Women's Media Pool
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.
Women's Treatment Literacy Toolkit: Launched
cross-posted from: http://www.livejournal.com/community/apcwomen_awid05/3271.html
I attended the launch of the toolkit titled "Women's Treatment Literacy toolkit" during the AWID Forum. In a move to combat the disease and increase women's AIDS treatment literacy among women in Southern Africa, Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Information Dissemination Service launched this useful resource. The launch was well received with more than 100 people attending and the Chief Executive of Action Aid International Mr. Yanar Mohammed gave the opening remarks.
Southern Africa remains by far the most affected region affected by HIV/AIDS epidemic, with prevalence rates as high as 30% in certain countries. Antenatal statistics reveal that up to 48% of pregnant women are infected with HIV/AIDS in curtain rural areas.
The toolkit came as result of the Southern Mutopola project which means the campaign voice of women living with and affected by the disease in Southern Africa which is being implemented by Action aid International. One of the goals of Southern Mutopola project is comprehensive treatment and care, this prompted SAfAIDS in conjunction with Action aid International to produce a tool kit.
"When treatment came to Africa there was no information... and that's resulted in us producing the toolkit" noted Ms Lunga the Executive Director for SAFAIDS during the launch in Bangkok. The toolkit addresses the missing information on treatment. Ms Lunga also noted that the "the toolkit reminds us that HIV/AIDS related treatment is vital for maintaining the good health of women, thus enabling them to live longer."
The toolkit which comes with three brochures on also includes post exposure prophylaxis, children and antiretroviral treatment and other forms of HIV/AIDS related treatment. It also comes with an audio tape for use in the community and women can share with other women who are unable to read. Posters, calendar, pencil, rubber and lastly six "lets share" cards are also included in the toolkit.
"Being HIV/AIDS positive does not mean end of sex" noted Ms Lunga. The toolkit also comes with a packet of condoms that can be used by positive women.
The toolkit aims to empower girls and women in communities with accurate and relevant information to enable them to make informed decisions in terms of accessing and demanding their rights in full participation in antiretroviral treatment programmes.
Lunga concluded that "SAFAIDS is encouraging countries to take the toolkit and adapt to any situation, and translate it to make sure that women can access the information in Southern Africa."
There is no doubt that this toolkit is the key in providing the missing answers on women access to information on treatment and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa.
Governing Digital Spaces
Cross-posted from: http://www.livejournal.com/community/apcwomen_awid05/
A striking paradox informs the web of relationships that people have built and maintained and that have been aided by various forms of communication technologies. For while advancements in communicaton technologies made boundaries more fluid, the resulting relationships have not all been fair. This paradox has been further heightened with the trade regimes which were founded in the mid-1990s and vested an unprecedented power to the private sector.
In the AWID Forum session "Governing Digital Spaces: The Political Economy of the Information Society and Violence Against Women", Prof. Saskia Sassen discussed the crucial yet devalued interstices that have turned these networks into multi-billion dollar enterprises.
The decade following the ratification of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the subsequent emergence of the World Trade Organization has led to the gospel of a "single global economy" and has seen the increasing and dynamic linkages of people, as the new order has likewise necessitated the rapid innovations of existing communication media. The widespread deployment of information and communication technologies (ICTs) may have significantly supplemented, if not even supplanted traditional media but these have not necessarily effected a more genuine and dignified communication.Prof. Saskia Sassen unpacked the characteristic of these networks and identified the gaps these engender between women and ICTs.
The pace with which networks are created because of the task of efficiently delivering economic goods and services not only defies the boundaries of time and space but it likewise obscures the actual actors that perform this task. The increasing concentration of finance in cosmopolitan realms and the constant relocation of labor-intensive processes in the developing world inform the recent changes in governance.
"Professionals are being governed but non-professionals are not being governed." Hence the consolidation of capital and distribution of labor, often making it possible to see the "figure of a man whose wife is not there."
Aside from being unequally distributed, the ICTs have also generated at least two cultures of use, the techie culture and the consumer culture. Both tap the benefits of ICTs but at the same time seem to hinder more meaningful and strategic collaboration. Given diffused agency emanating from ordinary users of ICT, gender concerns are further obscured, if not denied.
The misrepresentation of women in the new economic spaces facilitated by ICT thus pose a challenge of creating new categories in order to "(re)capture specificities."
Notes on the session "Rights and Religion: Women's Perspectives"
Cross-posted from: http://www.livejournal.com/community/apcwomen_awid05/
By Nina Somera
October 29, 2005, Saturday, 11:00-12:30
Organized by UNIFEM, this AWID Forum session discussed the perennial tensions between religion and human rights, particularly women's rights and attempted to identify spaces and mechanisms where these may be negotiated.
Islam
By Sallbiah Ahmad, Lawyer/ Researcher, Malaysia and Siti Musdah Mulia, Religions Affairs Department, Indonesia
Sallbiah discussed the ramifications of the failure of secular liberalism to allow a freer exercise of the Islamic faith. The fundamentalism that emerged out of the political deprivation of Islamic communities has become the main medium towards self-determination and at the same time has made feminist articulation more difficult. Sallbiah said that despite the tensions between universal principles and cultural relativism, the latter is nonetheless meant not to invalidate human rights nor effect moral degeneration. The challenge is to activate the productive synergy between religion on the one hand and secularism and human rights on the other.
Siti said that the principle of Tawhid actually invalidates the ongoing subordination and oppression of women in most Islamic communities since Tawhid calls for quality and freedom. Siti's group recently drafted a proposed law that would otherwise "correct" the Shariah law. The proposal, among others intends to make marriage as a contract between the bride and the groom rather than the bride's father and the groom; limit the authority of the bride's guardian in marriage; enable women and non-Muslims to participate in marriage as witnesses and transform mahar or dowry as a symbol of love and responsibility from being a "price of vagina." Unfortunately, the proposal was swamped with protests and eventually failed to go through the formal legislative processes.
Buddhism
By Ouyporn Khuankeuw, Gender Trainer, Thailand
Ouyporn provided a brief background on Buddhism, as a faith which puts a premium on self-reliance---which makes its distinct from other religions which are centered on one or more gods. Theravada Buddhism which is more popular in South Asia and Southeast Asia is deemed as more oppressive to women, unlike Mahayana which accommodates women in the higher tiers of the Buddhist hierarchy. Ouyporn identified the common link between Buddhism and feminism. While the former is opposed to any form of suffering (e.g. ignorance, greed, anger and ambition), the latter is opposed to oppression (par. inequality). Both suffering and oppression trace their beginnings in patriarchy. Ouyporn said that among the means through which women's concerns may be advanced is to redefine the concept of karma which naturalizes suffering and oppression. Revisiting the core values of Buddhism would also yield spaces that allow women's empowerment. The search of wisdom and compassion through the right view (one of the steps towards the attainment of the Four Noble Truths) and meditation (e.g. communication) should not be barrier towards women's empowerment.
Christianity
by Arche Ligo, Women's Studies, St. Scolastica College, Philippines
Arche explained that the liberation theology movement sees two major dimensions of the religious experience. Religion is at once nurtured through personal encounters and reinforced by social institutions. It is the influence of religion in social institutions that primarily impacts on the construction of gender and eventually oppression. This, particularly as Christianity aims to surface among the faithful the "supreme capacity for sacrifice." Arche said that Catholic and Jewish feminists have found solidarity in the project of revisiting and reinterpreting the scriptures --- whose current reading dates back to Augustine of Hippo, who asserted that "we are men, you are women; we are heads, you are members; we are masters, you are slaves." Moreover, unlike Protestant Christian, Catholics encounter the Bible mainly through the priestly tool. Christian women are thus in the lowest tiers of the church hierarchy (God, Church, priest, man) and at the same time associated with the body rather than the spirit. Arche asserted that equality among sexes can be articulated within the context of Christianity, given that both women and men are created in the likeness of God and that it is through the women's bodies that the whole drama of creation is played out.
Panel Reactor, Toni Kasim, Sis Forum Malaysia
Toni said that while it is important to pinpoint spaces within the religious context for integrating gender concerns, it is equally important to external institutions and mechanisms which can put this project forward. She posed the question: is there really a secular state? The struggle for human rights must not always assume the existence of a functional state. While courts may be places where grievances may be aired, the imperative of seeking practical justice is often untapped due to the "guilt" that surrounds it --- in cases where religion deems such move as unacceptable. She added that such situations only exemplify the so called private voice and public voice of women. Even as they recognize the oppression emanating from religious practices, women often opt to be silent about it and defend the community particularly in cases where communities happen to be a minority. Despite the massive influence of the patriarchal side of religions and the tensions even among feminists (e.g. academicians and activists), tasks of deconstruction and rereading must continue.
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