Forum Blogs

The Forum is now over, but we encourage you to check the "Latest News" section of this site for selected session writeups, transcripts, and other post-forum information. Updates will be posted throughout December and January.

October 27, 2005 | October 28, 2005 | October 29, 2005 | October 30, 2005

Daily Plenary Reports

Chaotic equilibrium...

Rochelle Jones, AWID
October 30, 2005

Can it be the final day? I sense changing energies, yet still the same level of power simply shifting form. I was asked a question this morning, and I really had to take a step back and consolidate the concepts in my mind. The question was - How do you think change happens? And at the exact moment that the question was asked, there was a cascade of words flowing through my head, yet I was unable to articulate them into any coherent, verbal form.

It's interesting how change - the most important focus of the Forum - can somehow adopt prolific disguises, and parade as different concepts. Some of the disguises that I have seen change adopt in the Forum include: power; self-care; accountability; persistence; sexual justice; collaboration; capacity building; love; money; legitimacy; inclusive spaces; respect; resistance; diversity; (re)imagining; multiple identities; feminist economics; and countless more.

I have all of these concepts in my mind when I visualize the past three days, but especially the Celebration Dinner held last night and the final Plenary today. My favourite visual snapshots, that seem to embody all of the above concepts and more, are firstly, the large group of women from different countries dancing confidently and purposefully onstage under a clear, warm, Thailand sky with a member of the transgender and transsexual theatre/dance troupe, Primadona. Another was from today's Plenary, when women from the audience shared their feelings about what they are taking away from the event, and importantly, about how we can make it better next time. These are moments you want to keep close to your heart.

But as Geeta Misra, President Elect of the AWID Board explained in her Plenary presentation, the AWID Forum is not merely an event! We should not just walk away from this gathering and treat it as another episode in a long line of others. This is a messy, non-linear, chaotic, revolutionary moment! Someone mentioned the word "crazy" from the audience - and just as Lisa VeneKlasen of Just Associates on the Plenary team took it up, I will borrow it as well, but use it in the context of change. Change is crazy. It's emotional and inevitable, and can sometimes be foolish and unwise. Change can be unscripted and stealthy, but it can also be embraced, probed, and directed along certain pathways. This is what we do on a daily basis as women's rights and social justice advocates.

It takes women, men, transgender and transsexual individuals - like all of us - to direct the kind of changes we want to see in our lives and in the lives of others. It may start with the word no, or it might start with a yes. The absolutely crucial point is that it starts. AWID's Forum is a magnificent starting point for some and a middle point for others, but it's definitely not the end, even though we all walk away and resume our separate lives and agendas in over 120 countries.

Remember that we are always connected. The AWID team can be taken in some ways as a microcosm of women's movements around the world. This is the first time I have met the incredible women that I work with, and I feel a sense of sadness that now we must walk away from each other and resume lives with oceans between us. I know, however, that the virtual, spiritual and conceptual worlds we are working in on a daily basis connect us beyond the physical realm, and I am OK with this. I extend my gratitude and appreciation to all of you who create the chaotic equilibrium of our revolutionary moment. Don't stop!

The AWID Forum Family Tree... Or should that be Forest?

Rochelle Jones, AWID
October 29, 2005

For me, day three of the AWID Forum has been about complexity and connection. Perhaps these themes emerged and stuck in my mind today because I realized that I haven't been able to attend even half of the sessions I would like to. For example, there were eighteen Friday afternoon sessions running in the same time-slot from 2-4.30pm, encompassing such themes as feminism and trade; the women's movement in the Pacific; gender and microcredit; secularism as an alternative to fundamentalisms; sexual rights and international development; how to effectively communicate through the media; young women raising consciousness; linking poor rural women etc etc... Whew! So many incredible panels, opportunities and topics. This, of course, doesn't count the fifteen more sessions being held simultaneously at 5pm, and the 52 sessions held today between 11am and 6.30pm.

At the Funders Forum last night (which was equally as fantastic as everything else, by the way), Cindy Clark from Just Associates mentioned that some donors are asking the question - it's been ten years, aren't you done yet? I think that if all our donors were to attend the Forum, they would understand the sheer magnitude and depth of the issues that women's rights organizations are facing.

In realizing this, however, I am also beginning to recognize the links between all of these issues. There are struggles within the struggles that haven't found their own designated, formal space within Forum sessions, but are emerging within the sessions in the form of branches, twigs, blossoms and seeds that all seem to be a part of the Forum Family Tree. One example that comes to mind is of women working within patriarchal structures, such as parliaments, who are seen as holding the flame for women, and yet forced to compromise their own, more radical feminist agendas in order to maintain a representative face of hope. This is a personal struggle within a larger struggle. One branch on a tree.

But let's think about this for a minute or two. Every tree is part of a forest (let's just put aside the fact that with today's rampant, consumerist culture, I'm not sure how long this will be the case). So if the AWID Forum Family Tree is blossoming and producing seeds, these seeds (and cross-pollination) are all contributing to the growth of a diverse, but interconnected forest.

My lesson for today then, is that the obvious complexity and magnitude of the issues that are being tabled here at the Forum, shouldn't eclipse the fact that these issues represent a lush, diverse connection, like a living forest where below the surface, roots are growing, intersecting and supporting each other. By the end of the Forum, I won't have been to all of the sessions that I wanted to, but I will have connected with all of these issues by taking the time to look below the surface and seeing the strength in our interconnected struggles.

Forum Interstices: whispers and smiles

Rochelle Jones, AWID
October 28, 2005

On the second day of the AWID Forum, Friday File Moderator Rochelle Jones, attempts to translate inspiration into words.

It's difficult to find a quiet space to reflect and breathe here, but in this buzzing arena of voices, minds, bodies and spirits, I'm not anxious about all this energy - I'm simply stunned. It is a whirlwind of colour, smiles, beautiful diversity and overwhelming emotion, and despite the organized sessions taking place during the day, a huge part of the Forum's personality lies in the in-between spaces, or the interstices of the Forum. People are claiming spaces wherever they can, to talk, rest, read and catch up with friends.

The whispers and smiles in the corridors not only parallel the sessions taking place during the day, but they add a unique richness because they reflect the importance of informality in the Forum process. For example (and there are so many of them), everyone here is dressed exactly the way they want to be dressed. I'm pretty confident in saying that there is no-one at this Forum bound by any socially prescribed conventions. These women (and men!) are simply shining. They are confident, they are comfortable, they are themselves. This ease translates to they way they communicate their ideas, and even to the way they shoot warm smiles in your direction when you catch their eye. I am so very happy to be a part of this amazing event, and I frequently find myself standing in the middle of a corridor, slowly turning 360 degrees just watching and inhaling the power that has engulfed this little corner of the world.

Sometimes I am moved to tears by overhearing a simple introduction, like "Hi, my name is... and I have been working for sex-worker rights in India for twelve years".

On other occasions I am overcome with sadness, like in discussions about power inequality and the unfairness of it all. There are moments when I feel that poverty and women's rights, love and respect are unattainable in such a terrible, unfair world that privileges the rich and tramples on everyone else. Then there are delicious moments of elation and inspiration like when I met Jully Sipolo, a feminist poet from the Solomon Islands, and when I heard Regis Mtuti Munyaradzi from Zimbabwe talk about the role that he can play as a man to deconstruct and reconstruct masculinity.

These are the most inspirational moments. These are the moments where I look down and realize that my hands are shaking, and that it's not because I've had too much coffee. The interstices of the AWID Forum are capturing the essence of how our personal lives are inextricably entwined in complex and beautiful ways with sadness, happiness and all shades of grey. This Forum is in its own groove right now, and I'm swaying with the rhythm.

First Day Feelings

Kathambi Kinoti, AWID
October 27, 2005

The Shangri-La is ablaze with an amazing diversity of women (and some men) all here to reflect about change. The Forum presents many opportunities to look at the big picture and at the same time examine the finer details of women's activism. Last night I attended a charity screening of the movie "Iron Jawed Angels," which is about the American suffragette movement of the early 1900s, just before and during the First World War. It reminded me that we often take for granted many of the gains made for women's rights. It seems absurd to us today that women should be denied the opportunity to vote for the leaders they want, let alone to run for office. Yet less than a hundred years ago, that was the universal reality. One of the ironies that that the suffragettes presented as a challenge to Woodrow Wilson, who was the US President at the time, was: "How can you claim to fight for democracy in Europe, when there is no democracy at home?"

Today, after the opening plenary session of the Forum, all the participants had a chance to contribute to an exercise in remembering how change has happened in their different geographical regions. I joined other participants from Africa in a lively session and was once again struck by another irony of history. We recalled that although women took part in the struggles for liberation from colonial rule, when African countries gained independence in the 1960s women were sidelined.

One of the presentations that I attended was 'That is Not What we Meant at All!' This was an aptly titled discussion about how significant successes brought about by activism are often turned against women. For instance, activism has brought about the recognition of honour killings as a crime. However some women who marry men of their choice, against the wishes of their families have found their husbands arrested for abducting them.

There are also several interesting photo exhibitions and displays such as the Girls Go Global Exhibition. I was struck by a poster that protests 'We're not Sick - We're Women.' It is directed against the manufacturers of the menstruation-suppressing birth control pill Seasonale. The drug is said to reduce a woman's menstrual periods to four in a year. According to its advocates, 'there is no medical necessity for menstrual periods' and menstrual suppression improves women's health.

There is such an overwhelming array of presentations at the Forum that it is difficult to choose which to attend. There is however something for everyone - discussions, debates, book launches, a film festival, and even feminist yoga.