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Democracy's Hero: Djingarey Maiga
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SOURCE: The International Republican Institute (IRI): Advancing Democracy Worldwide
In the community of Kati, Mali, Djingarey Maiga dedicates herself to increasing women's participation and visibility in local politics and advancing human rights. For years, Djingarey watched as women in Kati were placed low on candidate lists by political parties and pitted against each other within the party structure. It was in 2009 communal elections that Djingarey saw an opportunity to change the political landscape by creating a network of women from all political parties and electing a woman for the first time to the mayor's council. With this mission, Djingarey and her organization Femmes et Droit Humaines (F&DH), set out to make history.
Founded in 2000, F&DH promotes the socioeconomic, civil and political rights of women; and under Djingarey’s guidance, it committed to supporting female candidates in the 2009 communal elections and increasing the number of women in elected office. Working with the Women’s Democracy Network, Djingarey and F&DH focused on building the capacity of women to effectively campaign for office, equipping women with skills need to govern and promoting gender equality in politics and through legislation. F&DH also conducted a series of radio panels in which participants spoke about their experiences throughout Kati, the broadcasts reached more than 40,000 people.
As elections drew close, the newly formed network of women from all eight of Kati’s active political parties supported each other as fellow candidates. This network established a new context in which women candidates communicated and campaigned in an open forum, succeeding in muting political party pressure to work against one another.
“The success of the program can be seen through the women’s confidence as candidates who came together to seek communal advancement and help one another press forward in politics,” said Djingarey.
Political parties took notice of F&DH’s programming and responded by placing the trained participants as high as second on candidate lists. On Election Day, a record of more than 100 women stood as candidates and for the first time in the commune’s history, a woman was elected to a position on the mayor’s council.
Djingarey viewed this success as a turning point for women as leaders in Kati, “This program brought about an invaluable change in election trends in favor of women in our commune. A change that is not easy for words to express or for a report to detail, as it deals with changes in human perception and change of paradigm of the foundation of democracy here.”
In 2010, Djingarey launched an initiative to take F&DH’s successes to a regional level by building a West African network to promote regular, transparent, free and fair elections and the effective participation of women in democratic development. Djingarey has connected with leaders and women parliamentarians from Mali, Burkina, Niger, Senegal, Conakry Guinea, Nigeria and Gambia and is overseeing this nascent organization as it seeks to bring women’s empowerment to all the women of Africa.
*Djingarey is an alum of the 2005 DAWN Training Institute held in Montevideo, Uruguay
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Reflections About Feminist Activist Strategy in a Fierce New World: Are We Playing Their Game? by Nicole Bidegain (DTI 2007 Alumna)
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Women, Water and Climate Change in the Andean Countries by Carmen Capriles (DTI 2007 Alumna)
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Article available at DAWN Informs June 2010 issue
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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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