Global Feminism, Plural Leadership
http://alainet.org/publica/femlead/en/
Global Leadership Strategies for WCAR and Follow-Up
Introduction
The presentations and comments submitted in the framework of this exchange are directly related to the various stages of follow-up: they refer to the World Conference and the NGO Forum as well as to the development of future strategies. The ideas expressed will influence feminist proposals presented in these events, the outcomes of the World Conference itself and the future implementation of this and other international instruments.
Some of the strategic elements mentioned are: lobbying mechanisms designed to motivate or strengthen the commitment of governments in the framework of the WCAR and its subsequent stages; the expression of feminist leadership in proposals as well as in actions; the intersections between proposals with a gender perspective and the issues raised by the Conference; and others.
Such strategies also incorporate the concept of globalization of feminism itself, implying an inclusive universalization of a plurality of visions and practices, which converge in a common agenda.
Putting gender on the WCAR agenda
Charlotte Bunch and Roxanna Carrillo
Preface
We would like to begin our reflections on this rather overwhelming topic by affirming what has been put forward in the first two parts of this discussion – that is to say, the challenges of diversity and particularly of countering racism and other forms of intolerance are both very crucial issues for feminist leadership and very complex ones. While we will focus this week on more specific aspects of the WCAR itself, we would like to call for more concrete discussion (perhaps in more weeks of this list serve or another format) of the kinds of specific experiences and actions (both local and global) that each of us feels have best responded to the challenges put forward here. For example, how have women best acted out the “solidarity” strategy that Patricia McFadden describes so well and how could we do it better? Or following, Sunila Abeyesekara’s call for “diversity for unity” and her identification of critical issues for women facing ethnic divisions, how have women succeeded or not in trying to do the things she proposes in various situations and what has made it more possible or more difficult to do so.
While we have been part of discussions of diversity within the US for many years, there has not been enough concrete sharing of our various national experiences of and strategies around these issues in the global women’s movement, as well as discussing our experiences of this question globally. And indeed part of what makes this issue so complex is that it is at once both very local and very global. At the local/national level, the specifics of issues of diversity are often quite particular to a country or region and the struggles around these issues each take distinct forms – Sri Lanka is different from Peru, the US, the Philippines or South Africa for example. Yet, as we have learned in feminist organizing, there is also a commonality in the fact that racism exists everywhere and that globalization (in both its current and previous forms like colonialism) often creates some common aspects to the problems. Further, there is the complexity of South-North differences and the need to unpack what are the actual issues here – what are questions of race, what of class, what of geographic location and how do these interface, and how do we deal with “the North in the South” and “the South in the North” etc.
Finally, as we work on the WCAR and other agendas, we are constantly seeking to find ways that feminists can create conversation that addresses all these differences and issues while still trying to cross lines of patriarchal division to shape an effective women’s agenda and defend women’s human rights from numerous attacks. Or in Sunila’s phrase, how do we put “diversity for unity” into action globally?
WCAR: The Intergovernmental Conference and Document
There has been considerable work done by women regionally and internationally to bring women’s concerns and the intersection of gender with race and other intolerances onto the WCAR agenda. At both the first (May 2000) and second (May 2001) international preparatory committees in Geneva, women drafted statements and worked in a variety of sub-groups on gender/race in relation to globalization, migration, trafficking, armed conflict, refugees, indigenous peoples, Africans and African descendants, ethnic minorities, caste, sexual orientation, as well as looking at methodology for an intersectional approach to the conference and how that should be incorporated into human rights mechanisms. Most of the background papers dealing with these issues are available in English, and some are also in French, and Spanish on www.whrnet.org. In addition, WhrNet is moderating two forums in preparation for the final preparatory committee in Geneva from July 30-August 10 and leading up to the actual governmental conference beginning August 31st. One of these forums is dealing with drafting women’s language for the proposed text of the governmental document and the other is for discussion of lobbying strategies.
Without repeating all the issues in the drafting process here, one of the major contentions, as Phumi Mtetwa has alluded to in this list serve, is over the language that will be used to list multiple oppressions (including whether there will be such a list) and how they connect to and intersect with racism. The Women’s Caucus in Geneva wrote a useful description of intersectionality and multiple oppressions which we quote from here:
“Intersectionality is an integrated approach that addresses forms of multiple discrimination on the basis of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance as they intersect with gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, migrant, socio-economic or other status. Intersectional discrimination is a form of racism and racial discrimination which is not the sum of race PLUS another form of discrimination to be dealt with separately but is a distinct and particular experience of discrimination unified in one person or group, we therefore suggest the following: In all cases where it appears, replace “multiple forms of discrimination” with “forms of multiple discrimination” or “intersectional discrimination based on race, work and descent, colour, language, national or ethnic origin, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, migrant, socio-economic or other status.”
Those lobbying for this language should be aware that the most controversial topics in the list that governments are likely to oppose are sexual orientation and descent (caste). In terms of lobbying our government’s for the WCAR, women should seek an inclusive statement like that above as well as the incorporation of women and gender perspectives in relation to all the other issues you and your organization work on. There is still considerable disagreement over the document which is why a special additional preparatory committee is being held beginning July 30th. Among the most controversial issues for the delegates are the question of Palestine (military occupation) and Zionism (as a form of racism), the recognition of caste as a form of racial discrimination (on the basis of descent or occupation), and the recognition of the ongoing effects and consequences of slavery, the slave trade and colonialism (particularly as they may relate to compensatory measures, including reparations), and the connection between globalization and racism.
It is possible that after this PrepCom, most of the final text will be in place – although perhaps not on the most controversial issues. Therefore some of the lobbying for the final stages of the WCAR will be about the seriousness with which governments take this conference (for example how many high level officials attend), the amount of political will they will put behind it, and the resources they will devote to its implementation and follow-up.
One of the biggest leadership challenges women face in most countries is to get our own governments to be willing to face up to the issues of racism for which they bear some responsibility. What has become apparent in this process is that almost all governments are seeking to escape real scrutiny of their own problems of racial and other forms of discrimination. For the governments of the North, this primarily takes the form of not wanting to face up to the legacy of slavery and colonialism or issues of racism inherent in globalization. For governments of the South, it is generally the opposite – wanting only to frame the issues of the conference as North-South without tackling the issues of racism and discrimination at home. The feminist challenge is to demand that all of the above be addressed and to let no governments off the hook while also working for language and solutions that reflect an intersectional approach.
Further, there is an unfinished agenda that feminist activists spelled out at the Beijing conference and its 5year review, and much of it is very relevant to the issues of the WCAR. We would suggest that women advocates involved in this process pay particular attention to ensuring that the document that comes out of this conference includes the mechanisms and institutional arrangements both at the international and national level, as well as the benchmarks, targets, timelines, indicators and resources necessary to implement the lofty recommendations that governments are most likely to agree upon. Let’s work together to ensure that the framework that emerges from Durban is one that will help us to advance our discussions about diversity and feminist leadership and a reaffirmation of our commitment to the realization of all human rights for all in all our diversities.
WCAR and Human Rights: Networking and Documenting Intersectionality
Of course the WCAR is only a global moment in a larger process and much of the feminist strategy for it should center on how we use this moment to bring greater attention to these issues in an on-going way. As such, the NGO Forum to be held in Durban August 28-31 will be an occasion for women advocates to exchange strategies and learn from each other. In addition, there will be 24 official NGO commissions that will meet twice during the NGO Forum. One of these is the Gender Commission and it will decide on additional input to the NGO Declaration and Programme of Action (drafted by the NGO WCAR Steering Committee and available on the NGO Forum website www.racism.org.za) that will be presented from the NGOs to the inter-governmental conference. This is a place where a broader and deeper gender perspective could be lobbied for and incorporated.
One of the concerns that will be addressed by several activities during the NGO Forum in a variety of ways is how best to document the intersectionality of gender, race, and other oppressions and how to shape more effective strategies and remedies to address multiple forms of discrimination. NGOs will be sharing work done on this as well as lobbying governments to make a commitment to this approach in their national plans of action. A number of women’s human rights related NGO activities for the NGO FORUM are also listed on www.whrnet.org as well as on individual websites like www.apwld.org. Information about the NGO Forum from the organizers in South Africa can be found on www.racism.org.za
As part of this effort, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership in partnership with a number of other organizations will be organizing a women’s human rights hearing during the NGO Forum to give voice and visibility to the multiplicity of women’s experiences of interlocking discriminations. We have found in the past that such hearings demonstrate in real life terms what women are calling for and thus we hope to make intersectionality a concrete reality through the stories of women’s lives. The hearing will also present strategies that women are using to address these intersecting oppressions and what they tell us about how human rights work and governmental remedies need to be shaped. For more information about the hearing and testimonies being presented, go to www.cwgl.rutgers.edu. You can also find on the CWGL website a presentation to the Commission on the Status of Women by elmira Nazombe that summarizes the women’s human rights caucus discussion of an intersectional methodology to address gender, race and other forms of discrimination; there is also a paper by Charlotte on why the WCAR is important to women’s human rights advocacy that discusses the issues of universality and diversity as well as links intersectionality to the human rights concept of indivisibility.
WCAR Follow-Up
Another effort that is being made by women is to use the WCAR to increase attention to intersectionality in the international human rights community in general and in the work of the human rights treaty bodies and mechanisms in particular. Thus, women have begun working with both CEDAW - the Committee that oversees implementation of the women’s convention and CERD – the Committee for the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on how both can address the intersection of race and gender more effectively. For a very useful presentation of what this means, contact Maria Herminia Graterol <m_graterol@hotmail.com> and ask for a copy of the “Presentation to the CEDAW Committee by Women’s Human Rights Groups: The Intersection of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Context of Temporary Special Measures”. While the impetus for this comes from WCAR, the real work will be in the follow-up that is done after the conference with these and other groups. A key component of this strategy is to have the UN human rights treaty bodies and other mechanisms like the special rapporteurs receive more documentation on how multiple oppressions intersect in women’s lives. This work must be done locally as well and discussion of intersectional methodology needs to be brought into local women’s organizing.
Follow-up at the local and national level is perhaps the most important area for ensuring that the WCAR has a lasting impact and is not simply a one year affair. The WCAR draft document calls for governments to develop National Plans of Action for working to eliminate racism, xenophobia and related intolerance. Feminist leaders should demand action from their governments on these plans as well as use this mandate to call attention to issues that are being sidestepped and to hold governments accountable to whatever promises they do make in Durban.
Like other world conferences, the WCAR offers an opportunity for women to draw local media and other forms of attention to these often-neglected issues as they are manifested in each setting. Feminist leaders may do this by working with other social justice and human rights NGOs involved in the WCAR process - seeking to bring a gender perspective to their activities - and/or by organizing events specifically about the issues of women and diversity. There are many strategies women have used to bring Beijing home that would be useful to consider in thinking about WCAR follow up. Most importantly, this is a chance to advance an urgent and ongoing discussion that is critical to the future of feminism and the achievement of human rights for all women.
Strategies for Follow-Up to WCAR: Vital Communication
Sally Burch
The agreements made by governments at UN World Conferences to bring about social and political changes in furtherance of development and respect for human rights, are frequently a response to pressure, either from their own population or from other countries. More often than not, the commitments made at these conferences remain a dead letter on a document, except where sufficient pressure is maintained to push the institutions concerned into taking action.
For civil society organizations that are mobilizing around these issues, the post-conference challenges include, on the one hand, that of obtaining and monitoring implementation of the commitments achieved, and demanding accountability from governments; and on the other, continuing to mobilize towards recognition of the demands that were denied.
To a large extent, these challenges need to be taken up at the national level, where the strategies that can be applied will depend on a variety of factors that I will not go into here. At the same time, it will be important to maintain levels of international coordination. But in almost any civil society strategy, whether national or international, two key elements are: firstly, to create broad alliances in order to bring pressure to bear on governments and institutions; and secondly, to raise awareness and support in public opinion.
In both cases, communication is crucial. The following reflections look briefly at why it is crucial and at some of the particular implications in the case of the follow-up to this world conference, and more specifically as regards feminist leadership.
Building alliances implies networking, concerting actions, sharing information, and communication mechanisms are needed to do this. Effective communication mechanisms do not emerge by spontaneous generation. They need to be designed and facilitated in response to specific needs and situations. Creating an e-mail list does not of itself generate useful communication any more than setting up a meeting room makes for a productive meeting. Both require planning.
So we will need to define what sort of communication will be needed for follow-up to this conference and therefore, what mechanisms are needed.
It has not been easy in the lead-up to this World Conference to achieve consensus among civil society organizations at the global level, even on some basic issues. Partly this relates to the necessary process of building movements. Those movements that are only recently interrelating at the regional or global level may need more time to build their own internal processes of consensus before looking at broader alliances. But it is obvious that in the absence of such alliances, the governmental sector has not felt pressed to find a minimum of agreement on many key issues.
No doubt a factor that has not helped has been the lack of an effective means of communication among the different groups involved. Although a number of communications mechanisms have been created, each of them is operating among a closed group.
One of the strengths the women's movement has built over the years is its capacity to form consensus on many of the issues concerning gender discrimination and inequality, over and above other levels of political, social and cultural differences. Feminists also have widespread experience in transversal linking among different movements where they are present. Leadership initiatives of feminist inspiration within the different emerging movements around racism, xenophobia and intolerance might be able to help provide the necessary stimulus to seek dialogue and build alliances across social groups. Part of this process could be to develop communication mechanisms that reach across the different groups involved.
The second point has to do with influencing public opinion, which is all the more fundamental as regards racism, xenophobia and intolerance, as it implies not only seeking support for a cause but also changing racist and intolerant attitudes in and through the media. The role of media is obviously crucial in raising public awareness and a number of proposals in that respect have been put forward to the conference.
For example, the proposals from the NGO Forum of the Americas that address these issues include (in summary):
To urge media to reaffirm their social function as modelers of opinion, by including symbolic expressions and representations of diversity and inter-culturalism, and ensuring access for expression of discriminated social groups.
To raise an urgent call for the democratization of all communications systems and media, their diversification on all scales and the access of all citizens to communication resources and knowledge.
To put pressure on media, the tourism industry, marketing and publicity to put an end to the exploitation of cultural images based on identities, symbols, customs and of stereotypes based on gender, sexual orientation, age, and disability conditions.
To set up citizen boards to monitor the content of the mass media, with regard to their treatment of diversity.
To promote boycott campaigns to pressure the media to eliminate programs that constantly favor and feed racism, discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance.
Although governments and UN bodies could support certain of these proposals, this is one area where we cannot afford to depend mainly on governmental action. Whether or not the governments in Durban agree to put these demands on the agenda against racism (and as we learned from Beijing + 5, Northern governments are highly reticent to touch the media), the main initiative as regards media needs to come from civil society, since governmental intervention in the media is likely to be rejected as censorship. The media contribute to forming public opinion but they are also responsive to public opinion, since sales and ratings are their god. One of the challenges is therefore to create sufficient collective pressure on the media to bring about change.
The women's movement has achieved some important successes, for example in countering violence against women in the media. These experiences could be shared and extended to racial and other forms of discrimination.
But also, one of the important advances within the women's movement has been to look at media and communication not just from the viewpoint of content, but from a perspective of human rights and democracy, recognizing that communication is a basic and essential human right that underwrites most other rights.
To quote from a document presented by ALAI to the WCAR: "Power relationships, generated in the political arena, are largely defined by access to information. A lack of information cuts discriminated groups and peoples off from participation and empowerment, and constrains the viability of other practices that are essential for the rule of democracy, such as: freedom of thought and opinion, free will and speech. These foundations can only be ensured when the flows of diversified, plural information make it possible for autonomous schools of citizens' thought and public opinion to have their own ideas. Likewise, human rights - an inalienable birthright of the human race - will be enforced only when a well-informed citizenry can make them their own and demand the societal and cultural transformations required to put them into practice."
Demanding the recognition of communication as a human right implies challenging the monopolistic power of the commercialized media, which is converting information into a commodity to be sold to the best buyer, in which women are exploited as objects and discriminated social groups are only valued as an exotic commodity. If we are to change racist and discriminatory attitudes in society, the democratization of communication is therefore paramount. Any steps in this direction will require a broad alliance, in which it is important for feminist proposals -such as those that have been formulated in relation to a gender focus in communication- to stand out.
In the World Conference process, ALAI has been focusing on several of these aspects, in collaboration with other organizations that share our concerns, such as through the communications caucus. In the follow-up phase we hope to join forces with feminist and other organizations concerned to build a communication strategy to combat racism. We are convinced that development of feminist leadership in this process would be an significant contribution.
The strategies suggested by Charlotte and Roxanna to influence positively the process and the outcome document of the World Conference, in addition to the wealth of previous reflections - which identify feminist tasks and challenges in view of the multidimensionality of realities and exclusions contained in the "forms of multiple discrimination" and the way they are mutually fed and sustained - constitute a substantial contribution to the proposal capacity process and to "appropriation" of the conference.
In this intervention I am interested, rather, in reflecting on those other dynamics and processes regarding what remain as future tasks - at the national and global levels - after the Conference, as well as on the new trends which, based on "feminisms", could sustain new perceptions and practices on the forms of exclusion from leadership and democracies within feminism and in the spheres where it acts.
Undoubtedly, it is crucial that a good document results from the Conference, since it will be useful not only to keep a vigilant attitude and demand accountability from governments in its fulfillment; it will also - and, perhaps, more importantly - be useful to position the urgency of intersecting these forms of multiple discrimination in the various feminist expressions and in societies themselves. That is, a political agenda shared between the State and civil society is fundamental, but it does not cover all the actions and proposals of women and their movements. This, which is valid for all feminist strategies, is the more so when facing dimensions as fundamental as those of the Conference, to the extent that only if feminisms strengthen forms of leadership that express this diversity and of leadership committed to it, will the possibilities of influencing governments' agendas and achieving the fulfillment of their agreements, be increased.
Another process launched by world conferences in general and this one in particular, due to the dimensions it raises, has to do with the subjective dimension of recognition and legitimacy. And in this respect, I refer to the experience of Beijing: in Beijing, there was, for example, a clear and differentiated presence of indigenous women, although their more specific demands were not totally reflected in the resulting Platform for Action. However, for restricted citizenship, the global sphere has a potentially double virtue: that of visibilizing its image and its proposals, at the same time that it reflects or irradiates the legitimacy of recognition by others, a legitimacy which is not easily found in the countries of origin.
The existence of solidarity, knowledge and learning networks, as well as theoretical, political and vital exchanges also offer a driving force for broadening subjective citizenship. This is the case, for example, of indigenous women's movements in the Beijing process, whose subjective citizenship was modified and broadened under the light of legitimizing interactions and visibility in the global sphere, which in contrast was fragmented in their own countries, both by states and by civil societies. Assuming this legitimacy and strengthening it, in feminisms and in countries, is a fundamental challenge.
For these reasons, the conference process also contains other multiple processes: one of them is precisely to raise and visibilize the new leaders which for quite some time have been occurring in women's social movements or in those in which women are a part - indigenous, gay and lesbian, youth - and who are raising an agenda for feminisms that cannot be postponed. Many of them are feminists, other are not, but their mere presence forecasts the possibility of questioning feminist positions rooted in rather conservative positions with respect to these dimensions, even though they may be radical in many other respects. However, that radicality does not manage to subvert the symbolic discursive order of the exclusion of women, since it does not deal with precisely that which prevents an intersectional gender perspective.
Another crucial aspect, from a national perspective, pertains to the fact that strengthening these new leaderships within feminisms and in society cannot be considered isolated from broader perspectives of state transformation and reform, as well as from in-depth ethical cultural transformations; that is, the way in which feminisms also broaden their leaderships in relation to broadening democratic processes.
A struggle against forms of multiple discrimination is also related to the generation of more autonomous spheres of struggle and organization, where new actors expressing the multicultural and multiethnic characteristics of our societies are expressed and acknowledged. And this will only be possible by confronting traditional, racist, sexist, homophobic and exclusionary common senses and the authoritarian political culture common to much of Latin America. The promotion of democratic processes of democratic decentralization and of state reform that may redistribute political, economic and cultural power throughout every corner of countries, will strongly favor the articulation and recognition of these characteristics of the forms of multiple discrimination.
At present, I feel that in the dynamics, perspectives and discourses of feminist plurality there are new trends that open greater possibilities to deal with diversity. One of them is the trend to activation of movement dynamics, expressing a new cycle. Feminisms, from different spheres and points of entry, begin to recover the most subversive and transgressing issues and perspectives, also recovering an autonomous perspective and searching to put into place a different vision of the future, sustained in the new conditions brought by changes in a globalized world. There is an attempt to respond to the new risks, the new exclusions and the new rights emerging from them.
Another promising trend is, precisely, the recognition of diversity, not only in women's lives, but also in close relation to the multicultural and multiethnic characteristics of our societies; characteristics which, for centuries, have been tinted with inequality, and in the face of which, feminist commitment is now unavoidable. As Leila Gonzáles, an African Brazilian feminist, told me many years ago now, feminisms have been racist, maybe not due to action but due to omission.
This view on diversity and its characteristic of permanent exclusion, has also led to the emergence of new actors, expressing new social movements, such as that of indigenous women (and men), the gay and lesbian, the African Latin American and Caribbean movements; all these as expressions searching for visibility and recognition, confronting the rigid and anti-democratic structures of societies and states. And cross-cutting them all, including feminism, searching for recognition and redistribution of power, the young women's movements, that begin to populate the entire region. This movement of youth represents a challenge for feminisms, and this challenge implies beginning to understand their new horizons and new parameters of action. Our efforts -until now insufficient- to know their demands and converge in their mobilizations, are part of a pending task to democratize feminisms and renew leaderships.
Growing incursions into new issues and dimensions search to extend themselves towards a macro perspective, specially regarding the macroeconomic dynamics that sustain poverty and inequality and regarding democratic governance, searching for alternatives that empower women in those spheres. That has implied recovering the partially forgotten agenda, beginning to close the gap among the political dimension, the social dimension and the cultural dimension of women's citizenship.
There is also a growing trend to recover cultural subversion and subjectivity as a transformation strategy at a longer term. Subversion that transgresses and modifies traditional values and common senses, that questions the authoritarian political culture in our societies and that gives a breath of fresh air to democracies. This look towards the political cultural has provoked new questions regarding our historical struggles, such as that on violence against women, that nowadays seems to find its clearest boundaries precisely in this authoritarian culture from the state, as well as from civil society itself. Broadening strategies against violence, incorporating these multiple dimensions, also emerges as a fundamental trend.
These new perspectives broaden the range of feminist action and allow progress, based on the struggles for the democratization of gender relations, nourishing the anti-racist, anti-homophobic struggles, struggles for economic justice, for a healthy planet, for symbolic cultural transformations, etc. as a substantial part of feminist transformation horizons. This growing trend for the recovery of a cross-sectional perspective and of intersection of gender with the other multiple democratic, political and cultural struggles raised not only by women, but by other multiple social movements, begins to be one of the deepest, more complex and difficult changes.
These new strategies and quests lead us to the urgency of building a different vision of the future and recover one of the substantial characteristics expressed by the emergence of feminisms in the 20th century: its conviction that feminist struggles predicted a different world, sustained in the recognition of the other as similar in her/his difference. These characteristics are now shared and strengthened by vast sectors of democratic civil societies, as the two most mobilizing slogans of the First World Social Forum held this year in Porto Alegre, Brazil demonstrate: "Another world is possible", "No to the pensée unique".
Finally, a few words on the possibilities opened by globalization. Charlotte and Roxanna rightly say that globalization often creates common aspects to problems, as I understand, to the extent that phenomena of exclusion are also global and that national policies are predetermined in many ways by similar perspectives defined at a global scale. However, or maybe for this reason, there are other dimensions of globalization, those that allow precisely a production of global knowledge such as that being generated by this on-line conference. And it is also at a global scale where protests begin to occur, as well as the possibility of elaborating proposals that provide a universal content to the specific forms of discrimination we are facing. The same globalization logic, which connects distant and diverse localities and struggles, at the same time, allow strengthening of national struggles and extending democratization processes toward the global, staking on governing globalization from national and global citizenship perspectives.
A lot of excellent contributions have been made, so I am going to restrict my brief comments to what I see as some more key challenges for feminist leadership during and after the WCAR. As we think about developing feminist leadership strategies at a local and global level, I would like us to take time out to reflect on work that needs to happen within the global feminist movement itself around these issues. Charlotte and Roxanna point to the need for us to have further discussions and concrete sharing of experiences and strategies. I would therefore like to reaffirm a point Pat McFadden made in her presentation, and suggest that we create spaces to talk about these issues as they manifest themselves within our movement. The global feminist movement has had a tremendous impact on the theory and praxis of feminism in almost all spheres of life over the past two decades. In the process of doing the hard work of building our commonalities, seeking unity in diversity and diversity for unity, we have not taken enough time out to check in with each other to see where we are or how we feel. How do we feel about how these issues affect us as a global feminist movement? Have we resolved our own contradictions? Many of us in this movement have stories of hurt, betrayal, and pain which have come out of our experiences of global feminist organising. Yet we do not address these issues because we don't feel safe enough, so we share in a process of denial.
In Charlotte and Roxanna's paper, the comment on the need for all governments to bear their own share of the responsibility is absolutely critical. Racism underpins most of the relationships that the governments of the North have with the South. Governments in the South, on the other hand, are quite happy to point fingers across the Atlantic/Pacific while they starve, oppress and kill their own people. We also need to extend this call for accountability to civil society institutions, social justice and human rights organisations in all these countries. Most of them have been leading the WCAR process, and their capacity to use an intersectional analysis is quite limited. The call for us to use an intersectional analysis as feminist thinkers and activists also raises the need for us to document women's experiences of re-constructing and re-creating new identities.
Another challenge that struck me reading the paper, was the immense amount of work that feminists need to do at all levels. This might be something for us to think about post WCAR. Who exactly is going to do all this work of research, advocacy, campaigns, mobilising? The individual feminists who are besieged, burning out, struggling to balance family obligations and professions? Or the feminist organisations on shoe-string budgets, overwhelmed staff, and a general lack of material, human and financial resources? I think one of our current challenges right now, is the need for discussions on the state of feminist leadership and organising today, six years post-Beijing. Movements don't just move. Organisations don't just organise. It is people who organise and who move. The work needs to be done, but sometimes we make assumptions that we are capable of taking up all these challenges and agendas. Let us re-visit the social cost of the work that we do as feminist activists.