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A round table proposed by National Network of Autonomous Women’s Groups-India, Development Alternative for Women in New Era [DAWN], Articulacion Feminista Marcosur and WICEJ. A Dialogue between Movements The tremendous challenges, posed by the forces and ideology of the right wing and neo liberal economics, have moved many progressive movements to ally and forge alliances. There is also an ideological basis for such alliances. We have realised that though movements claim to bring together a particular group on the basis of some identity, people live several identities and respond to them in different ways. With the challenge presented by women of colour to the white women’s movement, the women’s movement realised in the 1970s and 80s, that there were serious limitations to using a single category of women for analysis and strategising. Similarly, the labour movement had seen the analytical category of ‘class’ being argued and battered. In the globalised world, the easy divide between the formal and informal sectors and employer-worker relationships had collapsed. And dalit men who have often spoken about the advantaged dalits were confronted with a dalit women’s movement. The persistent challenge has been to understand how we can accept the politics of differences and the notion of conflicting and multiple identities as well as build strategies for social justice and equality. The race and gender challenge and its theorisation dovetailed with the post modernist trends to bring to centrestage the problems of a single category. Were there two genders, man and woman based on biology and were there only two sexes? Very soon the social groups of transgendered persons and bisexuals were introduced. There were problems within a category. Women have multiple and complex identities as workers, dalits or lower caste women, as members of religious groups, based on ethnicity or race, because of their sexual orientation, as trafficked women or prostitutes and so on. Along with multiple identities there are multiple discriminations. Racial discrimination and a disadvantaged position in the labour market are quite different for men and women. The multiple identities approach puts forward the concept of differences between members of a group. Some face a variety of discriminations, some are more privileged than others in certain contexts and situations. In the case of women, there is a legitimacy of articulating oppression vis a vis patriarchal society but that oppression is layered and complex for different women. By and large, feminists and activists of the women’s movement have accepted the starting premise that women live multiple and layered identities, which are derived from social relations within in a patriarchal and unequal society. This has lead to experimentation with different analytical frameworks and methodologies. This workshop is a continuation of the ongoing debate and an attempt to build bridges between movements. The framework of intersectionality explores the relationship between the multiple dimensions of social identities and social relations. This methodology seeks to conceptualise the racial, ethnic, economic, sexual, cultural and gender dimensions of multiple and even compounding forms of discriminations. It has been used to visibilise groups within groups e.g. roma women or transgendered persons. It has made a singular contribution in highlighting the intersection of identities in individuals in different categories. For example, during right wing provoked violence, women may not be killed but are usually raped as the property of the "other" men as in Gujerat and Rwanda. Sterilisation or clinical trials are performed routinely on black, Hispanic and Third World women. Structural Adjustment Programs hit different types of workers in various ways, and men and women of different classes are impacted by cuts or rollback in governmental social sector expenditure in a variety of ways. Workshop Design The workshop ‘A Dialogue Between Movements’ is visualised as a talk show with a moderator, representatives or experts and a participatory audience. The moderator will open the workshop with a short introduction on the objectives, process and importance of connections between movements. Representatives of four movements: the women’s movement, the labour movement, the gay rights movement and the dalit/race movement will present how they have taken up the issues of violence, work, religious fundamentalism and access to decision making/power and what sort of problems they have encountered in doing so. The audience also drawn from members of the four movements will have the opportunity to intervene on all the issues. In Round One, each of the representatives of the 4 movements will get 5 minutes each to speak on their intervention on the issue of violence. Followed by audience comments. In Round Two, each rep. will speak on the issue of work. Followed by audience comments. In Round Three, each rep. will speak on the issue of religious fundamentalism. Followed by audience comments. In Round Four, each rep. will speak on the issue of access to decision making/power. Followed by audience comments. Round Five will encourage the articulation of strategies within the four movements and alliances to seek human rights for all oppressed peoples.
Coordinated by NNAWG National Network of Autonomous Women’s Group |
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