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RTIs at the 2009 AP-NGO Forum on Beijing+15
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Agenda of the Young Feminist: Rediscover, Redefine and Reclaim Feminism
(Presented at the AP-NGO Forum on Beijing+15, Feminisms through Generations Part II, 22 October 2009 by Shuchi Karim)
 Let me start with a declaration: I AM A FEMINIST. Unlike many women, successful and well-intentioned, who, not only shy away from the label, but also would probably not even touch it with a bargepole- I, happily and proudly embrace it. I am, what I term as an 'openly, outed feminist'. And trust me, it is perhaps, much more difficult an identity to live with than ever before!
Feminist in a new era: Like DAWN says, there must be a need for alternative version of feminism, for women of this new era! Though one must contest the phrasing of “young women” or “next generation women!” “Who is young?” “Younger than who?” (Feminists from 60s and 70s?); or even better, within the brand of “new generation” there are multi-layers of mini generations and each one is as different from each other as chalk and cheese. Even within the all-encompassing new generation feminist brand, are we all that different from the “older generation?” Are my feminist issues in 2009 very different from yours? Or am I just the old feminist essence packed in a shiny, glamorized, globalised wrapper?
But first, let us try to define who is a feminist in today's world. Isn’t the aspiration of a feminist at any given era to strive for empowerment – to be able to live up to my own full potential? To have the ability to live an independent life that is respectfully accepted by others?
Let me give an example of what 'empowerment' means to 'much' younger women of today. Based on our recent interaction with some young university women leaders, the answers were highly educated, professional, rich, family-oriented, God-fearing, someone who can balance between home and work, good communicator (but who does not speak much), who makes careful decisions, good-looking and well-dressed, multilingual (in some cases), etc.
Who is this woman? Who is she? Where does she live? She appeared to be this mega-successful, modern, urban woman, who is palatable to everyone, pleasing all gender norms but in a more glossy-glamorized way – obviously a product of media invention, an image that most young women strive to become, and find disappointment in executing it to the tee.
As much as we were disappointed with the answers, we could not but acknowledge that the next generation woman is, after all, a consumerist, media-obsessed, urban-cosmopolitan-self, for whom the world of poverty, global politics, rural realities, struggle of mainstream/ordinary everyday women from any other socio-economic class does not exist (beyond the newspaper or TV reports).
We have created our own marginalized groups, people who must live on the periphery of this epicenter of comfort and privileges. We are more racist than ever before, more hetero-normative than our predecessor and more fundamentalist than we appear to be. We tend to mainstream everything, with a vengeance.
Today’s Feminism and aspiring feminists are elitists. The whole question of class, race and sexuality still remains relevant but a struggle to feature in urban feminism.
Mainstream feminism is still educated, urban, elite, rich, beautiful, intellectual and straight – and most of us still look for fulfillment in marriage and children, in social acceptability.
-We don’t have alternatives, because we don’t look for it, because it is too risky, more than ever before;
-We don’t have a BIG Broader common battle/cause/challenge to fight or face.
-We don’t have the edge, because we have our carefully crafted comfort zones, resulted from previous generations’ struggles and fights.
But is it a BAD thing then that we look aimless-shameless in our individualism, our personal struggles taking priority over the common one? Are we failing to see the bigger picture, as such?
The answer lies in a bitter-sweet, often contradictory introspection of ourselves. The truth lies in the fact that we are situated and positioned in a highly competitive, consumerist social structure, and we are kind of born with obsession/self-possessiveness and individualistic focus of life.
Our generations change in every 5 years, with each having its own value systems and norms –creating gaps between the intra-generations that are difficult to bridge.
We do not endorse 'sisterhood' as such, it sounds so yesterday to many, rather, we bond as 'peers/friends', different from each other, in a transnational reality of life- feminism that is based on friendship with a common thread of understanding and acceptance.
There are very few feminists, and even fewer in the making.
None of us, for that matter became feminists because we witnessed great movements or causes, or even waves—we have evolved as feminist.
We have evolved as feminists because of our small, everyday struggles against certain norms and barriers  (both old and new) that threatened to curb our growth and individual aspirations. Many of us became aware of the surroundings, or of the bigger picture, because we happened to meet great feminist mentors, and worked in places that opened the world as well as our own backyard to us—our feminist identities are rediscovered by us; we chanced upon this 'ism'; we learned to redefine feminism as we progressed in life; and finally, we have come to 'reclaim' an identity, an ideology called feminism that often gets a bad name.
Being a feminist is a lonely journey, a tough one- personally and socially. It makes you look odd in our own surrounding, you are often the target of joke and sarcastic humiliation, an intimidating personality who relentlessly says things that are right, whether someone listens to her or not!
But what is the pull of feminism after all? Unlike other identities or isms, a feminist remains a feminist all her life, with a great attitude and a changed vision- elements that are central to empowerment.
So, today's feminist agenda, for me, is to help younger women rediscover, redefine and reclaim herself, through the feminist framework.
As the popular ad goes, 'try feminism, because you are worth it!'
*In the Photos: Shuchi Karim-plenary speaker (top) Anupama Sekhar-plenary moderator (bottom)
*Both Shuchi Karim and Anupama Sekhar are graduates of the DAWN Regional Training Institute (RTI) for South and Southeast Asian in 2007. Anu is a Project Executive at the Asia-Europe Foundation and Shuchi a full-time PhD student at the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands. Other speakers included Emee Lei Albano (UN Population Fund - Philippines), Satsuki Murase (University of Sacred Heart Japan) and Eriko Tanno (Japan Women's Watch).
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RTI Alumnae Invited as Facilitators at the Young Asian Women's Leadership Forum
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Our Voices, Our Aspirations: Creating our Future - Who is an Empowered Woman in an Uncertain World?
By Shuchi Karim (RTI '07 Alumna)
This was the last session on the first day (Oct. 19, 2009) of Young Asian Women’s Leadership Forum. We had around 18 young women from a range of Asian universities and as the day went by, it was clear that these young minds were getting to know gender and its related concepts (may be) for the first time. So, like anything new, we observed the excited, enthusiastic and often bewildered faces trying to make sense of everything that they were hearing and seeing! When it came to the last session of the day, they were a little tired, ready to wrap the day and rest for a while. But NO! We had other plans for these young minds, as we prepared to challenge their perception of world, masculinity, femininity and the very notion of empowerment!
We started off the hour long session by introducing ourselves, i.e. the RTI Facilitators (Shuchi Karim- RTI 2007, Anupama Sekhar- RTI 2007, and Nilushah Hemasiri- RTI 2009). The idea was to familiarise them with the diversity of our backgrounds- both cultural and professional, yet the commonalities that we share in terms of feminist positions, our assertion of our self-recognized independent-empowered selves. Then we divided the participants into 6 small groups (3 members in each group comprising of at least 2 different nationalities/cultures). We posed two questions for group discussion:
1. Who is an EMPOWERED WOMAN?
The answer was to be found in a cross cultural discussion within the group: how did each culture view an empowered woman? Who were the role models? What were the commonalities between the different cultures in determining the characteristics of an empowered woman? What were the differences, if any, at all?
The groups were asked to make a check list of 5 common characteristics and 5 differences to be found across culture (within the group).
2. Who is an EMPOWERED MAN?
Like the first question, here students were to find common characteristics of an empowered man.
The groups were given 30 minutes for discussion and coming up with the check-list. As we walked around observing and listening to the discussions, we realised that the girls were finding it rather challenging to pin-point what makes an empowered woman. They thought hard, discussed even harder and some even consulted the images of role models that they brought with them.
After 30 minutes, we came back to the large group format- sharing group findings and hopefully generating some debates and/or discussion. We decided to write down all the common characteristics of the empowered woman on a large flip chart as well. After we listened to all the groups, and enlisted the requirements of being an empowered woman: we realized that it is rather a tall order to be empowered in today’s modern world.
For example, the list included:
High level of education, Multi lingual, Rich (doesn’t matter of she is rich through marriage), Professional , Humble/modest, Tolerant, God fearing/religious, Good communication skill but does not talk too much, Good balance between home and work, Family minded-oriented (within the marriage institution), Multi-skilled (meaning, can do everything), Well dressed/good looking/presentable, Make careful decisions, Respectable, Socially responsible (and many more)
They brought examples of women who were Prime Ministers/Ministers, models and news casters etc. What
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Nilushah, Anupama and Shuchi
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was obvious from their list was that their perception of an empowered woman was an urban, cosmopolitan, educated woman who was successful both in office and home; who looked good and played all the parts of the popular image of a ‘successful woman’ as viewed in television or media in general. When asked if they interchanged the word ‘empowered’ with ‘socially accepted-popular and successful woman’- they admitted to be doing so. Clearly, then, these young women did not understand the concept of ‘empowerment’, and for them it is the ‘power’ part of the word that made more sense. When asked if they could think of any rural woman who is poor, and not so educated- yet empowered- there was surprisingly a dead silence in the room! It was apparent that our participants had a strictly urban-elite perception of their world. Even more surprising was that they could not even think of any aunt, grandmother or relatives and/or neighbours who they could perceive as ‘empowered’! only exception was an example of Pakistan (Mukhtar mai, a gang-raped woman who fought for justice despite having no socio-economic status , no education to back her up).
We tried to explain what ‘empowerment’ really meant for everyone, especially for a woman, and giving our own examples, and women that we know and have met at different points in life, from diverse backgrounds. We asked the participants to raise hands if they considered themselves to be empowered, only two hands were raised and the rest kept quite.
The second question regarding ‘who is an empowered man?’- had a rather short list, and it was almost common across cultures:
Strong, Good job, Earning power, Good looking, Responsible, Authority, In control, Decision maker
(And yes, the world has not changed since the ape-age! Women seem to understand masculinity through the Alpha-male image).
 For men, high level of education was not a ‘must-have’, but his position and authority to make decisions and control was of supreme importance. We asked what about men who want to be poets or artists (like painters), a firm answer came, ‘but that is irresponsible’! but women agreed that in most of our cultures, it is a tough job to be a man too, as expectations are high and often male-responsibilities are non-negotiable, whereas a woman can stay at home, not earn and still live off a man (which will not be considered a bad thing). Our discussion ended with encouragement from our side for the young women to think about gender, roles and aspirations more critically and to train their minds to perceive the world in a more challenging way. It is understood that the participants are very young, and often naive about the nature of the gendered world, and there is a risk of falling into the traps of aspiring to be this impossible ‘new woman’ that the media sells every day. We hope that these young minds get more exposure to much more challenging sessions and trainings in feminist ideas, and grow up to be strong, independent empowered women.
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DAWN Training Institute Alumna at the Berlin Forum on ICPD+15
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Some Thoughts on the Global NGO Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Development
By Maria Melinda "Malyn" Ando
I was not yet part of the women’s movement when the landmark International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action (ICPD PoA) was signed by 179 governments in 1994 in Cairo. Yet, I am very much part of its legacy. In the NGOs that I have worked with and at the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW) where I am now, we have used the ICPD PoA as the key document in pushing governments to respect, protect and uphold women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). This is, of course, in recognition that even as the ICPD PoA signalled a very critical shift in thinking from demographic goals to rights-based approaches, it is a compromise document, the best possible set of agreements to be had given the global context at that time. We know that there are gaps in the ICPD PoA, including the framing of safe and legal abortion as a public health issue rather than as a human right, the very limited definition of sexual rights, the approval of privatisation of healthcare, and the lack of challenge to neo-liberalisation as a mode of development. But it is the best document that we have.
Fifteen years later, as I flew to Berlin in September to attend the Global Partners in Action: NGO Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Development, I fervently hoped that despite these uncertain times, the world has progressed far enough in its thinking that 400 NGO representatives from 130 countries around the globe would agree to address the above gaps and not just affirm ICPD POA in toto. This was certainly not a done deal—the participants were a varied group of feminists, women’s rights groups, human rights activists, public health practitioners, reproductive health advocates, youth rights advocates, population and family planning groups and sexual rights activists, coming from a variety of regional and national contexts, agendas and perspectives.
I am happy to say that in the end, the Berlin Call to Action (BCtA)—the outcome document of the forum—did  deliver. While still a consensus document, the BCtA is a forward-looking one, going beyond the ICPD POA and setting new goal posts for donors and governments on what must be achieved by 2015. In a world dominated by the simplistic Millennium Development Goals, the document’s main focus was on recognising and fulfilling reproductive and sexual rights as human rights. The latter, particularly, was a triumph, as the right to free and informed decisions over sexuality, the right to sexual orientation, the right to (sexual) pleasure, and the right to livelihood (pushed by a very passionate representative of a network of sex workers) all managed to come into the final document without anyone raising a qualm against these provisions (although some surely must have squirmed in their seats!). The BCtA clearly called on the repeal of punitive and restrictive laws and policies which deny access to information and services for SRHR, as well as those which criminalise abortion and the transmission of HIV. It also demanded for safe and legal abortion as a public health and human rights issue, and that this—together with contraception, skilled maternity and newborn care and other sexual and reproductive health services—should be made available and fully funded at all levels of the health system, including in humanitarian crises.
It also illustrated the meeting’s commitment to young people that one of the five calls to action was focussed on ensuring the sexual and reproductive rights of adolescents and young people (youth under age 30 comprised 25% of the participants and were an integral part of the Steering Group and of each plenary and workshop session). The BCtA specifically asked for guaranteeing confidentiality and removal of parental and spousal consent and age restrictions to SRH services. In calling for full and meaningful partnerships between NGOs, governments and donors, the document also demanded autonomy for NGOs and the repeal of repressive laws and policies regulating them. It called on national governments and donors to allocate sufficient resources and budgets that meet all people’s SRHR, especially in these times of economic crisis and under the new aid architecture. Mindful of its audience of donors and governments, the document did not demand outright for eliminating of the neo-liberal frame of development. However, it did appeal for strengthening and harmonising people-centred, economically and environmentally sustainable policies.
But even as we celebrate the above, we from the feminist and women’s rights movements know that our work is far from done. Many of the tensions that existed in 1994 still exist today. Abortion remains a touchy issue. An article in one of the German newspapers announced that the conference was all about abortion, making the German government very nervous since they co-funded the conference with UNFPA and they were going into elections in the following few weeks. A couple of right-wingers managed to sneak into the conference and turned the workshop on abortion into a tension-filled event. Initially, there was a point of contention on whether to footnote provision of safe and legal abortion with “in accordance with international agreements.” This qualifier was thankfully deleted, as current international standards do not yet match what women need and want.
Meanwhile, the very tired debate of having fewer children as an antidote to poverty, climate change and all other social ills, seems to be experiencing a resurgence and was circulating in the forum. In a satellite session co-hosted by ARROW and the Asia Pacific Alliance (APA), a speaker from a women’s rights NGO revealed that post-ICPD, coercive population control policies are still very much in effect in Indonesia. At the closing ceremony, one of the keynote speakers from a private foundation asked where the “P” in ICPD was in the BCtA, giving the example of Kenya as a country which has faltered with its provision of family planning since Cairo and now has a ballooning population, and stressed the importance of revitalising and repositioning voluntary family planning at the centre of the agenda. This was echoed in a lobby on the floor from another donor to replace provision of contraceptive services in the Call to Action with family planning, failing to consider that family planning often enshrines hetero-patriarchal norms and marginalises those who do need contraception but are not doing it in the context of a family, such as young people. While the Berlin Call to Action remained firmly rights-based, we must be aware of these trends amongst private donors, and the faultlines these will cause as many will eventually follow where the money is.
We must do all we can to utilise the Berlin Call to Action as an advocacy tool among donors and governments, and try to capture their imagination and that of the public with the ideals and principles behind the document. Finally, we must also make certain that our advocacy and activism are not solely focussed outward—we have a lot of convincing to do with those from various fields of health and development. It has been said before that our strongest chance is through building inter-movement partnerships. Perhaps through these we can ensure that the comprehensive and rights-based vision of ICPD and beyond is fulfilled.
Malyn is a graduate of the DAWN Training Institute in Montevideo, Uruguay, and is currently the Programme Officer of the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW). ARROW is a regional women’s based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia that is committed to promoting and protecting women's health needs and rights, particularly in the area of women's sexuality and reproductive health. ARROW, through its Programme Manager Siva Thanenthiran, served as the co-chair of the Forum Steering Group and the co-facilitator of the Call to Action Drafting Committee.
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DTI Panel at the 2008 AWID Forum
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Do We Really Have a 'Feminist' Family? - Plural Notions of Family and Marriage
Panel organized by Representatives[1] of the DAWN Training Institute at the 11th AWID International Forum on the Power of Movements, 14 November 2008, Cape Town, South Africa
Our dear feminist sisters Asha George and Anasuya Sengupta (India) of DAWN Training Institute (DTI) arrived at the question as to whether or not we really have a “feminist family”. Pulling the interest of Michelle Reddy (Fiji), Claire Luczon (Philippines), Kemone Brown (Jamaica), Joana Chagas (India), Indhu Subramaniam (India) and Sanjukta Chaudhuri (India) among other DTIs, the group decided to take our topic to the AWID forum. With our mixed ‘masala’, we were ready to begin the work. Due to our various locations, we were unable to have a physical meeting, so the group utilized electronic communication, which included constant emailing and chats. Each of us was responsible for analyzing the question individually, writing our own understandings of the topic, doing independent research, gathering what theorists such as Carole Pateman had to say, and creating our own perspectives. Even after a few hiccups, we were finally able to have a group of DTI representatives carry on the session at the AWID forum, consisting of Michelle Reddy, Claire Luczon, Indhu Subramaniam, Angela Collet (Brazil), Kemone Brown and Nicole Bidegain (Nicaragua).
Though it was difficult to decide on the format our panel would take, we all came to the decision that we needed to co-ordinate a very interactive session, where as many views as possible may come about on the topic, thus opening a dialogue on the feminist perspective of the family. We refused to give prescriptions or exercise plain theorizing. Rather, we focused on examining whether or not what we have gathered in our research complemented our actual experiences. We started the forum by asking the participants what comes to their mind when they hear of the word “family”. As expected, varied responses have been elicited and some have identified “family” as pertaining or related to polygamy, social institution, parent and children, economy, religion and so on. We progressed with dividing the participants into five groups, where each was asked to reflect on a given scenario based on real situations of women in different contexts.
Do we really have a feminist family? During our preparation, we had an interesting discussion on how we, as feminists, have created our own notions of the family in terms of the issues within (power, resources, gender etc.) and the visions for the “feminist family” (equality etc.). We looked at how these notions have built or broken down the values, norms, and ideas of the societal (conventional, hetero-normal) family. We were then able to deconstruct the ideas of marriage, polygamy, singlehood, love and other forms of relationship that constitute in one way or another the family. Guided by our individual experiences, we reflected on how these concepts have been viewed by fundamentalists and what we, as feminists, have done in challenging and changing these views by communicating our ideas to others beginning with our own families.
From our unique circumstances, we were able to pull together the similarities and differences in the notions of the family. Our research showed that both Fiji and Jamaica have been viewed as matriarchal societies because of the thought that women are the head of the households. However, in both contexts, this was not the reality. We have realised that in Fiji, women have no say in land inheritance, nor are they able to make major decisions. The Jamaican society, on the other hand, is viewed matriarchal only because many of its households consist mainly of single mothers. It was therefore concluded that because in both situations, men still make the final decisions, both countries are indeed patriarchal societies. In the case of India, Brazil, and Jamaica, we have seen the presence of homosexual families. Although in Brazil, the act of homosexuality is not criminalized, as in Jamaica and India, homosexual families in all three countries still suffer from discrimination. Through these comparisons, we began contemplating whether or not our efforts to communicate as feminists have been inadequate (unintentionally). Has feminism transformed the notion of the family in inclusive feminist ways?
At the forum, the group leaders shared how their members viewed given scenarios based on their actual experiences. While all the participants condemned laws prohibiting a woman to divorce her husband unless she can prove that he is psychologically incapacitated and that such incapacity has existed prior to marriage, everyone shared similar views on lesbian unions and parenting, which have been said to be affected by issues of legality, prejudice and discrimination. In some contexts, on the other hand, the idea of a woman and a man having a family but not living together physically was seen as negative if the woman is incapable of deciding whether she wants this or not. The same view was expressed in circumstances where heading the household was forced upon women. In contrast, however, while many contested the ability of and practice by man to marry or have sexual relations with his wife’s sister, this was said to remain as the norm in some societies.
At the core of communication is the understanding of why and how fear and resentment begin. The forum has shed light on the need to sensitively yet powerfully resolve and overcome these fears and resentments expressed by our own feminist sisters who might believe that that the feminist notion of the family is exclusive. We understand that in order to transform the family in inclusive feminist ways, we must continue the debate. Most voices are left unheard, and ideals and ideologies have yet to be deconstructed. We wish to continue the discussion as we have realized, which has been ‘cemented’ at the AWID forum. From our interaction with the participants, we have learned that the ideals, issues, norms and notions of the family need to be taken up in a joint effort and guided by our own unique actual experiences. We, therefore, as a group, have taken the decision to continue our discussions around the topic of the ‘feminist family’. ***
[1] DTI Representatives to the AWID Forum: Nicole Bidegain (Nicaragua), Kemone Brown, author of the above article (Jamaica), Angela Collet (Brazil), Claire Luczon (Philippines), Michelle Reddy (Fiji), Indhu Subramaniam (India).
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15-Aug-2009, Elmer Valdez
ADB-PSI, Philippines
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