"Friction"
Naomi Klein; wrote No Logo and Shock Doctrine, fair trade activist
A: did not take into account women's productive roles and reproductive needs/responsibilities
Development of TFNs
Cold War cast a shadow on solidarity in form of E-W divide through 1990s
Second Wave movement in West brought many strategies but perpetuated a North-South divide
Global North saw legal equality and reproductive rights as key femnist demands
Global South emphasized "development", colonialism, and imperialism as obstacles to women's advancement
Disagreements made worse by international development projects that focused on population control while ignoring basic needs and desires of local women (for example?)
1970-80's SAPs (policies introduced as condition on lending which require indebted countries to reduce public expenditure in order to assist repayment of debt)
resulted in: cutting of social services, reduction of trade barriers, encouragement of foreign investment, halting social development projects to repay loans
Johan Norberg; wrote In defense of global capitalism; senior fellow at CATO institute (thinktank promoting limited government and free trade)
STRATEGIES OF TFNs WORLDWIDE
Four Types of TFNS:
(describe a bit on what each does)
1. Feminists against Neoliberalism
2. Feminists against
Fundamentalism
- e-petitions
- action alerts and appeals
- direct action (acts of civil disobedience)
- share photos on YouTube Flickr etc.
- blog (blogger.com)
- participating in World Social Forum (annual meeting opposed to corporate forces of G)
- act within own borders across NS
- participate at multilateral and intergovernmental level
Alliances (22 & 24)
3. Feminism against imperialism and war
4. Feminist humanitarianism
Class Assignment
- DAWN
- MADRE
- WIDE
- WEDO
- WLUML
- SIGI
- Jubilee 2000
- Coalition to end third world debt
- Women's International Coalition for Economic Justice
- Women & Trade Network
- Women's Eyes on the Bank
- United Peace for Justice
Now look up an organization within one of the four "types" you've been assigned and answer the questions below.
- What is its mission?
- are its programs useful for TF activism? how so? why not?
- what are its current campaigns or programs?
- Why is this work important for TFNs?
Websites:
#1 (30) #2 (35) #3 (37) #4 (39)
Platform for Action (1995 Beijing)
The TFNs following the Kenya #3 UN World Conference on Women 1985 were motivated by:
- The transition to neoliberal economics and a new international division of labor that relies on "cheapened" (feminized) labor
- decline of welfare state in much of Global North and poverty of many countries in global south (increasing burden to women)
- emergence of various forms of fundamentalist and right wing religious movements (threatening women's human rights)
coming together w/ conscious understanding of privilege; making commitments toward a politics of engagement that recognizes difficulties of struggle
Seattle WTO Protest Nov. 30 1999
a law enforcement officer pepper sprays the crowd of protestors
How can we negotiate difference and build effective politics?
- Standpoint theory- focuses on how to build coalitions among women instead of a movement grounded on some mythic sense of unity. Social location(s) is/are resource for construction of a unique feminist perspective on social reality, which can ground struggle for change.
- Post-Structural Analysis of discourse/language focuses on how power operates in *every* articulation of a feminist subject.
How do we recognize different priorities across culture? (compromise)
- In some parts of the Middle East or Eastern Europe, women's rights groups frame their struggle as one for:
civil society
democracy
law reform
sometimes avoiding term "feminism"
- Agendas may not include issues pertaining to abortion and homosexuality (Africa and India)
- In Iran and Algeria they choose to call themselves "secular" feminists" at great risk to Islamic authorities
Identities are always unstable and result from shifting relations of power.
Ex: Iran's One Million Signatures Campaign 9/2006
Burqas and "portable seclusion
Transnational Feminisms