed at eradicating or alleviating poverty. The design and implementation of many micro-credit programmes, income-generation schemes and self-help programmes aimed at addressing the issue of poverty seem not to have taken gender relations into account. For example, the role played by women’s unpaid labour in the home is often ignored in discussions on the economic base of a household. In Sri Lanka, some preliminary surveys have shown that, at times, women’s vulnerability to domestic violence increases due to her enhanced income-earning capacity. Yet, there is little willingness among many of the larger NGOs that engage in this type of development activity to address issues of violence and sexual harassment within their own organisations and constituencies.
Political Participation
More than any other region in the world, South Asia has had its share of women heads of State. Yet, all of them were representatives of political dynasties, rather than women politicians in their own right. Thus, their political agendas were shaped more by the needs and interests of their political parties and constituencies than by their desire to uplift the women of their country. In addition, the women leaders of South Asia have, without exception, acted with scant respect for democratic practice when their powers have been challenged. Throughout the subcontinent, figures show that the political participation of women at the highest level, in cabinet positions or as members of parliament has, in fact, improved only minimally—by 1 percent or 2 percent, at most—in the 50 years since independence in 1948.
Creating space for women’s political participation through legal and legislative action has been an arena in which significant changes have taken place in the region. In India, two constitutional amendments—the 73rd and 74th—made it possible for one-third of the representatives elected to village, block and district panchayats to be women. As a consequence, over one million women throughout India are today members of these local government bodies. The 81st amendment to the Indian constitution mandating that one-third of members of parliament be female enacted in 2000, was of topic of much controversy and discussion throughout the region.
In Nepal, changes in administrative procedures and legal frameworks in 1997 made it mandatory for one of every five members in a ward committee (the smallest local government administrative unit) to be a woman. Following this change, 36,000 women were elected to local ward committees in 1998. However, the Nepali experience also merely exposes that the mere inclusion of women in the system does not guarantee opportunities to participate in the proceedings and processes of governance in an equal way.
The experience of having many more women in positions of power in the region has been varied. In some instances, the women have been mere ‘nominal’ members while the men carried on with the actual business of governance. In other cases, the opportunity to be a member of local government has paved the way for women previously active in their communities to wield authority and power. This process has also led women’s groups that in principle supported enhanced political participation of women to re-think some of their strategies of ‘participation,’ and to become more involved in the political debates about democratisation and devolution of power.
The debate in the region on the issue of quotas and reservations is more alive today than ever before. In spite of repeated affirmation that this kind of action can only be a temporary measure, and is justified in light of the centuries of deprivation, there are still arguments around the logic of having ‘unqualified’ or ‘incompetent’ women in positions of power. Clearly, numbers alone will not resolve the issue, and only when there are gender-conscious women and men in positions of political power will any legislative action advancing the situation of women take place. Yet, there can be no doubt that the presence of women in large numbers in a political arena hitherto dominated and controlled by men is an extremely significant improvement, even if only to enhance the visibility of women. In addition, once women are in these positions, at least a few of them gain confidence and become interested in staying on within the framework, and advancing not only themselves, but also the cause of women.
Women’s groups have been extremely active in encouraging the political participation of women, as candidates and representatives, as voters and as members of election-related civil society groups that engage in voter education and poll monitoring activities. In the course of this work, they have developed relationships with political parties of all persuasions, and have also worked with the State machinery that conducts elections. Work on the processes of civic education and election monitoring is among the ways in which women have become involved with governance issues. Some women’s groups in Sri Lanka and Nepal, for example, have also lobbied political parties and groups to include women’s concerns in their programme manifestos and campaign platforms.
Peace and Conflict Resolution
Militarisation, armed conflicts and civil wars have played a major role in shaping and changing women’s lives in South Asia throughout the post-independence period. The ‘normalisation’ of violence, coercion and intimidation to suppress opposition and different views are felt at all levels in society—nationally, regionally and even domestically.
The peaceful and negotiated settlement of conflicts in the region, therefore, continues to be a major area of concern for the whole of the South Asian region. Women’s groups, at the level of their individual nation-States and also at the regional level, have focused on the issue, which becomes ever more critical as tensions based on differences in ethnic origin, religion and language sharpen into acrimony and confrontation.
In both India and Pakistan, which are divided over the issue of Kashmir, joint campaigns for peace became more imperative in the wake of the nuclear tests carried out by both countries in 1998. The threat of nuclearisation also made the issue a regional one. Several forums committed to a peaceful relationship between the people of India and Pakistan, and to an end to the conflict in Kashmir, have been formed. For instance, the Indo-Pak People’s Forum for Peace, which is a people-to-people initiative, has the active participation of women. In Pakistan, several women’s groups are also members of the Joint Action Committee (JAC), which campaigns against discrimination against minorities, including Christians, in the country.
In Sri Lanka, women have played an active role in agitating for a peaceful resolution of the ethnic conflict, which has had serious impact on the women’s movement since the 1970s. Because the conflict has sharpened, keeping the connections between women and women’s groups from all the communities alive and engaging them in a process of dialogue and discussion have not been easy. Using the symbolic articulation of motherhood, the Mothers’ Fronts of the north and the east were the only public voices of protest. They gained prominence, both within the island and abroad, for their courage and activism. Through various networks, such as Mothers and Daughters of Lanka, Women for Peace, the Women’s Coalition for Peace and the Sri Lanka Women’s NGO Forum (SLWNGOF), the National Alliance for Peace, and the People’s Peace Front, women have come together to oppose all forms of extreme nationalism and any attempts to resolve conflicts militarily.
The conflict in the seven States of northeast India, which have been historically denied their autonomy, is one of the most complicated in the region. There are a number of concurrent and different conflicts taking place in the area, between the Central government and the different States, as well as among different tribal groups. In addition, the indigenous people of the area are in confrontation with settlers from Bangladesh and Burma. The conflicts are extremely brutal, leading to hundreds of deaths. In addition, there is an almost continuous flow of displacement, which is difficult to record.
Even though there are matrilineal communities in this region of India, according to women activists from the northeast, this has not translated into political or decision-making power for women. For many years, women from the northeast remained on the fringes of the women’s movement in India. During the process of preparing for Beijing, a strong federation of women’s groups in the northeast evolved, under the name North-East Network (NEN). This network is involved in monitoring the situation of women and human rights abuses in the northeast region, in collaboration with other groups within and outside India.
Making the connections between politically motivated violence and violence against women by the family and within the community has been among the most critical of the advances made by the women’s groups in the region. An understanding of patriarchal nature of the power relations that operate in each situation of oppression has been critical to developing an understanding of the patriarchal roots of violence.
In addition, sections of the women’s movement have been engaged in developing a feminist critique of communalism and all other forms of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, language or religion. Women’s groups have committed themselves to maintaining a dialogue across the religious and linguistic divides that separate them from one another. Especially in the field of mass communication and creative arts, women artists, theatre artistes and cultural workers have evolved a wide range of creative communication materials that convey ideas of harmonious co-existence in the subcontinent. Women academics have also engaged in the study of communalism and its impact on women. In India, for example, there have been studies of women’s involvement in the rightwing Hindutva political organisations, while in Sri Lanka, women scholars have studied the role played by women in all aspects of the ethnic conflict.
The Feminist Dilemma
There have been fewer and fewer women’s groups in South Asia that want to identify themselves with a feminist analysis of society or declare themselves to be feminist. This may be, in part, due to continuing prejudices regarding feminists, which, interestingly enough, are similar in many parts of the world, the most common allegations being that they are ‘Westernised’ alienated from the indigenous culture, and intent on the destruction of ‘family values.’ But this is also partly due to the inability of many feminists to take on the challenges posed by modernity and the processes of globalisation, and evolve new modes of analysis that respond to the rapid transformations taking place in our societies. While there have been studies and research on the impact of globalisation on women’s economic status, and on the impact of the growth of religious fundamentalism and national chauvinism on the social status of women, these have been too few and too specific.
The symbolic disappearances of words such as ‘liberation’ and ‘emancipation’, ‘oppression’ and ‘exploitation,’ ‘patriarchy’ and ‘feminism’ from our lexicons may be key to understanding this phenomenon, especially when one considers the one word and term that seems to have replaced them: gender. The concept of ‘gender’ as social, in contrast to ‘sex’ as biological, was first used by feminist sociologists to describe the social construction of masculinity and femininity. Placed within an analytical framework that embraced the concept of patriarchy and looked at gender relations as being relations of power, gender is an invaluable tool that we may use to enhance our understanding of reality. However, as used now by development agencies and government bureaucrats, it has been stripped of its analysis of power relations and, therefore, has been de-politicised.
The constant pressure put by feminists on mixed civil society organisations, in terms of their attitudes and policies on violence against women and sexual harassment, has led to a certain distancing between the two groups. Instances in which the male leadership of trade unions, political parties and even community-based organisations has been accused of sexual harassment and abuse of their female colleagues are well known in each of the South Asian countries. Yet, bringing the perpetrators to justice has been as difficult as in other cases.
Among the challenges that confront the feminist movement in South Asia today is that of re-shaping its linkages and connections with other social movements from a perspective that deals with the issue of diversity in a democratic and just manner. For women, this means an acceptance of the fact that speaking of the dignity and equality of women cannot suffice; one must also take into consideration the need for all members of society to be treated with dignity and equal respect.
The difficulty of dealing with diversity comes hand in hand with the issue of identity-based politics in the region. In situations where minority communities feel threatened, which leads them to strengthen their own resistance to the onslaught they face from the majority, it becomes extremely difficult to urge any form of equality that could be interpreted as a move toward homogenisation. Accepting the differences and trying to devise forms of harmonious co-existence and solidarity pose a great challenge to the understanding of equality that postulates ‘equal’ as being ‘the same.’ In recent years, feminists that have begun to use the human rights framework as a basis for discussing issues of equality and difference have proposed that returning to concepts of discrimination and disadvantage would perhaps provide some insights into the problem.
For the feminist movements of South Asia, another difficult process has been that of forging links with the State and becoming involved in policy-making in coalition with State agencies. Overcoming traditional resistance to links with the State is a critical issue, since many feminists had traditionally been active in opposition to the State. As the nature of the South Asian State changes, and as it withdraws from its traditional role as provider of services and protector of rights, various community-based organisations have no option but to step in to provide essential and basic services to the community. Assuming this role, however, brings with it another range of problems about becoming a ‘part’ of the ‘system’ and, therefore, losing the capacity to stay critical of the system and of structural injustice as a whole, since one is committed, on a day-to-day basis, to a range of activities that in fact prop up the system.
Difficulties in dealing with power and issues of leadership, the generation gap within the women’s movement, the marked absence of younger women in leadership positions in the movement, and the conflicts and tensions created by the process of transforming movements into institutions are among the more serious problems that confront the different women’s movements in South Asia today. These internal crises are, of course, sharpened by the processes of social, economic and political change taking place within the larger South Asian context.
Conclusion
Looking at the nature of women’s movements in South Asia in terms of Melucci’s definition of what constitutes a new social movement, one can see that, in the early years of the 1970s and 1980s, they were truly ‘nomadic,’ in Melucci’s sense of the word. There was a focus on commitment and a resistance to structures and formalities. Funding imperatives were minimal, and in their stead were much voluntarism and a concentration on self-awareness. The slogan “The personal is the political” is symbolic of the era, with its struggle to break down the divisions between the private and the public worlds. The wide range of discussions, debates and activism focusing on various aspects of marriage and the family can be seen as a manifestation of this trend. Many of the older women’s organisations in South Asia, such as Saheli in Delhi, the Forum against the Oppression of Women in Bombay, Nari Pokkho in Bangladesh, and Voice of Women in Sri Lanka, can be viewed as a part of this spectrum. Changing social perceptions about women, and transforming traditional and cultural practices that discriminated against women were key components of their work.
During this period, there was not much focus on institution-building, leadership or policy change. The political analysis of patriarchy within the women’s movements went along with the critique of the family and monogamy. The relationship of women’s movements to the State in its ‘welfarist’ phase was based on a belief in the State’s duty and capacity to deliver essential goods and services in an equitable manner. The relationship with the State was, therefore, shaped by this perception, and addressing demands to the State for better and enhanced ‘delivery’ formed a large part of the activism.
The interactions of members of the women’s movement in South Asia with members of women’s movements at the international level created a space for the discussion of women-specific issues from the perspective of cross-cultural understanding. Theoretical debates on issues such as ‘gender’ as a social construct went side by side with global campaigns to draw attention to the severity of women’s situation as victims of all forms of discrimination and violence.
In later years, in the 1990s, as the State began withdrawing from the economic arena due to the pressures of globalisation, and as the forces of chauvinism and extremism began to gather strength, women found themselves being pushed into several contradictory positions. The rising cost of living and the need to supplement the family income meant that more and more women had to go out to work. However, the areas of employment that were open and accessible to them were, for the most part, exploitative, and, in many instances, reaffirmed women’s subordinate and ‘domestic’ role. In addition, in the face of heightened ethnic consciousness within the community, women’s major role was prescribed in a specific way, as bearers of the community’s ‘honour’ and culture. In this context, many women had to face the dilemma of being caught between the demands of their community or collectivity, and their personal interests as individual women.
A grim reality of the subcontinent of the 1990s is also the slow but sure increase in female-headed families, due to abandonment and death of male family members, especially of breadwinners. This is largely related to the many internal conflicts in the region, which have resulted in massive displacement of populations, as well as extensive human rights abuse. The very critical changes in the role and status of women in South Asian society that have come about as a consequence of this situation are yet to be addressed fully by social scientists and women activists.
In the face of these challenges, women’s movements in South Asia have moved along several different trajectories. Some have become integrated into broader social movements that focus on the impact of globalisation, including environmental degradation. The dilemmas of coalition building, especially with regard to maintaining a gender-specific analysis of the issue and with regard to equal space and opportunities for women within the movement, remain similar to those experienced by women who worked closely with leftwing political parties, groups and trade unions in the 1970s.
This situation has also led many women’s groups to work on specific issues related to globalisation that have an impact on women—migrant women workers, trafficking and prostitution, new reproductive technologies, and food security, among the most significant. In each of these cases, there are issue-based coalitions that emerge and work with State and non-State institutions and agencies to achieve their goals. This emphasis on acting in the ‘present’ is one feature of the new social movements identified by Melucci, and clearly visible in many South Asian women’s groups and organisations. While the narrow focus has some extremely positive outcomes, in terms of sharpening both analysis and strategies for action, it also could lead to a blindness to other issues, which has a negative impact on the movements, in the long term.
Engagement with the UN mechanisms and activism aimed at influencing policy documents on women put out by the UN for the various world conferences made women more familiar with the structures of power at the global level. The need to transform the commitments made by States at the international level into concrete improvement of women’s conditions at the national level made women more involved with the State and with negotiating with the State.
In this situation, what Melucci identifies as one of the characteristics of new social movements, that is, the treatment of information as a resource, has certainly come to the fore. All over the world, obtaining and sharing information on the advances made in women’s rights in other countries and other situations, following international conferences, and discovering creative and innovative ways of using mass communication and the media to disseminate information have all become critical aspects of the women’s movements. New communication and information technologies have certainly facilitated this process, although the question of access remains crucial in the region, due to inadequate technological resources. In addition, the ways in which women have used the symbol of the ‘mother’ in their struggles for justice and peace in the region, whether it is the Mothers’ Front in Sri Lanka or the Naga Mothers’ Union in India, demonstrate how well women realise the potential of symbolic resources that are embedded in a particular social and cultural formation.
The development of various sets of relationships with the State and with the State apparatus has resulted in a politicisation of the women’s movement in many parts of the region in a way that has had both a positive and a negative impact on the movement. In some cases, activist women leaders who moved into positions within the government apparatus and within the UN and other international agencies became caught up in the dynamics and politics of those institutions. In other cases, for example, through the formation of strong networks such as NAWO in India and the SLWNGOF in Sri Lanka, members of the women’s movement have been able to influence policy and have moved into ‘consultative’ status with State, regional and international institutions.
The process of globalisation has also had an impact on funding for women’s activism. Funding agencies insist on professionalism and specialisation from recipients of their funds, seriously threatening the autonomy of some groups. The accusation that some women’s groups are ‘funder-driven’ in the identification of both their goals and their strategies is often heard from within the movement itself. Undoubtedly, the challenge of becoming self-sustaining remains a key to the future.
The number of women’s groups in South Asia has grown remarkably over the past decade, and they now cover a wide range of activities and activism. The most significant advance of this period could well be the linking of women’s rights with human rights, which has opened doors for lobbying and advocacy in many arenas.
An interesting observation of contemporary women’s movements in South Asia is their focus on transparency and accountability, principles of governance that have come into these movements in a very strong way. Issues of representation and the ‘legitimate voice’ have created dissonance at times, no doubt, but the emphasis on ‘process’ over result also leads to an ongoing critique of activism that have promising impact on the movements. Melucci has described new social movements as those that give equal weight to the journey as to the destination. Thus, the intense internal conflicts that sometimes arise within the women’s movements of the region, and which are paralleled by similar debates in other parts of the world, could be viewed as positive in that they compel a deeper examination of the processes of each organisation and network. There is also a growing critique of the structure and formation of groups themselves, from the point of view of democratic and representative decision-making, and the coalescence of public commitments and private lives.
A major problem with the women’s movements in the region continues to be the separations that exist within the spectrum of social movements and the difficulty of informing all the different struggles for social justice with a gender perspective. For instance, despite the affirmation that women’s rights are human rights, issues such as abortion, criminalisation of prostitution, victimisation of trafficked women and related issues are not perceived as ‘human rights’ issues by the human rights community in general. Discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS is not perceived as an issue for struggle by people who work against discrimination based on caste, race or language. Creating linkages at the conceptual and practical level between these different spheres of existence and different levels of struggle remains a major challenge for all the social movements of the region.
At the same time, there are many divisions within the women’s movements in the region that are based on differences in the perception and analysis of current issues. The wide range of problems faced by women in conflict situations, for example, has been at the root of many separations in the women’s movements. Other divisive issues have been those related to funding, working at the international level, and prioritising issues linked to globalisation. While in some ways, the class divisions critical to the women’s movements in the early years have been diffused, the new divisions on the basis of age, race, religion, ethnicity, language and sexual orientation create tensions and conflicts that are so rooted in the broader political realities that they cannot simply be addressed at the level of the women’s movement.
Following the various formulations of “violence against women as a development issue” and of “poverty as an abuse of human rights,” it becomes clear that the issue of discrimination against women can no longer be viewed as a separate phenomenon that can be addressed through actions that have an impact only on women. Our understanding of the role and position of women within the family and within the community has extended our understanding of the policy and legal changes that need to be made if women are to be treated as equals. At the same time, the realisation that the subordination of women cannot be legislated away, and that many economic and cultural processes need to change if women are to be treated with dignity and equality, has brought about many changes in project and programme formulation, not only within women’s groups but within other institutions and agencies as well.
However, the trend toward a ‘gender’ analysis that is devoid of the politics of understanding patriarchy and power poses a major obstacle to our ability to create an analytical framework that encompasses the totality of woman, as mother and as citizen. For all South Asian women’s groups committed to bring about a process of social transformation, the creation of a more democratic and plural system of government based on concepts of the inherent dignity, rights and integrity of every person remains a challenge for the future.
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Dahlerup, Drude. “Introduction.” In The New Women’s Movement: Feminism and Political Power in Europe and the USA, Dahlerup, ed. New Delhi: Sage, 1986.
Lateef, Shahida. Muslim Women in India: Political and Private Realities: 1980s - 1980s. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1990.
Melucci, Alberto. “Nomads of the Present.” Interview by Keane and Mier. In Radius. London, 1989.
Menon, Ritu and Kamla Bhasin. Borders and Boundaries. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1988.
Pateman, Carol. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988.
Shaheed, Farida, Zia Asma and Warraich, Sohail. Women in Politics: Participation and Representation in Pakistan. WLUML Special Bulletin: Shirkat Gah for WLUML, 1998.
Stree Shakthi Sanghatan. “We Were Making History: Women in the Telengana Struggle.” In A Space Within the Struggle, Ilina Sen, ed. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
SLWNGOF, NEN and NAWO: Various documents on the Beijing +5 process.
Source: Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) website, <http://www.dawn.org.fj/publications/docs/prstabeysekera2003.doc>
Beyond Good and Evil: Notes on Global Feminist Advocacy1
It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of those good and respected things consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed things—perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps! But who wishes to concern him/her/self with such dangerous “Perhapses”?
Nietzsche, 1885, Beyond Good and Evil
As a global feminist-environmental advocate for the last 15 years, I engaged in lobbying for women’s rights, sus-tainable consumption and production, corporate accountability, Tobin tax2, regulation of toxics, and the abolition of third world debt. The more I tried to be a good UN girl, the more uncomfortable I became with the effects of my engagement, which seemed to perpetuate, rather than challenge, existing power flows. Please read my concerns as a quest to contribute to the development of analysis and strategies that will allow to make sense of how power works, and to engage with global institutions on terms, which enhance the transformative potential of global NGOs.
The issues I want to problematise are perhaps best captured by a comparison of two sets of documents. In 1991, prior to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, women’s organisations gathered in Miami under the auspices of what would later become Women, Environment and Development Organisation and produced the document called Women’s Action Agenda 21. The Miami report outlined a feminist global project to do away with social and gender injustice, dirty production, wasteful consumption and military controls, and proposed a feminist vision for an alternative world order. In the outcome of the subsequent advocacy for the Earth Summit, women were mentioned on almost every page of Agenda 21, the official conference document. The advocates gave visibility to the roles and interests of women, and offered the empowerment and participation of women in sustainable development as the solution to the problems of environment and poverty.
Following the Rio conference, women’s organisations engaged with the Commission on Sustainable Development, Rio +5 and Rio +10 (the Johannesburg Summit). The documents on women and transport, women and energy, women and water, and women and climate change pleaded for the visibility of women’s roles and interests, and again argued for the integration of women in the environmental policy frameworks.3 What we see here is the strategies developed prior to the Rio conference as applied in a different context, and with a different set of techniques for the production of knowledge. First, by the time of Johannesburg summit (2002), the sustainable development discourse has been transformed by marginalising social justice-oriented approaches and accentuating those that resonated with neo-liberal governmentality. This shift was invisible to the NGOs captured in the simulation of the implementation of Agenda 21 (more on simulated politics below).
Second, the new feminist vocabulary, which deployed the concepts of gender, gender equity, equal opportunities and individual empowerment, was stuck in a mutually productive relationship with neo-liberal governmentality. In some of the above mentioned reports, the rights-based arguments for the integration of women were supported with cost-benefit calculations, and demonstrated the efficiencies to be gained by the integration of women. This kind of reporting which makes a business case for gender equity is highly valorised by donors and within the UN networks as the strategy to engage with UN and other international NGOs.
Third, in the time from Rio to Johannesburg the social movement, feminist movement including, have metamorphosed into NGOs, an organisational form which draws on the corporate model. The crucial elements of the NGO organisational structure are the staff, management, and the board. Funding guidelines and UN access rules disciplined social movements to make this transformation. This reorganisation led to delinking the social movement from the grassroots.
Agenda 21, adopted in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 outlined the model and strategies for the implementation of a global social/environmental contract and participatory societies.4 Although the relationships between women and environments have to be carefully thought out, the political project of engendering social contracts makes sense. However, it’s crucial to recognise that the project defined in Agenda 21 has never been implemented. The UN reporting process on Agenda 21, NGO alarming reports on the lack of progress in its implementation constructed Agenda 21 as if only one more push, one more wave of mobilisation, was all that was needed to make it happen.5 They created a presumption of implementation of Agenda 21. From the point of view of the effects of this narrative, NGOs and the UN created a simulation of “progressive” global social and environmental governance. This talk about implementing a project that did not exist has far reaching political consequences as it obscured the operations of a neo-liberal global economy as the war on livelihoods.6
At stake for the critical NGOs is to differentiate and make visible simulations of global liberal peace (conversations on sustainable development, human development, reforms in the Bretton Woods institutions, etc.), and the sites where global governance deploys more direct and crude controls on human bodies (and, differentially, women’s bodies) and nature, such as population and development, trade and investment liberalisation, privatisation, and “anti-terrorism” discourses. My point is that we should be more careful in the engagements with the global policy discourses, which pull us into permanent dialogues, which simulate governance, while leaving the problem of disappearing livelihoods unadressed.
The paradigmatic example of simulation politics is the case of the Human Development Reports (HDRs) or Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), which are just talk, and do not have any institutional effects. The MDGs go back to the indicators for development assistance first announced by EU Development Assistance Committee more than a decade ago. Since then, there was ample time to invest in implementing the only and very minimal gender goal of girls education. It is very informative, that the investment had not been made, while at the same time the discourse on poverty reduction and MDGs have grown exponentially. The NGOs were pulled into taking part in this discourse, and endorsed its effects, that is the replacing of allocation of funds and the implementation of policies for poverty reduction, with a never-ending virtual talk about poverty reduction.
At stake here is how poverty or gender equality issues are studied, organised and packaged for public consumption in a calculative manner that actually enhances bio-political controls. The calculating, categorising, ranking techniques are applied to poverty, gender inequities, investment portfolio comparisons, or Poor and Moody or World Bank rankings of corporations and countries. Gender equality discourse conducted in this manner allows to communicate with the system that the feminist organisation try to change, but at the same time it contributes to reorganise the feminist and women’s organisations as a stakeholder representing women reconstructed into an interest group. Engagements with calculating gender inequality contributed to remove from the agenda the issues of power.
It is not by coincidence that the title of the IMF’s own history project is “Silent Revolution”7. That’s precisely how neoliberalism was introduced, through invisible micro-techniques in the production of knowledge for the governance of markets, states, and societies. The calculative and ranking techniques are at the core of the global neo-liberal bio-politics. The regulatory controls are exercised by way of the internalisation of routines through which human subjects, entrepreneurial cities and client countries permanently adjust themselves to the requirements of making the world, its populations, nature and territories governable in a coherent manner. At stake is the making of flexible, permanently adjustable subjects.
The pursuit of the strategy to speak the language of the system is based on the assumption that it will change global governance from within. The problem is that these strategies subtly change the movement (now identifying themselves as the NGOs). Also, for several reasons, the preoccupation with tools to make women visible and integrate them removed from the discussion a fundamental question: integrate, but into what? Equal opportunities, but in what? The remaking of sustainable development in the neo-liberal frame and neo-liberal affinities of human development were beyond the political imagination of the UN NGOs structured by the terms of participation in the UN. Defending the trees and moving from one crisis to another crisis, we did not see the loss of the forest. The fire-brigade role prompted NGOs to focus on solutions, while the causes and means for their prevention were removed from the discourses of neo-liberal governance.8
To avoid the concentration of examples from the feminist engagement in the Rio process, I now bring up the recent World Information Society Summit. By then, the multi-stakeholder negotiating format was already institutionalised. In the preparation for the Summit, the attempt to mobilise women was successful. The agenda for which women were mobilised was to make visible the gender divide within the global North-South IT divide. This helped the feminist movement achieve several things all at once: (1) integrate women in IT, (2) strengthen the policy discourse promoting the role of IT as the development strategy and the UN’s role in global governance, and (3) strengthened the strategic role of ITs (surveillance, speed-up, and job extinction) in global restructuring by supporting the marginalisation of the debate on the origins, and social, ecological and political costs of the information society.9
The discussion of systemic problems is disruptive, and everybody avoids it for their own reasons. NGOs are trying to be good UN boys and girls, and are caught between two agonising trends: to resist or to conform. When tools or policy frameworks are discussed without interrogating the causes of problems, this allows for smooth maintenance of multi-stakeholder dialogues as a political technology for the permanent integration of critics with powers they oppose, and for systemic reproduction.
The 1995 women’s world conference in Beijing institutionalised gender mainstreaming as the main feminist global project. At the core of gender mainstreaming is the operation of power as visibility. The tools for gender mainstreaming such as the triple gender-roles framework, the Human Development Gender indices, the Gender and Empowerment framework, the Rapid Gender Analysis reveal gender asymmetries with the use of calculative techniques, and customise women for integration in neo-liberal development policies.
Having said this, I also recognise that feminist work carried out within the conditions of possibility, have nevertheless tried to transform the gender mainstreaming projects. The imperative is to make the gender mainstreaming project a subject of self-reflection. This should focus on techniques and effects of gender mainstreaming to avoid normalising and moralising approaches cooptation, selling out), which are not helpful in showing what went wrong and how to shift gears.
My rethinking of the visibility strategy was triggered by the question of why, with several notable exceptions, we never ask: mainstreaming into what, visibility for what? In gender and development theory10 and in the political imaginations of global feminist advocates, the current forms of action on gender exclusions, asymmetries and hierarchies have been essentialised, taken as good and effective in themselves. It follows then that what we do to redress these imbalances is good in itself. This linearity between problems and solutions, and the politics of resistance as strategic reversals require critical interrogation. The visibility of women exposed us to new forms of control and subjection.
Global Advocacy and the Realities at the UN
Majority of NGO workers come to the UN conferences as political tourists, and there is nothing wrong with being one. The problem is that the presence of NGOs creates a simulacrum of participatory democracy. This happens in subtle non-homogenous ways.
In the name of improving the efficacy of engagement and political impact, NGOs are trained to observe UN meetings and to participate in multi-stakeholder dialogues. The trainings construct the current institutional policy format as the norm and adapt NGO bodies to the UN, World Bank or WTO governmentalities. The detailed regulations for the engagement with the UN define how UN authored documents are commented upon, who has voice, whose voices are heard, and when. The NGOs conform to these techniques or play around them. These techniques of managing the interface between sites of global governance and civil society were developed in the World Bank NGO Group (set up by the World Bank in the late 1980s), and in UNCED (Rio, 1992) to contain, “civilise” and adapt to the discontent. They have by now been normalised as the NGOs’ own project.
Of particular concern is the deployment of these techniques in WTO advocacy, as if there were no problematic beginnings and no strategic differences between these institutions. The NGO caucuses are celebrated as our own success story. They are not taken to be the strategic outcome of power relations. It faded away from NGO memory that we did not invent this format of engagement where NGOs are customised as stakeholders representing the interests of different groups. The interests are determined within frameworks that are not up for negotiation. Power operates in agonising ways, giving voice without influence.
The NGO course of action is further structured by the terms of funding and rules for writing project proposals. In this respect, my favourite neo-liberal enemy is the Harvard Logical Framework,11 which provides a template to write project proposals as business plans for NGO actions. In the last years, the demand and competition for funding has increased, and NGOs, the World Bank and the UN organisations compete for funding with each other. This creates a demand for a coherent framework to compare different proposals. The Harvard Logical Framework is restructuring and marketising civil society, and engages NGOs in their own subjection. Last but not least, the NGOs’ investment in training themselves to participate in the UN and self-policing for good UN behaviour assure conformity with the terms of engagement. All these normalising techniques are invisible because the attention is captured by conversations about the noble causes of NGO actions: rights, equity or poverty reduction, which have mobilised and customise NGOs as a fire brigade. Given this role, NGOs operate in a responsive mode and serve a buffer in maintaining the current system of governance. In order to deal with this problem, we need to understand the seductive appeal of phrases such as poverty, gender equity, violence against women, etc. that mobilise NGOs for the neo-liberal project, which actually exacerbates poverty. As I will argue later, poverty or violence against women are discursive frames that capture politically oppositional projects. For instance, the approaches to poverty or violence on women pursued by World Bank, faced with the unequal power relations in setting the agendas and mobilising resources, prevail over the approaches of critical NGOs. Yet NGO mobilisation reinforces the mainstream discourse.
At the UN floor level, the engagement of NGOs boils down to reading the UN documents, and finding spots where paragraphs can be changed—in which parts, for instance, women should be made visible and included. The frameworks of the documents and the strategic approaches they adopt are not for negotiation. This makes it impossible for NGO interventions to have transformative effects on the UN documents. Despite the abundance of good intentions, the mobilisation of political energies serves an entirely different project. Crazy as the idea may sound to people convinced by its political correctness, the integration of women into the WTO regime is the effect of earnest activism to make visible the differential effects of global trade on women. Women’s NGO created a discourse which made visible the role of women of international trade. The WTO took issues on board but on its own terms. An example is the first WTO seminar of gender and trade in 2003, which neatly integrated the language, giving visibility to women within the WTO regime, while the power regime was left intact.
In the same manner, the feminist discourse on violence against women enables the World Bank, for instance, to expand its system of controls to intimate spheres of our life. The argument of ‘private is public’ has backfired on us. The result is the enhancement of the loss of autonomy over one’s own sexuality in the name of protecting it. In my recollection, the first World Bank event on women in post-socialist countries was devoted to domestic violence. The World Bank is thus not a bank that mediates loans on which it earns profits, but a regulator of the bio-politics of everyday life. At the same time, the World Bank manages global money flows on terms of the Coherence Agreement with the IMF and the WTO. The capacity to align controls over bodies with the flow of finance accounts for the World Bank’s tremendous power. All mediating institutions are done away with as the World Bank zooms in on the women’s bodies it seeks to protect. This way, the Bank extracts its legitimacy to manage populations and environments in the so-called developing and transition countries.
The global policy discourse on violence against women assembled around the time of the Beijing conference enhanced bio-political controls over women, and reinforced subordination by fixing women in the role of the victims. At the same time when violence against women became one of the gender and development policy frames,12 the systemic causes of violence and ways to prevent violence were not discussed. Instead, the mainstream debate on violence shifted to morals, which lends itself to moral superiority and moral imperialism. Since each discourse is producing its own object by the flow of discourse and by structuring the flow with techniques to define, categorise and manage the object, the discourse on violence against women contributes to reproduce victimisation, as well as the new and old patriarchal power structures that seek “to protect” women.
It is worth remembering that feminist organisations have done a lot of work on the problems of violence before the global governmental discourse on violence against women came into being. Also, there was more emphasis given to the collective empowerment of women before individual empowerment became the neo-liberal mantra. Collective empowerment is no longer an agenda of the gender and development framework anymore.
NGO Discourses as Messianic Narratives
The problem I want to tackle here is how NGOs presume they are outside of power, and consequently see themselves as those who give immaculate birth to truth. The NGOs construct their political subjectivity on the basis of messianic narratives that represent social movements as the Redeemer coming from below, from the working class, from the grassroots, from the privileged standpoints of the excluded and the oppressed, from the local. This is the privileged subject outside of power. There is a tendency to construct the projects for alternative societies as recovery narratives, e.g., the idealised notion of virgin nature associated with Eden before the fall, which constitutes the backbone of environmental discourse.13 These messianic underpinnings obscure the fact that feminism and ecology as social critiques, as well as social movements, are situated in larger power/resistance landscapes. We did not come to the UN on the wings of storks or in the cabbage leaves. We are products of our societies and cultures, and global discoureses.
The feminist movement has problematised the representations of women and institutions such as marriage, household, local community, state and religion, but has not problematised our political engagement with global institutions in the same manner. We are produced by processes in which we participate. The terms of NGO engagement with the UN, World Bank and WTO structure our fields of action. Our political interventions are subverted at the same time that we oppose or engage in reforming these global institutions.
NGOs operate within certain conditions of possibility, which is why I argue for the situated analysis and the cynical—or kynical—engagement with global institutions. If we don’t question how we are produced, the NGOs will continue to be mobilised for neo-liberal global governance.
Among the key instruments of global governance is the division of the world into North versus South (and previously, into the three worlds). The North (actually North West) are rich and developed, the South (and post-socialist countries) are poor, victims of history and in need of rescue. The governance of environment and women in the subaltern regions is constructed precisely on these metaphors. These governing metaphors of globalisation perpetuate structural inequalities. Some of their origins are with the founding UN Declaration, which took western standards of living (and the American Dream), human rights, and western institutions as the yardsticks of development. The adoption of this framework by the UN facilitated bio-political management of populations and environments, and as Foucault put it, took away the liberties of societies in countries that were gaining independence after colonisation. The same can be said of Eastern Europe after the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall.
The metaphors of North and South as techniques of representing the world are crucial for the formation of the global empire. The amorphous spaces, the unnamed territories, the multitudes are ungovernable. They have to be named, categorised, calculated and problematised—to be ruled.14 Power works by surveilling subjects, by naming, calculations and problematisations. It is at its strongest when it is invisible, or when it manages to make its effects invisible. Such a construction of the South as the victim of history in need of rescue actually obscures the massive transfer of wealth from the South to the North. Since the mid-1980s, the IMF has earned more from the most impoverished region in the world, South Saharan Africa, than it lends to it (Toussaint, 1998:278). According to the World Bank, 95 percent of privatised property in Poland is now owned by foreign investors.
The construction of the North as the source of norms and morals is reinforced in the global NGO and UN dialogues by the absence of North American or European voices talking about their problems. The founding assumption of development and now of neo-liberal economic globalisation—the feasibility of the American Dream to improve everybody’s life—is not challenged. A factor that contributes to this is the division of labour between organisations focused on national and local work, and internationally oriented NGOs, which are the ones we usually meet in global arenas.
American or European NGOs appear in the framework of solidarity as those that articulate the violations of human rights or social and environmental disasters in the South or “transition” countries, and provide funding and frameworks to solve these problems. Critical investigations and personal experiences, however, debunk the myth of the rich North. If we ignore the propaganda, the U.S. is in fact a highly indebted and poor country. Consumer debt exceeds average annual household income. For 75 percent of households, the standards of living have systematically declined since the 1980s. Racism has a strong economic foundation, despite discursive commitments to multiculturalism. Wealth is concentrated, and what appears as affluence is a facade, a simulacrum, of affluence, a copy without the original. In a country such as Netherlands, after a decade of intense production of and adjustment to neo-liberal globalisation, poverty is now up to 19 percent and the crime rates are the highest in Europe. Mobbing15 reached 250,000 cases until the registration stopped when this form of violence at work was legally re-customised as gender, age or ethnic discrimination. And yet, both societies are considered the source of wealth, norms and morals. At the same time, in both countries, the problems created by the adoption of neo-liberal models of governance, shareholder value-driven capitalism, and the neo-liberalisation of social and environmental policy are blamed on the migration of jobs to developing countries (USA) or on the presence of migrants (the Netherlands). The North-versus-South metaphor works to prevent global mobilisations against the effects of global restructuring on livelihoods, which simultaneously take place in the South and in the North.
The construction of the North as rich and the South or transition countries as poor and victim of the North lends itself to the assumption that the South will be rich if it becomes like the North, thereby precluding the discussion of alternatives. This plot obscures global neo-liberal restructuring based on the bind of profits with moral imperialism, and conceals the miseries in the North as well as the role of the states in the neo-liberal restructuring of the subaltern countries. The massive redistribution of property in Poland to foreign investors and local elites, the privatisation of pension systems and re-regulation of the labour market was possible only through the work on/by the Polish government. Similar stories can be told of, for instance, South Africa or India. Pinning all the blame on corruption conveniently distracts attention from the role of governments in the neo-liberal restructuring of these countries. Because the combination of enticements, disciplines and seductions though which neo-liberal elite subjectivities are produced is not interrogated, we are stuck in the agonising combination of celebration and bewilderment when encountering feminist neo-liberals in high-level positions, from the South as well as from the North.
Alternative Voices in Feminist Discourse
In Foucault’s analysis of the 1970s, the politics of resistance are about strategic reversals. Foucault himself was engaged in the movement against the death penalty and for the rights of prisoners. In his view, the pluralisations of access to policy making, such as consultations of the French government on penal policy, provide for strategic reversals from within the authoritarian systems. In his later work on neo-liberalism, Foucault identified how this political project depends on the technologies of agency and empowerment to produce responsible, fit and flexible subjects, to attune bodies to the new (post-Ford) forms of accumulation of capital. The serial customisation of social movements into NGOs, and NGOs into stakeholders, is a part of the production of the neo-liberal project. Given that NGOs are captured inside this project, all kinds of strategies of reversal carry the risk of mobilising political energies for the perpetuation of neo-liberal governance.
Making women visible as action on the exclusion of women generates more sophisticated forms of integration of women into the technocratic patriarchal systems. The discourse on corporate social responsibility shapes political energies by structuring them as a response to itself. The discourse is strengthened even as it precludes the political debate on the causes of exploitation of people and nature, and on alternative economic policies and profit-making strategies. The strategic questions about how value is generated are left out.
Feminism and ecology as social critiques as well as social movements are situated in the larger power/resistance landscapes. One of the problems in getting out of the neo-liberal conundrum is that the resistance forces have a limited understanding of how power operates through discourse at the same time that the systems of governance they oppose are discursively organised. The result is a zone of invisibility of power. Power, which is invisible, cannot be challenged.
In addition, feminism does not have a comprehensive analysis of neoliberalism and globalisation. We have excellent work by economists, cultural studies feminists and political science feminists—but these analyses are fragmented and confined by disciplinary limits. The use of professional jargon opened the space for feminist voices within disciplines, but made feminist communication across these boundaries difficult. The same happened with activism.
In my understanding of the recent history of feminist thought, the analytical framework of the gender-sex system was meant to ‘operationalise’ the understanding of patriarchy, to provide the understanding of power relations through which patriarchy is institutionalised. In practice the concept of patriarchy was abandoned, and gradually, the system framework was transformed into gender mainstreaming, which turned into the technical project for integrating women into the neo-liberal globalisation.16 These transformations entailed the de-politicisation of gender discourse. By now we do not have any feminist integrative or systems approach to making sense of the world. Much work has been devoted to the analysis of gender bias in a variety of contexts, but hardly any feminist analysis of society. We either follow valuable but fragmented narratives (e.g., women and the gendering of the labour markets, or women’s rights) or connect to models created by others: socialist, Keynesian, liberal, neo-liberal global governance. Some are better for women than others, but we peg gender analysis to the models created by others like currencies pegged to the dollar.
Neo-liberal globalisation is being constructed with the technologies of agency and empowerment that integrate subjects into neo-liberalised markets and the state. Women have been integrated unequally. The ongoing social and economic restructuring increased differences among women. The challenge is to develop an analysis, which will make the increased differentiation of women visible, show how women are integrated with the neo-liberal global economy. At the same time it should provide resources to re-draw the feminist resistance subjectivities in a manner that gives justice to differences, acknowledges the local genealogies and situatedness while allowing for a common project.
There are some new things happening, new ways of thinking and being, which I associate with “young feminists.” For instance, at the DAWN Training Institute, I met women activists from all over “the South” who are reframing political problems posed to them in terms of ambivalences, complexities and duplicities. This is an entirely different approach than tracing male bias and the exclusion of women, which yielded a wealth of analysis and mobilised resistance but, accepted by the system in a selective manner, lent itself to new forms of control. The young feminists are not a replacement but a successor generation, which signals a constitution of a “new” feminist subject beyond the gender mainstreaming project. We need to equip these young feminists with self-reflective tools to better prepare for new kinds of entanglements between good and evil.
This is, to some extent, captured by a new computer game called “ Beyond Good & Evil.”17 The action is situated on planet Hillys, where different species—humans, pigs and sharks—live together in peace. The planet is attacked by the forces of DomZ, and its inhabitants are led to believe they are defended by the Alfa Section. As the plot unfolds, the resistance organisation called IRIS discovers that DomZ and Alfa Section are in collusion with each other. The female protagonist, a photographer named Jade, is documenting the complicity of Alfa Section in the destruction of Hillys. She is stylised along the mode of the empowered femininity of Lara Croft. The interesting thing is that she appears not to reproduce the Aryan beauty image.
Jade and pig partner Peyi’j (strategic partnerships are crucial to succeed in the game) are busy documenting the loss of species on Hillys. The visibility techniques in the discourse on the loss of biodiversity actually open up species and genes for bio-prospecting and enhance the operations of genomics at the same time as that dedicated ecologists struggle to calculate biodiversity in order to defend it. In the same manner, the discourse of violence on women enables stronger global bio-political controls over women, and enhances violence against or on women.
The human rights discourses mobilise the longing for security, justice and fairness in the United States. They expand the framework for discussing the civil rights of individual citizens to social, economic, environmental, women’s, reproductive and sexual rights. In Western Europe, the prevailing self-deluding belief is that all human rights are already being implemented. Elsewhere, human rights come with a package of moral and legal imperialism. I wonder if it is possible at all for us to split the package up, keep the good and throw away the bad?.
While human rights are very important as tools, something problematic happened when feminist and other global NGOs accepted human rights as the universal political framework. Human rights were approached in essentialising manner, as good in themselves. As a consequence, important questions have not been asked, for instance: 1) whose rights, and into what? (2) competition for rights, so visible in the recent flawed discourse on the migration of IT jobs to India as the cause of unemployment in the USA. Human rights as the framework for political action show absence or presence of rights. Power relations that are contingent and dynamic are invisible from within the confines of this framework. At the stake to bring the inquiry into power, and the relationship between women’s lives and how societies are organised back on the agenda of feminist movement. Human rights are best left as important tools for action.
The New Scary Thing Without a Name
In feminist and alter-globalist debates, neo-liberalism is analysed and politically addressed as an economic theory and economic programme. Meanwhile, an incremental neo-liberal restructuring, which by now, with its cumulative effects, amounts to a revolution in all kinds of social and personal, economic and political, and local and global affairs have been taking place since the 1970s. Foucault’s governmentality studies are illuminating because they provide a method to the study of how political technologies for the production of fit, flexible, cost-benefit-calculating subjects became essential to the restructuring of the market and the state so that bodies are aligned with new forms of capital accumulation. Many scholars, from Foucault and his work on bio-politics (inclusion of life in the mechanisms and calculations of power, which made human bodies, populations and nature the objects of surveillance and management) to Dean and Rose, Dillon, Cruiskhank, Rankin and Vavrus, made visible for us the constitutive authoritarian components of liberal governance, and how these components were accentuated by the neo-liberal revolution. Hart and Negri capture this combination by naming the new system as empire.
One of the problems with the concept of power as empire is that in the recent debates, it came to be associated with the United States. As a result, the current global political predicament and systemic problems are confused. Quite justifiably, civil society is mobilised as a fire brigade to oppose the military-religious turn in the U.S. government. But the neo-liberal system will carry on, albeit in a more palatable version. I think it is important to understand the relationship between neo-liberalism and what we call religious fundamentalisms, and the enhanced stress on policing and military controls. The global neo-liberal economy operates as war where human bodies and nature are treated as resources for economic growth. The new turn to patriot-type legislation and military control is essential to the sustainability of such an economy, which exacts huge social and environmental costs and does not provide populations with the means to be able to participate in the global market.
An interesting inspiration in a discussion of the contemporary state comes from the Italian political philosopher, Giorgio Agamaben, who investigates the power exercised by the state as combination of sovereignty (power to let live or kill life) with the biopower dedicated to the management of life. Biopower adjusts human subjects to the forms of accumulation of capital. Human subjects, as providers of labor or as consumers whose money are mobilised to purchase products are resources for the generation of profits. Others are redundant human waste. For Agamben, the paradigmatic model of this kind of society is the concentration camp, or the condition of the refugees. While the global governance discourse projects the simulation of law and order, from the perspective, of the refugees, the poor, the jobless global governance is a state of emergency, where law is suspended. The lives and livelihoods of the poor can be taken away with impunity. As the death of Rachel Corrie or the deaths in Gujarat sadly demonstrate, the list of those that can be killed with impunity extends to political and religious discontents. The economy where human bodies human bodies and nature are deployed as resources and waste dumps operates as war on life.
Economic globalisation (accelerated growth in the volume and scale of production and consumption), with its relentless pressure on human bodies and nature, neo-liberal controls and conservative political agendas based on religions and morals operate through a matrix of mutually reinforcing relationships. Feminists who talk about fundamentalisms have been right on the target. The agenda at hand is to deepen this analysis and to problematise the recombinant relationships in the matrix.
This brings me back to the beginning—the Agenda 21 and the Rio treaties, which were negotiated at the same time as the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations, which contributed to the juridical-economic restructuring of the national economies and to the establishment of the WTO in 1994. During the 1989-1992 Rio process, few NGOs made the linkages between the two processes. To put in place neo-liberal global governance required institutionalising the global as the domain of governance. The caring face of Rio (Earth Summit) and Copenhagen (Social Summit) constructed the images of the global in the political imaginary of all TV watchers. The construction of the global as the policy domain and policy object was the precondition of global governance. From the point of view of Rio, Vienna, and Copenhagen, global governance was about global liberal peace. In the political imagination of many NGOs, the framework of global liberal peace competes with neo-liberal social and economic restructuring. The question I pose is whether these are two competing frameworks, or if talk of human development and sustainable development served as a shadow concealing economic globalisation as permanent war to extract capital value (and profits) from bodies as resources. The 1992-1994 Cairo negotiations on population and development facilitated the emergence of the Vatican-led global conservative alliance. In the early 1990s, the new military doctrine of digitally organised network-centric warfare, Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which reconfigured the security thinking in the NATO, countries to deploy electronic forms of warfare and to focus on the new enemy from within, was well under way too. The global UN conferences of the 1990s, the WTO governmental discourses and the RMA are interrelated processes. 9/11 represents a critical threshold of connectivity that clicked in place the project of global legal imperialism, or neo-liberal global governmentality, or whatever name one gives to the scary new thing.
An application of Agamben’s analysis to global bio-economic and bio-political security discourses18 of global governance shows how high-tech financial capitalism operates as war on people and the environment. The system actually generates the demand for new forms of control such as patriot-type legislation to deal with the systemic discontent with social and environmental costs of this kind of society. IT provides tools to enhance these controls in a new and capillary manner, which have never been at the disposal of the sovereign power of the state. That’s why the arguments about another crisis and another cycle of capitalism out of which a new mode of regulation (a new social contract) will emerge do not seem valid.
The system for the multiplication of financial capital tries to secure its own survival by making it difficult to speak truth to power and by “invisibilising” power. In the dialectics of empire, power and resistance depend on each other. As the NGOs’ engagement with the discourses of global governance shows, power holds us close to its centres, tries to close the distance to resistance, and subsumes resistance inside the power flows in order to pre-empt the lines of flight away from dominant bio-politics. At the same time it constantly entices us to speak, giving voice, though on its own terms. This is voice without influence. The inside/outside game depends on the capacities to understand this dynamics.
The challenge for feminism is to produce an analysis that can help us name the enemy (the new scary thing without a name), as well as to provide tools to problematise subjectivities of resistance, and to reflect on the transformations in relationships between I and Thou, and “the matrix”. This is where feminist insights could provide breakthroughs—in charting the course out of the predicament and figuring out different forms of engagement with global institutions. This kind of self-reflective conversations will help develop tools to unravel agonising knots of good and evil, as well as give hope. We need to keep watch at the UN and other intergovernmental organisations, secure the space for strategic interventions, while steering away from the entanglement with neo-liberal controls, to make these controls visible, and to speak truth to power. Speaking truth to power is does not only imply making visible the abuse. It also implies making visible how power is organised. And this has slipped from the agendas of global feminism. Feminism as a social critique and political movement is not about technical gender frameworks, it is about women and society.
On previous attempts to open conversations on global civil governance with feminist and environmental NGOs, I have been dismissed as a troublemaker. I admit I am one. The interface of activism and academia, feminism and ecology, and the multiple places I lived and worked provide for the kind of “disruptive” positioning that helps think out of the box. The notes are supposed to make trouble and to heal.
Ewa Charkiewicz can be reached at <ewa_charkiewicz@ yahoo.com>.
The copyright of this article belongs to the author. This article can be used by non-government organisations or for teaching purposes as long as it is endorsed by the author.
Footnotes
1 The problems I raise in the article are not limited to feminist advocacy, and it might be interesting to have a debate on these issues with a larger group of UN NGOs. Please send comments to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
2 Tobin tax (named after German Nobel prize winner in economics, James Tobin) is a proposal for an incremental tax on international currency transactions. It is promoted in hope that it could generate finance for development.
3 These reports correspond to what was happening in academic and policy research on women and environment. By the mid-1990s, the debates shifted to identifying gender relations in environmental resource management, and investigated them in their local contexts. These important contributions to understand gender relations captured the field as they were not accompanied by the feminist analysis of environmental modernisation (the processes by which environment was “mainstreamed” into state and corporate policy). Also, feminist analysis of the effects of the production and consumption systems on women and livelihoods, and the ways they are materially and discursively organised was hardly given attention in feminist debates. In the last few years, for a number of reasons, feminism has been moving away from the environment, while in social ecology, environmentalists, with a few exceptions, have never acknowledged the importance of power and gender analysis. Regrettably, social ecofeminism, despite, or precisely because of its transformative potential, has lost voice as neo-liberal globalisation intensified.
4 It is worth keeping in mind that while Agenda 21 was negotiated as an articulation of global liberal peace, the Uruguay Round was at the same time steering governments to the project of neo-liberal globalisation. I return to this problem in the section on the scary new thing without a name.
5 The self-celebrating country reports of progress in the implementation of Agenda 21 produced by governments contributed to the construction of implementation discourse.
6 For a feminist-environmental analysis of the accumulation of capital as war on people and environment, see Theresa Brennan’s Exhausting Modernity, Ground for a New Economy, The Terrors of Globalization: Every Day Life in the West, 2003, both books published by Routledge.
7 James M. Boughton, Silent Revolution. The International Monetary Fund 1979-1989, IMF, 2001, <http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/history/2001/index.htm>
8 An example is the discourse on Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which further shifted the debate away from causes and locked the agenda on solutions, and engaged NGOs in permanent dialoguing on poverty.
9 It is not by chance that IT companies, including Microsoft, are big donors to the conservative presidential campaign. Patriot-type legislations boost the demand for hardware and software. Not by coincidence, the attempts by several critical think-tanks to find funding for reports on the ecological and social costs of the IT society did not meet any response from donors. Also, my attempts to put the social, ecological and political costs of information society on the agenda of a feminist IT listserve were ignored and rejected. The showcasing of successful examples of the empowerment and rescue of rural women from poverty by training them to use computers did not entail any discussion on the costs and feasibility of mainstreaming such a project. The local examples were used to simulate the existence of a general reality where rural women engaged with computers to generate income. In a similar manner MDGs (formerly known as OECD DAC development indicators) have been discussed since the early 1990s, although no progress has been made even in such basic and non-controversial issues as girls’ access to education. We need to talk about poverty or rural women’s access to the IT, not to solve these problems. Such talk substitutes for policy commitment.
10 Gender and development studies are focused on developing and teaching frameworks such as the triple gender roles framework by Caroline Moser, which attempts to integrate gender with human development, or the Harvard Gender Logical Framework, used to identify the roles, asymmetries, exclusions and assets to integrate women with policies and projects. The focus on technical frameworks removes from teaching, research and policy agendas the need for inquiry into, and action on, the causes of subordination of women, and any kind of system analysis of women and society. At their core is the notion of giving visibility to women. Given that bio-power operates through visibility, categorisations and calculations, the framework approach opens women up to more insidious controls, and integrates women into the global economy on neo-liberal terms. It contributes to the “McDonaldization” of teaching (one prefabricated format for all). The result of the encounter between women and institutions is that gender analysis, which was conceived as the analysis of power relations, became a technical substitute for analysing power relations. The feminist critiques of calculative projects spoke in a weak voice at the same time that gender frameworks were in demand. Because they resonated with techniques of neo-liberal governmentality, this became the language of our conversations with the system, which eventually structured and customised global feminist advocacy in specific ways that fit with neo-liberal governmentality.
11 The Harvard Logical Framework and the Harvard Gender Log Frame are the tools for writing project proposals and other NGO documents that:
(1) deploy the cost-benefit framework and linear analysis developed in business to civil society,
(2) structure the course of action by NGOs in specific ways by promoting certain approaches and excluding others,
(3) provide one format for coherent donor-NGO interaction across work domains and countries,
(4) operate as a form of power-knowledge totalising and individualising at the same time, and
(5) ensure the alignment of resistance with technocratic rationality.
Both are taught at trainings and at academic courses as a tool for NGO management and gender mainstreaming, and some smart NGOs have learned to cheat the system, but it is impossible to escape their effects entirely.
12 In recent years, the participation of women in politics, women and micro-credit, violence against women (particularly rape and trafficking, two themes crucial to patriarchal controls), and the role of women in post-conflict reconstruction became the leading frames of the global policy discourse on women, gender and development. They have also restructured women’s NGOs via funding policies.
13 For an excellent explanation, see Carolyn Merchant, “Reinventing Eden: Western Culture as Recovery Narrative,” in William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking Human Place in Nature, W.W. Norton, 1996.
14 In one of his interviews, Foucault said socialism failed because it did not develop alternative bio-politics.
15 Mobbing is a form of psychological violence at work when people behave in a very aggressive manner towards one person at work who differs in one way or another from his or her co-workers. See at http://www.mobbing-usa.com/
16 Not to rely on my experience with the World Bank only, while writing this paper, I visited several Websites (UK, Australia,. Finland) which provide tools for gender mainstreaming. None of them asks for causes of gender inequalities. Instead they seek to give women visibility and a calculative form.
17 See www.beyondgoodandevil.com, and a review article at <http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=15640>.
18 The policy discourses on trade liberalisation and privatisation are bio-economic discourses (managing the relationships between people and resources through the focus on market governance), while sustainable development, human development, gender and development, etc. are bio-political discourses that manage the economy by focusing on populations and environment.
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