RESISTING AND CHALLENGING RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISMS

Background

Over the last few decades, religious fundamentalisms or regressive political-religious movements have gained ground all over the world with particularly negative consequences for women’s rights. Religious fundamentalisms are manifesting themselves in control over various aspects of women's lives, including their sexuality, reproductive rights, family relationships, freedom of movement and dress, and participation in public life. Religious fundamentalisms are also gaining undue influence in setting social norms dominating everyday facets of life; defining laws, particularly family and sexual and reproductive laws that most impact women; controlling the media; influencing national policy-makers and international institutions; undermining human rights institutions and norms; putting religion at the centre of state business and public life; and undermining spaces for plurality and dissent.

Women’s rights advocates have done considerable work to detail the impact of religious fundamentalisms on women’s rights, as well as to document strategies to resist and challenge religious fundamentalisms. Feminist analysis on the issue of fundamentalisms has been carried out with a regional or religious focus by such networks and organizations as Women Living Under Muslim Laws, Women Against Fundamentalism, Catholics for a Free Choice, and Articulación Feminista Marcosur, among others. However, there is a need for more strategic spaces that span across regions and religions, to encourage and foster transnational and trans-regional dialogue and exchange with a view to formulating responses that are coherent and global in nature. AWID’s Resisting and Challenging Religious Fundamentalisms initiative is an advocacy research project that seeks to address some of the gaps in this area in order to strengthen the responses of women’s rights activists across regions and religions.

What we hope to achieve:

• Produce new and strategic knowledge on the workings of fundamentalist projects and disseminate this knowledge to key partners and allies;

• Create strategic venues and the necessary conditions to build common platforms across regions and religions to foster more global responses;

• Create common spaces for dialogue and facilitate shared understanding among women’s rights movements and organizations about how fundamentalisms work, grow and undermine women’s rights;

• Develop joint strategies and advocacy efforts across regions and religions to confront religious fundamentalisms; and

• Build the capacity of women’s rights activists, advocates, organizations and movements to challenge religious fundamentalist politics.

Activities for the project in 2007-2008 include:

• Research on the broad trends and strategies vis-à-vis religious fundamentalisms and women’s rights, including a desk review, in-depth interviews and case studies, and an online survey to gather quantitative and qualitative information;

• Development of a mapping of all major past and present international and regional initiatives challenging the impact of religious fundamentalisms on women's human rights;

• Support of and collaboration with key stakeholders in building partnerships with like-minded organizations;

• Dialogue with key networks and organizations within women's movements, other social movements and progressive religious leaders around religious fundamentalisms.

Strategic Initiative team

Cassandra Balchin – Lead Research Consultant
Deepa Shankaran – Research Associate
Juan Marco Vaggione – Research Consultant
Saira Zuberi – Programme Coordinator
Shareen Gokal – Strategic Initiative Manager

Note: The above image is courtesy of FIRE and taken by Gabriela Arguello on the Nicaraguan Nine March. To learn more about the March, click here

About the resources on religious fundamentalisms and women's rights on this site