Synopses & Reviews
The struggle for the advancement of women's rights and gender equality globally is impossible without strong women's organizations and movements to provide leadership and momentum. But what does a strong women's organization look like? And what does it take to create effective and sustainable women's movements? This groundbreaking collection of essays by activists from all corners of the globe explores what it means to be an influential women's organization, and what it takes to build the kinds of movements needed to transform women's lives. From how to build successful participatory democratic processes and implement shared leadership models, to lessons on overcoming internal organizational divisions, the case studies in this collection focus not only on the 'what' but also the 'how' of movement building. Those concerned with how to effect sustainable change will find not only much food for thought, but also an abundance of creative ideas and innovative strategies - served up with a uniquely feminist twist.
Synopsis
Building Feminist Movements is an international collection of essays and case studies which explores diverse ways in which women and feminist organizations and movements are organizing and it also analyses the important lessons learned in the process. Women's organizations and movements must be stronger than ever to be able to hold the line and continue moving forward the women's rights agenda. In the present context, where many threats to women's rights such as armed conflicts, the advance of HIV/AIDS, raising fundamentalisms and scarce resources for work on women's rights, a revision of the internal dynamics and work done in women and feminist organizations and movements is de rigueur in order to face these challenges effectively.
About the Author
Lydia Alpizar, Anahi Durán and Anahi Russo Garrido are all activists and heavily involved with AWID, the Association of Women in Development.
Table of Contents
* Introduction -- Lydia Alpizar, Anahi Durán, and Anahi Russo
* Part 2: Revisiting Organizational Practices
* Part 3: Broadening the Movement: Mechanisms of Inclusion
* Part 4. Increasing Organizational Capacity and Resources
* Part 5. Alliance Building and Partnerships
* Part 6: Sustaining the Work in Conflict Situation
* Part 7. Campaigning for Building Movements
* Part 8: Dynamics and Leadership Introduction -- Lydia Alpizar, Anahi Durán and Anahi Russo Garrido * Part 2: Revisiting organizational practices * How different is different -- Pramada Menon * An insight into feminist organizations -- Yamini Mishra and Nalini Singh * Gender mainstreaming in development organizations: policy, practice and institutional change -- Nicholas Pialek * Building stronger movements: linking organizational health to mass empowerment -- Salma Maoulidli * Part 3: Broadening the movement: Mechanisms of inclusion * Group of and for Latinas in Hamburg Germany -- Sol Viviana Rojas and Raquel Aviles Caminero. * The Korean Women's Trade Union: a foothold for female workers' rights -- Jinnock Lee. * On starting big when you are small: a Romanian story about building feminist values -- Camellia Blaga * A religious women's revolution: the case of Kolech in Israel -- Margalit Shilo. * A case study: The Zimbabwe women writers association -- Mary Tandon * Part 4. Increasing organizational capacity and resources * Mexican women's social change model: Semillas 15 Years investing in women -- Emilienne de León, Amanda Mercedes Gigler, Lucero González and Margaret Schellenberg * Enredadadas: the capacity-building experience of the virtual seminal -- Verónica Baracat, Phyllida Cox and Norma Sanchís * Widening the base of the feminist movement in Pakistan -- Shahnaz Iqbal * Part 5. Alliance building and partnerships * Promoting women's leadership and human development in Siberia -- Elena S. Gvozdeva, Marina V. Tyasto and Jane Secor * Repolitization of the women's movement and feminism in Argentina: Your struggle is our struggle! Experience of the group Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses) -- Andrea D'Atri * We are campaigning: Building alliances and partnerships for sexual and reproductive rights -- Elizabeth C. Plácido * Equal representation in a divided society: feminist experience in Israel -- Dalia Sachs and Hannah Safran *Part 6: Sustaining the work in conflict situation * Women's peace initiative: building alliances, agenda and collective actors in political action for peace in Colombia -- Yusmidia Solano Suárez * From individual struggle to national struggle: An Arab Women's Organization in Israel -- Trees Zbidat-Kosterman * Part 7. Campaigning for building movements * Remobilizing the women's movement in Algeria around the Barakat (Twenty Years Is Enough) Campaign -- Caroline Brac de la Perrière * The campaign for the reform of the Turkish penal code from a gender perspective -- Liz Ecervik * Indonesian feminist movement: the valued role of 'motherhood' as strategically used by 'the Voice of Concerned Mothers' (Suara Ibu Peduli SIP) to re-politicize the Indonesian women's movement -- Monika Swasti Winarnita Doxey * Strategies, struggles, and methods of WARDC advocacy for women's human rights in Nigeria -- Titilope Salaam * The evolution of discourse: the women's campaign to change the Moudawana in Morocco -- Alexandra Pittman in association with Democratic Association of Morocco Women * Part 8: dynamics and leadership * Empowering women's space: power distribution and dynamics in Christian feminist communities -- Kelsey Rice and Ann Crews Melton * Feminists, factions, and fictions: using power to view power and build rural feminism -- Leona M. English * Empowerment and democracy, working for or working with group participants -- Nancy Guberman, Jennifer Beeman, Jocelyne Lamoureux, Danielle Fournier, and Lise Gervais. * New democratic exercise for feminist Mexican organizations -- Adriana Medina Espino