Feminist Activisms, Feminist Futures

===

This is my last blog post of the semester, and, quite appropriately, it is about current feminist activisms and what feminists envision for a just world. For example, the International Center for Research on Women in Washington, DC (http://www.icrw.org/) is one such activist organization that engages in research about and advocacy on behalf of the lives and experiences of women around the world. Their list of advocacy issues (http://www.icrw.org/what-we-do) reflects almost exactly the topics and issues that we’ve been reading about all semester:

• The poor status of women’s health worldwide and their lack of access to safe, affordable health care
• Patriarchal institutions such as the media and religion
• Problems with “development” projects
• The gendered dynamics of globalization
• Women’s work in the informal and formal labour sectors
• The low rates of women’s literacy and their lack of access to education
• The many forms, causes, and consequences of violence against women

And, of course, as you’ve learned throughout the semester, none of these can be considered separately; they are all interconnected.

===

===

===

So, in these final three weeks of the semester, we’ll be focusing on how feminist and other social justice advocates are working to solve the problems that exist for women, poor people, and people of colour globally. We’ll be doing some reading and talking this week and next about the forces operating against women’s activism, the mistaken assumptions about women’s movements, the different strands of local and national women’s movements, and the strength of women’s involvement in social justice and protest movements that exist outside formal political structures and institutions. All this is covered in Burn, chapter 10, and Kristoff and WuDunn talk about a couple of examples, Tostan in Senegal and Girls Learn in New Jersey, that are part of the global network of feminist activism.

Then, in chapter 11, Burn discusses the ways in which the local and national struggles she discusses in chapter 10 have come together to create TRANSNATIONAL FEMINIST MOVEMENTS AND NETWORKS that demand attention to women’s rights as human rights. We’ll read this chapter for next Tuesday in conjunction with two articles by Tax and Brokks (on Blackboard) about practical ways that we can each participate in solving some of the problems and issues for women globally that we’ve encountered throughout this semester.

All this will lead us directly into your presentations of your Term Projects (the presentation schedule is available under “Assignments”). So, we’ll end the semester on a positive note: By learning about what you’ve all found out about contemporary work by feminists all over the world to solve the issues we’ve been reading and talking about all semester!

In chapter 10, Burn defines WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS as “the sum of campaigns by groups and associations using a variety of tactics, disruptive or conventional, to change women’s position in society” (245). They include both thinkers/theorists, who identify gender and other inequalities and then suggest ways to fix them, and activists who implement those strategies. Often, these categories overlap: thinkers/theorists can be (and often are) activists, and vice versa.

As you’ll read in Burn, making a commitment to advocate for the rights of women and other marginalized peoples has been and remains quite a dangerous business. In a white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal society that depends on the status quo of sexism, racism and classism to function, attempting to change that status quo can, at best, result in ostracization and mockery and, at worst, disfigurement, brutalization, and death. This is the range of consequences that feminist activists around the world have endured—and continue to endure—in order to achieve their social justice objectives.

Women’s movements around the world have, together, constituted one of the most influential political movements of the last two hundred years. They have collectively made possible the privileges you and I enjoy today, including being able to attend school, having access to a wide variety of professions, the right to participate in formal politics, the ability to access contraception and abortion, and even being considered a human being. These are all clear successes of feminist activism. So, thank a feminist!

Still, though, as we’ve been reading and talking about all semester, women globally (including right here in Canada, as a few of your colleagues will discuss in their presentations) continue to experience very low social, political and economic status. Women around the world face barriers when attempting to access health care and education. They are negatively affected by the gender inequality embedded in organized religions. They have a hard time getting involved in formal politics and work, and when they do, face discrimination and sexual harassment. Women do most of the world’s work, both paid and unpaid, but that work is largely devalued and not counted as part of the global economy. Their cultural practices (such as female genital surgeries and veiling) and their attempts to earn a living through sex work are misunderstood, taken out of context, and thought of as always already negative. And economic globalization, of which “development” projects are an integral part, has created a situation in which most people in the world are poor, and most of those people are women.

Given all this, the work of feminists the world over is far from complete. And we’re going to spend the last three weeks of the semester talking about contemporary transnational feminist activisms and how we can each make choices right here at home that will assist them in their work around the world!

Administrative Stuff
1. Remember to check the presentation schedule to be sure you know when you’re scheduled to present your final project to the class. Click on the link under “Assignments.”
2. Don’t forget that if you would like my help or want to chat with me about anything, stop by during my office hours or e-mail me to make an appointment!