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CUL T UR A L S T UDIE S 1 7 ( 6 ) 2 0 0 3 , 9 0 5 – 9 2 0
Virginia Vargas
FEMINISM, GLOBALIZATION
AND THE GLOBAL JUSTICE AND
SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
Abstract
The paper begins with a theoretical-political positioning regarding globalization, as a multidimensional phenomenon, loaded with power relations
with unequal and ambivalent impacts producing dramatic exclusions but,
at the same time, opening possibilities for profound changes in the gender
order and in social subjectivities. The effects of globalization on social
movements have also been multiple and ambivalent, producing fragmentation and particularization but at the same impelling new ways of articulation, more flexible and inclusive, as well as mobilizations at a global level
oriented to ‘dispute’ its hegemonic contents and struggle for an alternative
globalization. In the second part, the paper analyses the new dynamics of
intervention of feminist movements that follow from this new reality. The
Social World Forum is a privileged space for this analysis, due to the
convergence of new tendencies and new ways of existence of feminisms,
expressing the new conflicts and challenges faced by feminisms in the
collective construction of alternative proposals towards globalization.
Keywords
feminism; neoliberal globalization; alternative globalization; social movements; gender orders; World Social Forum
We are faced here with a problem of language. The word ‘globalization’ has
been hijacked to mean only the particular form of globalization (neo-liberal
and overwhelmingly concerned with the economic) that we suffer at the
moment. But ‘globalization’ really just means global interconnectedness,
Cultural Studies ISSN 0950-2386 print/ISSN 1466-4348 online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/0950238032000150093
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and it could take other forms, on different terms and embodying different
kinds of power relations. Perhaps, indeed, there are the beginnings of ideas
about how this might work in the decidedly international networks already
being invented within the radical protest movements themselves.
(Massey, 2000)
T
H E S O C I A L M O V E M E N T S, including the feminist ones, are not unaware
of the socio-economic, political and cultural transformations that directly
or indirectly impact, modify and complicate their own approaches and strategies.
The dramatic transformation brought about by the process of globalization has
also substantively impacted the various feminisms, generating disagreements,
fragmentations, uncertainties and, for that very reason, they are provoking the
search for new forms of existence and new strategies, responding to the new
reality.
These multiple and ambivalent processes have generated defensive attitudes,
greater individualism, growing fragmentation, the reappearance of narrow
identity policies, in addition to various forms of balkanization and fundamentalism (Marchand and Sisson, 2001; DAWN, 2002). However, they have also
generated a widening of horizons for the transformation of social movements
(the everyday, the global) and new forms of resistance. Revealing new ways of
seeing and questioning reality, they have opened up closed identities, thus also
opening the possibility of expanding the content of ‘the citizen’ and ‘the democratic’ beyond the nation-state. They thus also stimulate new rights, and new
dynamics of citizenship in both local and global spaces. Globalization – highly
unequal in reach and impact – divides at the same time as it integrates. As such,
it is a threat, but it is also a possibility and a promise (Waterman, 2001).
Precisely because it has been hijacked for hegemonic and partisan purposes,
globalization is a disputed terrain. This is in respect to its contents, orientations
and democratic implications (as well as its complexity and multi-dimensional
nature). It is in this disputed terrain that the new needs and challenges – as well
as new possibilities – are opening up to social movements in general and Latin
American feminisms in particular, thus feeding into an alternative globalization.
Understanding and interpreting globalization, with its multiple connections
in space and in time, means understanding ‘the world as a whole’ (Robertson,
quoted in Guzmán, 2001) in a relational manner that simultaneously addresses
the multiple levels and dimensions of social reality. The impacts of these
economic and cultural changes on women tend to demand a greater capacity for
negotiation. This is in the sense that they confront women, much more than
previously, with the ideas of autonomy, individualization, liberation and equality,
modifying their self-perception and their identity as legal subjects.This facilitates
the proliferation of social definitions and cultural interpretations. Politics is no
longer seen as existing only in formal spaces, nor expressed only through voting
or representation: it expands towards spaces increasingly important for both
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male and female citizens, with daily life on one side and the globalized systems
on the other (Giddens, 1996; Guzmán, 2001). This impacts on citizenships,
opening new aspects, multiplying rights previously unconsidered. There is also
the modification and decentralization of national identities (Sousa Santos, 1994),
in so far as political frontiers decreasingly coincide with territorial ones.
These are not, therefore, unequivocal processes. And they become even
more complex when they meet the multiple other exclusions and realities
women experience. Many feminist studies have pointed out how, in the context
of globalization, gender operates at different levels, and in inter-relationship
with class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality and geographic space. The
subjectivities thus modified have an impact on gender relations and roles, and
reformulate the construction of masculinity and femininity in numerous ways.
The mutual impact of globalization and social movements
The impacts of globalization on social movements have been multiple and
ambivalent. On the one hand, they have played a role in the fragmentation and
particularization of struggles, with consequent repercussions for social behaviour. As Lechner (1996) suggests, ongoing economic reforms frequently restrict
the action of the states at the same time as they produce a dramatic movement
towards the ‘privatization of social behaviour’:
In ‘consumer societies’, including their marginalized sectors, individuals
value and calculate, in different ways, the time, the emotional energy and
the financial means they invest in public activities. Any appeal to solidarity
will remain abstract unless we take into account the ‘me culture’, cautious
about involvement in collective commitments.
(Lechner, 1996)
It is the same perception that leads Nancy Fraser, alluding to the sceptical state
of mind, to what she calls a post-societal approach. This is one that doubts the
possibilities of progressive social change, that expresses itself in ‘the absence of a
credible emancipatory project’, to a point at which the recognition of difference
obscures the need for social equality (Fraser, 1997: 5).
However, it is within this reality that another dynamic has begun to emerge.
Following a less-overt period (the ‘moment of latency’, according to Melucci,
1989), the social movements have begun to express themselves in other ways,
re-articulating the agendas of transformation. The very existence of the movements has been both modified and expanded. Slowly, throughout the decade of
the 1990s, there has grown an awareness of the planetary scale. Earlier movements have contributed to this: successful global campaigns have placed: new
themes on the international agenda (Greenpeace and the defence of the
environment); new contents for classical human rights campaigns (Amnesty
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International); or new contents within urban mobilizations (reclaiming the
streets for the people, organizing similar and simultaneous mobilizations in
different countries). The worldwide UN conferences have also contributed, in
so far as they have opened spaces for critical awareness of that which had been
advanced or left out of crucial areas for the whole of humanity (the global
conferences of the 1990s on the environment, human rights, population,
women, and development).
However, it is in the most recent years that there have appeared other
movements with truly planetary impact: the movements for ‘global justice’ or
‘anti-globalization’ or ‘alternative globalization’. These had their first dramatic
impact in Seattle and have continued, with increasing impact, until today. These
are movements of global social forces, disputing spaces and places of neo-liberal
globalization. In these movements, we see a coming together of trade unionists,
ecologists, feminists, older and younger fighters for social justice. The radical
division between the old and the new social movements, as it was perceived in
the 1970s, appears less evident in times of globalization. Other global dynamics
have brought together many new and old agendas, global and local struggles,
mixing territorial expressions with de-territorialized global networks (Cohen
and Rai, 2000). The logic of globalization thus expresses itself within the social
movements. If national politics are predetermined by what is decided at the
international level, it is at this level that protests, and alternative projects, must
also develop: ‘Anti-globalization advances because it adopts the logic of globalization’ (Cassen, 2001).
Different feminisms are contributing their multiple experiences and relations to this process. They have a long and rich experience of international
solidarity, displayed at the Latin American and Caribbean feminist encuentros
(encounters), expressed in problem and identity networks (lesbian collectives,
Afro-Latin-Caribbean movements), articulated at both regional and global
levels. The interactions developed since the UN conferences, especially that on
women in Beijing, 1995, have dramatically extended the web of global feminist
connections.
The impact of globalization on ‘feminist subjects’
[Frames denote] outlines of interpretation that allow individuals to locate,
perceive, identify and classify the elements of daily life and the wider
world. Frames give sense to actions and experiences, give sense to the
world and guide individual and collective action. Frames are the metaphors, symbolic representations and cognitive clues that model behaviour
and aid the evaluation of experiences . . . It is clear that frames are neither
permanent nor stable. Neither are they unique or consensual.
(Jelin, 2001: 7)
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In this new context, movements are faced by ambivalent tendencies. Globalization promotes homogenizing tendencies, re-structuring societies and the forms
within which individuals relate to structural and subjective changes (Marchand
and Sisson, 2001). Fragmentation and re-articulation occur within a new organizational form, which Castells has defined as the network society. These networks
have an
appalling multiplicity of combinations for the exchange of tangible and
intangible goods . . . that flow through a myriad of nodes and identifiable
channels that interconnect social groups around the world. The interactions in the domain of the networks comprehend all kinds of organizations . . . whose interrelations create tangled webs of networks,
superposing ones on others and in constant transformation. In this way,
new connections, new channels and nodes, are generated, destroying the
old ones and suffering in this process endless mutations and evolutions.
(Sagasti, 1998: 21–2)
In this cacophony of connections and overlappings, social movements see themselves modified and expressed in a different way. Not as unified actors, and not
only as movements of plural content. They are revealed rather as a ‘field of
actors’, wide, diverse, and in permanent growth and transformation (Jelin,
2001). Other authors, such as Sonia Alvarez, have re-conceptualized social
movements (in reference to the feminist ones) as a discursive field, expansive,
heterogeneous and generating polycentric areas. These extend over a distinctive
set of civil society organizations (Alvarez, quoted in Escobar, 2000: 6), creating
alternative publics that give new meaning, and confront the dominant cultural
and political meanings, within society.
In this heterogeneous field, forms of resistance vary. The places of intervention, connection and co-ordination of the collective will of thousands are multiplied through electronic exchanges. Identities become nomadic (Braidotti,
quoted in Eschle, 2001: 209) because they are in continual mobilization,
avoiding fixture in just one position. The exceptions here are the fundamentalisms. Here, fear of marginalization expresses itself in a permanent search for
certainty (Melucci, 1999), through insistence on one identity as true and as
excluding others.
The various feminisms enter the process of globalization along a different
path than those of the past. In other words: not from a single identity; not from
a hypothetical global feminist sisterhood (that de-contextualizes and de-politicizes
their present, referring to a common hegemonic form of female being); and not
from a unique understanding of feminist being. The symbolic and discursive
frameworks are much wider and more changeable, given that it is diversity and
heterogeneity that matters. Maybe a programme of political, social and
economic transformations – well defined and reached by consensus – is not so
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important. It is, rather, a matter of an explicit combination of the agendas of
diverse collectives and multiple autonomies. Lilian Celiberti asks, ‘What would
then be the form of collective unit that allowed respect for, and the making
explicit of, differences?’, adding that the rigid and weighty organization does not
respond to the exigency of an open individualism. Maybe new collectivities –
more flexible, lighter and changeable – are emerging (Celiberti ,2001).
From such a perspective, we are able to analyse the changes in orientation
and organizational form of feminist struggles at the global level. These forms
have never been either excessively centralized or hierarchical. This alternative
model is beginning to become a more common and more profound pattern for
social movements favouring an alternative globalization. This model emphasizes
the absence of a centralized structure, so as to allow for flexible articulations and
initiatives, and the creation of webs with varied dynamics.
The new dynamics of feminist activity
Many Latin American feminisms are beginning to recognize this new reality. The
coming Latin American and the Caribbean Feminist Encounter (the tenth in a
series that began in 1981) is on the theme of globalization. This is rather
significant, given that it is in this space that the feminisms of this region reveal
their diversities and advances. They here express their new findings, connections
and subjectivities, and sum up their new and multiple courses of reflection and
action. In turn, global networks, such as DAWN (Development Alternatives for
Women in a New Era), AWID (Association of Women in Development) and
WLUML (Women Living Under Muslim Laws), have long been influencing this
new global reality, in articulation with the global-regional Latin-Caribbean
region.
Against the background of these new dynamics and spaces, I am interested
in analysing the feminist presence at the World Social Forum. This a pluralist
space favouring alternative globalization, in which many of the new strategies
and preoccupations of the globalized social movements, like the feminist one,
come together. It is also a complex site for connections with other movements,
whose orientation towards feminists is not always unambiguous.
The World Social Forum: a space for the disputation of
pensamiento unico (the single idea)
. . . diversity is our strength and the base of our unity. We are a global
solidarity movement, united in our determination to fight against the
concentration of wealth, the proliferation of poverty and inequalities and
the destruction of our earth. We are living and constructing alternative
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systems and using creative ways to promote them. We are building a large
from our struggles against a system based on sexism,, racism and violence,
which privileges the interests of capital and patriarchy over the needs and
aspirations of the peoples.
(Call of Social Movements, World Social Forum II)
The attempts to influence the World Social Forum (WSF) connect up with new
feminist tendencies that express the new struggles, politics of alliances, conflicts
and challenges that the global space brings for the feminisms. It is not the only
space for feminist intervention but it is indeed the one that concentrates many
of the multiple strategies and new forms of existence. It is, undoubtedly, an
ambivalent space, and maybe for that very reason one of great wealth. This is
because it brings us closer to the contradictory face of alternative globalization,
which at the same time that that it produces new signals and subjectivities, drags
with it old exclusions and conservatisms.
The World Social Forum (in its first and second emanations) has been already
turned into a meeting place for the struggles and proposals of a democratic global
civil society in formation. It expresses the hopes, riches, disagreements,
enquiries and proposals of social movements facing the dramatic and growing
exclusion of citizenships produced by a hegemonic globalization. These social
movements, with different identities, with multiple actors/actresses, have
adopted this space as their own, proposing new perspectives of utopian thought
– somewhat lost from the social horizon of recent decades. This is its richness
and strength.
The argument for an alternative globalization, expressed in many forms
during the last decade of the 20th century, and having Seattle as its turning point,
is beginning to express itself in this space. Its two slogans, ‘no to pensamiento único’
and ‘another world is possible’, express the orientation of this other globalization,
whose force is the ethical and utopian conviction that alternatives can be built
by democratic and emancipatory forces. And that, in order to make it possible,
there is no single recipe, nor a single alternative or subject, but a multiplicity of
social actors and actresses, contributing their many ideas of resistance and of
building democracies with social justice and equity.
Its Charter of Principles is eloquent in its orientation, in the interpretation
of the global context and in a transformational orientation towards globalization.
Without power of authority, without making representative claims, ‘Rejecting
the notion of acting as some kind of global vanguard, in either leadership or
policy terms, the Charter suggests that the function of the WSF is precisely that
of providing an agora . . . for the movement against neo-liberal globalization’
(Waterman, 2002: 1).
The WSF is also a space for the coming together of new and old structures
of thought and action and, therefore, of both convergences and confrontations.
That does not make it less feasible. The tensions and contradictions, the different
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levels at which they are expressed, are the raw material for the recovery of the
diversity of sensibilities and questions raised by the new stages of globalization.
This is a ‘field of actors’ in interaction, enlarging the symbolic and discursive
framework of democracy in global space.
Feminisms in the World Social Forum
‘Another world is possible’ is the motto of the World Social Forum. From
a feminine perspective the task is much greater than it looks. Without any
doubt, we are subverting dominant single thinking. But are we subverting
also each other, with our machismo, racism and other intolerances? The
specificity of the World Social Forum is to that of establishing a dialogue
among the diverse. It is this that gives originality and power to the Forum,
in constructing a globalization of the citizens of Planet Earth. But the road
is long and full of obstacles. I hope that the women force us to be radical,
acting as they have up to now, revealing what we do wrong and making life
difficult for us.
(Grzybowsky, 2002)
The presence of the various feminisms in the WSF is both a contribution and a
challenge. Changes in subjectivities have occurred also amongst feminists and
their agendas for transformation, re-incorporating the ‘forgotten agendas’ or
those weakened on the long march towards institutional empowerment. This is
an agenda that attempts to integrate gender justice with economic justice,
recovering at the same time both cultural subversivity and subjective experience,
as a strategy for more ambitious transformations. In this fight for justice, the
various feminisms are beginning to incorporate the diversity not only of the lives
of women but also of the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic characteristics of our
societies – and this without giving up the historical struggles for physical, socioeconomic, political and cultural autonomy. This fight concerns two types of
injustice: the socio-economic, rooted in the political and economic structures of
society, and the cultural or symbolic, rooted in the social patterns of representation, interpretation and communication. Both injustices are suffered in
common by women, as well as many others racially, ethnically, sexually and
geographically discriminated. Expressed in the unequal distribution of resources
and in the absence of recognition, they are made concrete in the struggles for
redistribution and identity. And although these struggles have not been always
connected, they are intrinsically linked, ‘because androcentric and sexist norms
are institutionalized in the state and the economy, and the economic disadvantages of women restrict their “voice”, hindering their equal participation in
cultural creation’ (Fraser, 1997: 33).
The various feminisms also contribute what has become an intrinsic part of
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FSM existence and development: its internationalist forms, accumulated during
30 years of Second Wave feminist experience. As Waterman says, there can be
no doubt of the contribution of the feminists of the 1970–80s to the movement
of global justice, as much because of their internationalist experience as because
‘much of the thinking of the new movement . . . and behaviour . . . can be traced
back to the feminists’ (Waterman, 2002: 6).
But the conditions for that internationalism have changed dramatically.
Struggles for recognition were, in past decades, the crucial axis of this internationalism. It could hardly have been any other way, because feminism had to
escape invisibility and express its existence and its demands. That dimension
must not be forgotten. However, the interpretative frames of action are now
different, as also the opportunities and risks. The old actors, and the new ones
now appearing, are both challenged to present themselves positively and forcefully in the face of this new reality. This leaves no choice: in order to ensure
recognition there has to be redistribution. And in order that this redistribution
be just and inclusive, recognition is required. As Jelin (2001: 7) says, those who
do not take account of this new reality ‘will miss the historical train and get left
behind’.
In the attempt to avoid being thus left behind, there have arisen numerous
alliances and initiatives. These combine the issues of economic justice and the
politics of recognition, whilst taking account also of the new dynamics and forms
of feminism. For example, we see extensive reflections on macro-economic and
macro-political processes, and on the process of globalization itself. These are
accompanied by feminist interventions on the interaction of the global with the
local. There are new, more flexible and horizontal, forms of articulation (the
Iniciativa Feminista Cartagena and Articulación Feminista Marcosur, to name
two of most recent, that in turn group various networks and organizations).
These have a considerable capacity to both reflect and strategize, and are beginning to produce more sophisticated analyses of the implications of globalization.
There are other inclusive global networks, like the Global March of Women.
There is continuing interaction between this and other networks in which many
Latin American women are active. Additionally, such historical networks as
DAWN continue to contribute to this new reality. In all these feminist networks,
one can find a significant group of young feminists, diversifying individual and
collective movement leaderships. These new networks, already present within
the WSF, have made a considerable impact and have ensured that feminism has
been on the main Forum agendas, with a feminist presence in the most significant
debates (DAWN, 2002).
However, along with this substantial contribution, there comes the challenge of this space, which simultaneously opens up and continues old exclusions
for women. Constructed from new visions and sensibilities, the WSF nonetheless
reveals these discriminations and exclusions. The WSM reveals a dialectical
relationship between the movement for global justice in general and the feminist
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movement in particular (Waterman, 2002). This articulation is not an easy one,
as Sonia Correa says, Because it implies a double strategy for women: commitment to the collective struggles of social movements at the same time as trying
to transform its perspective in relation to feminism, to gender, to difference, to
the range of thought (Correa, 2002). There therefore occur processes of articulation and processes of dispute. This was evident in the difference between the
First and Second Forums. The presence and activity of feminism in the Second
Forum, although insufficient, was much more visible and effective than in the
First. This was thanks to energetic interventions planned beforehand by the
feminists present, as well as to the inexhaustible work of the Brazilian feminists.
And we are not alone in this matter. The fact that, for example, Cándido
Grzybowsky, one of the leading visionaries and promoters of the WSF, took a
public position on women’s exclusion is an encouraging fact:
There is a structural bias that obstructs the advancement of women’s issues
. . . It is sad to recognize that the WSF has been somewhat limited in social
terms on the feminine side. This limitation is what obscured the 52 percent
of women’s participation in the First Forum. It is this limitation that, even
with 42 percent of women’s participation in the Second Forum, and
despite their greater visibility, did not allow for their proportional
presence in the Forum’s conferences, nor in its Organizing Committee.
This demonstrates, as Gigi Francisco says, that ‘patriarchy lives above all
in non-written attitudes and norms, reproduced also amongst those forces
considered progressive’.
(cited in Varsallo, 2001)
This is pensamiento único, concealed even within the strategies of change.
Our fundamentalisms and theirs
The Articulation Feminista Marcosur (Southern Frame) comes out of common
experiences of feminists involved in the Fourth World Conference on Women,
Beijing, 1995. It is born of a creative and co-ordinated process that did not
exhaust itself in the Conference itself, but which has, rather, strengthened
expressions of feminism and their innovatory capacity. The creation of the
Articulación Feminista Marcosur responded to the need to develop space for
feminist intervention in the global arena. The confrontation with pensamientos
únicos, as much in the neo-liberal model as in those of forces seeking to change
this, is its form of intervention in the global.
In this second emanation of the WSF, the Articulación Feminista Marcosur, along
with the networks and organizations of which it is composed, provided a series
of discussion spaces and communicational initiatives, with a definite impact.
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Workshops like ‘Women Migrants: Frontiers Wide and Alien’, ‘Sex, Lies and
International Trade’, reflected some of the new feminist concerns. AFM also
organized a creative and provocative campaign on fundamentalisms of all types,
and it was in the change of organizing the Forum theme on ‘Discrimination and
Intolerance’, addressed to diversity and exclusion. This theme area attempted to
express and strengthen the presence of diversity on the basis of those movements
– multi-racial, multi-cultural, sexual – the diversity of which is profoundly
affected by exclusion (thus placing at the centre of debate the intolerance, traps
and blindness with which society limits diversity). ‘There are two ways of being
lost . . . through segregation, isolated in particularity, or through dilution in the
universal.This is the continuing dilemma in relation to the debate about the place
of human diversity in the project of authoritarian globalization’ (Sueli Carnerio,
of the Afro-Latin American-Caribbean Movement).
This theme also demonstrated the arbitrary nature of that otherness to
which are condemned those sexual practices that do not adapt themselves to
good behaviour, and how this excludes and makes invisible other experiences
and knowledges: ‘When the names with which they identify us and the words
with which they label us are identified with shame, evil and invisibility, our
humanity is largely torn from us, and all the grand ideas which we consider we
have given our people turn into dust’ (Anna Leah Sarabia of ILGA, the international association of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and another sexual minorities).
The campaign ‘Against Fundamentalisms, People are Fundamental’, sought
to
amplify those voices that are firmly opposed to discriminatory social practices, discourses and social representations, submitting people to situations
of oppression or vulnerability.We believe in the possibility of constructing,
in the symbolic and political fields, an understanding of human beings,
whether women or men, under which these practices become impossible.
The content of fundamentalism was extended to
those religious, economic, scientific or cultural expressions that attempt
to negate humanity in its diversity, legitimizing violent mechanisms for the
subjection of one group by another, of one person by another. Essentially
exclusionary and militaristic, fundamentalisms undermine the construction of a project of humanity, within which all people have the right to have
rights, sacrificing, in the extreme of perversity, the lives of women.
(Marcosur Document)
The campaign dependent on repeated mobilizations within the Forum, under
the slogan, ‘Against Fundamentalisms Your Mouth is Fundamental’. Giving this
a global content and presence, AFM invited feminists experiencing different
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fundamentalist realities to present testimonies of their strategies of resistance
and solidarity, inaugurating the daily evening sessions the Forum had organized
for a wide range of testimonies. Feminists from Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel,
Brazil, Colombia, the USA and Nigeria presented accounts of religious, cultural
and economic fundamentalism, from all regions of the world, including Latin
America. Co-ordination with such global networks as Women Living Under
Muslim Laws was particularly important. The experience of Palestinians and
Israelis, co-ordinating and struggling as much against Israeli aggression as the
gender exclusivity within both realities was particularly moving. The success of
this campaign, with all those present, expressed itself not only in the impact
within the WSF but also in the manner in which other networks, alliances and
initiatives took on board the perspective proposed by Marcosur.
The theme of fundamentalism was an attempt to bring together different
realities, to destroy racist and exclusionary representations in the face of the
complex reality presented by the Muslim countries. It took the form, further of
a global feminist solidarity, taking account of new attitudes towards diversity:
‘In this manner, I believe, we begin to rewrite feminist solidarity for global
times, on the basis of distinct texts and voices’ (Guerra Palmero, 2000).
The ‘Planeta Femea’ (Female Planet), a space created within the WSF by the
Brazilian feminists, was a place of meeting, of exchange of strategies, cultural
activities and feminist discussions. From here began the demonstration on abortion, another anti-fundamentalist activity, raised in testimony form by the
network of Catholics for the Right to Decide. This was led by the 28 September
Campaign (day of struggle for abortion in Latin America), which was simultaneously a movement against the Bush policy of conditioning financial aid on a
country’s non-involvement in pro-abortion action.
Redistribution and recognition within the United Nation
system
The practice of negotiation with states at regional/global level was something
characteristic of the processes around the Beijing Conference. Here the various
feminisms, through their NGOs and sectoral or identity networks, built visibility
through their global impact on inter-state spaces on the basis of their autonomy
and capacity to make policy proposals. Now feminists express new strategic
struggles in these same spaces. The World UN Conference on Finance for
Development (occurring one month after WSF2 in Monterrey, Mexico) was a
space in which feminists sought to influence macro-economics and politics. They
arrived at the WSF, with reflections and actions, accumulated through a multiple
process, structured around the preparation for participation in the Conference
and a critical analysis of the preparatory document. A new alliance, the Cartagena
Feminist Initiative, and a position document, were the results of a preparatory
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seminar in Cartagena, Colombia.The urgency of creating an alternative paradigm
to that of neo-liberal globalization was expressed in this document.
These alliances and this collective statement of position would have been
none the less impossible without the parallel development of another process –
perhaps the most vital and political – that went beyond the Conference and
implied lasting effects in the medium and longer term. This was the formation
of a collective leadership through the articulation of feminist networks and
institutions, contained in the Cartagena Feminist Initiative. This leadership is,
on the basis of the Conference themes and the spaces in which each is involved,
creating a current of feminist opinion and action on macro themes. Certain
historical global networks such as DAWN, or regional ones such as REPEM (the
Women’s Popular Education Network), have a key role in this (electronic)
space of global reflection and action. The dynamics being facilitated by this
initiative are of substantial significance in the region, and have considerable
potential capacity. This is because they have, as sounding box, many other
feminist bodies, as well as the audiences specific to each network. These both
contribute and learn, thus generating an informed collective opinion. In the
Forum, the Cartagena Initiative organized various regional workshops and a
Global Seminar on Finance for Development. This was done together with the
global network, Social Watch, thus spreading the alliance but without losing its
own profile.
The above is not the only form of intervention in official global space. The
urgency of contributing to global norms, in which women’s rights are recognized
that are not established at national level, has generated new initiatives and
emphases in both local and global struggles. Confronted with the enormous
weight of the Catholic church in the region, feminists are co-ordinating local and
global strategies with the object of recovering the lay and non-confessional
nature of the states. One of these is the demand that the Vatican not be a member
of the Assembly of the United Nations. Another fundamental perspective is that
of consolidating global norms, still thin and partial, in relation to human rights,
and to the specific defence of women rights.This is a movement led by CLADEM
and supported by many feminist organizations and NGOs in the region. It is
seeking a Convention on Sexual and Reproductive Rights, which would play the
same role as that of the Convention of Belem du Para, of the Interamerican
System, in relation to violence against women – one of the most significant
medium-term (minimally five years) campaigns
The autonomy of dialogue at the global level
Well, then, we are witnessing multiple strategies oriented towards different
spaces, but flowing together at the WSF. More traditional interpretations
would differentiate between a ‘reformist’ and ‘transformatory’ tendency (an
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interpretation expressed, in a violent polarization, at the 6th Latin American and
Feminist Encounter, following the World Conference on Women, in which
certain feminist tendencies accused others of ‘betraying’ the movement by its
participation in Beijing). This was an issue at the Forum, though without such a
polarization. Even so there is a tendency to take positions based on such differences. But, as Michael Hardt says, we need to surpass a reading of such divisions
in terms of a traditional model of ideological conflict between opposed sectors,
because political struggle in the age of networks no longer functions in this
manner. Referring to political parties, but with more general implications,
Hardt argues that it is possible to dominate a conference table but it is impossible
to dominate the democratic power of movements, and that such bodies will
eventually be incorporated by ‘the multitude’, capable of transforming all fixed
and centralized movements into various other nodes, thanks to an infinitely
expanding network (Hardt, 2002).
All these interactions, finally, suggest more than new emphases or temporary alliances. They also have a significant effect on conceptualizations of
movement autonomy. It seems that, in this position-under-construction, there
is a perception that women’s affairs are democratic political affairs of the first
order, that they affect both women and men; and that democratic issues, at the
cultural, social, economic and political levels, have to be issues of feminist
concern and part of their national and global agendas.
These new orientations broaden the spectrum of feminist action and permit
it to advance from struggles for the democratization of gender relations, so as to
feed into anti-racist, andanti-homophobic struggles, movements for economic
justice, for a healthy planet, for symbolic cultural transformation, etc. This
increasing tendency to recover a transversal perspective – the intersection of
gender and multiple other democratic, political and cultural struggles that raise
not only women’s but also multiple other social movements – is one of the most
profound and promising changes.
These new strategies and discoveries suggest the urgency of constructing a
different future, and they recuperate one of the basic characteristics of the
feminist wave of the 20th century – its conviction that feminist struggles augure
the possibility of a different world, sustained by the recognition of the other,
based on their difference. These ideas are now shared and strengthened by wide
sectors of democratic civil society, as demonstrated, again, by the two mobilizing
slogans of the World Social Forum: ‘No to Pensamiento Único!’ and ‘Another World
is Possible!’
Acknowledgements
This article is an updated version of ‘Los nuevos derroteros de los feminismos
Latinoamericanos en lo global: Las disputas feministas por una globalización
RCUS100215.fm Page 919 Tuesday, December 2, 2003 1:31 PM
F EMINISM & GLOBALIZAT ION
alternativa’, presented at the conference ‘Representaciones de Identidades y
Diferencias Sociales en Tiempos de Globalización’ held at the Universidad
Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela, in May 2002. Free translation from
the Spanish original by Peter Waterman has been approved by Gina Vargas. Some
quotations have been re-translated from the Spanish. The author’s common term
‘feminismos’ has been rendered as ‘various feminisms’, or ‘feminism’ and ‘feminists’. ‘Pensamiento Único’, what the British know as ‘There is No Alternative’ or
‘TINA’, also has no agreed English form, which is why it has been largely
preserved. As final translator, Peter Waterman expresses his appreciation for a
free test version of the Word Magic English–Spanish Professional translation
programme, and to Daniel Chavez (and the translation programme he worked
with).
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