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How do we frame our work? What counts as movement-building? What does all of our experience, mobilizing, and political education mean for achieving the ultimate goal of women’s rights and social justice?
The 22 women in attendance at JASS’ Southern African Thinkshop on Women's Movement Building brought their whole selves to the discussion: minds, hearts, bodies, desires, politics, rage and love---ready to stir up the best kind of trouble.
The full report is available here. For a brief taste … |
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Our Region Today |
“Much of the new ‘colonization’ of the region is by South African white capital. Would it make a difference if it was black capital? White Boer man vs. a Zulu man with a big car: both are patriarchy, but in different forms. … White capital reinforcing our history of colonization is particularly painful.”
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 Our analysis went deep and wide, as we mapped the context for women’s rights in Southern Africa. Beginning at the level of governments, we examined the limitations of existing constitutional and legal frameworks, as well as the challenges for women’s organizing in situations of political crisis and increasing militarization. Invoking a particular form of nationalism, governments are redefining who counts as a citizen in many of our countries. Similarly, alliances with religious and traditional fundamentalisms spell trouble for women’s hard-won freedoms.
Is our continent undergoing de facto re-colonization as South African and international capital sweeps in – especially from China and other Asian countries – to buy up access to Southern African resources? Land, it seems, is the new oil. As globalization reconfigures economies and gender relations to work, we need to deepen our understanding of the market and look beyond trade-union orthodoxies for effective strategies. Currently, women workers are not adequately represented and organized by either unions or women’s movements.
Turning to civil society, we need to set our own terms rather than fighting reactive rear-guard actions. Women’s rights and equality have been diluted and co-opted by “gender mainstreaming”, while safe spaces and opportunities for women continue to shrink. For too long donor approaches have constrained our work within a project mode. We need to shift back into movement mode, rather than containing our work withing "sector silos" (such as HIV, gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive rights). Yet, as we organize to build the power of numbers, we need at the same time to weigh the costs of unity. Let’s choose our bedfellows wisely!
Read more … |
Building Movements |
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“We used to have a movement but we ended up being a brand on caps and T shirts instead. Have we doomed our political passion, smothered it with per diems?”
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Reviewing movements we know, women asked: What makes them work? How do they organize? What sustains them? After JASS shared some provocative thoughts about movement-building, women discussed the distinctions between movements and NGOs.
Would we want our own movements to have the power of religious movements or of political parties such as Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe? How can we learn from other models but still embody the transformative principles that some of us describe as feminism? Women drew on experiences in challenging times, in grassroots economic empowerment, in organizing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in hostile environments. These helped us to frame what we desire and avoid as movement-building strategies. |
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“It’s interesting that we did a lot of theoretical work during the day, and then in the evening we talked about ourselves – sex, identities, burn out, passion. We need more of those conversations, because we are what make up a movement.”
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Going Where the Women Are |
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To organize in rural or “poor” settings raises questions of difference and of solidarity, about facing up to power and privilege. From questions of respect and reciprocity to unpacking coverall terms such as “the women” and “the community”, we delved into the whys and hows of working amongst “marginalized” women. Economic empowerment may not, per se, equal liberation, we agreed. We can’t expect income-generating activities to automatically produce political transformation. On the other hand, even money for bus fare gives a woman more options and more power than a woman without. Let’s avoid the either/or.
A great deal of strategy has been about fixing and responding. While women’s practical needs remain critical to feminist action, our strategies must also shift mindsets and challenge structures. Like so much of our work, this requires a balancing act. |
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“More women are dying in childbirth now than in previous decades. But if our intervention only serves one individual, and then another, we are not generating structural change.”
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Intergenerational Organizing |
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“HIV infection has increased because young women are not involved in setting the agenda. Young women experience violence too in a different way.”
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Age, ageism and generational divides inevitably – and usefully – open the discussion to other elements of one’s position: race, class, sexuality, location, and so on. Who has access to resources and decision-making? How can we best name and navigate difference and privilege?
Beyond inclusivity, mentorship, space and power, the discussion veered into new territory: “Most young women contract HIV through intergenerational sex,” we learned. “Older and younger women are having sex with, literally, the same men.”
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“At some point, younger feminists are going to be older feminists themselves, so how will they cross that wall, if we build it?”
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A JASS Band? |
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An organization that sounds like a kind of music invites puns like these. How might JASS (jazz) harmonize the dynamic movement-building efforts of the women gathered at the Thinkshop? The first notes were struck, introducing possible new collaborations that promise to synchronize our individual and organizational passions.
Coming soon:
- Thinkshop deliberations on movement-building and strategies.
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