The e-discussion took place right at the beginning of my 3 month travel in Asia, a quest to understand a little better the trends in feminism and gender dynamics in South and South East Asia. With the hashtag #5thwcw, connected feminists from around the globe began to discuss this question: do we want a 5th world conference on women? As many, I raised the issue of intersectionality as one of the core ones at stake for such a conference. But how can a world conference on women reflect intersectionality and diversity of contexts, constraints, lives, that women experience throughout the globe?
Yes, I want a global conference on women, if it is a conference of women, if the rules are changed, if it is a bottom-up process.
Yes, I want a global conference on women, if it’s neither a governments’ conference nor an NGO forum. It can be both, but more than ever it needs to be above all something else: a global dialogue with grassroots movements.
Let me try and list a few simple ideas while on the plane between Bangladesh and Nepal. Sitting next to me, two young women, at once excited and nervous, just told me with a full smile and a limited English that they are on their way to Hong Kong, where they will be domestic helpers. How can we make sure these two women’s voices and lives will be represented in a world conference on women?
I think that the answer lies in the very core principles of feminist organizing:
Create a safe space where we can sit together and organize collective action
Global forum have always been fosterers of my feminism, the best way I’ve known so far to meet like-minded activists from all over the world and strategize together: e-discussions, e-forums and social networks will never replace informal brainstorming and conversations for real. We launched a transnational campaign for abortion rights after 2012 AWID Global Forum; the project of international feminist network took shape after we gathered at the 2013 World Social Forum. The web 2.0 is far from explaining the current trends in transnational feminism: as before, we need to meet, we need to speak and we need to confront our experiences.
But policy-makers don’t come to civil society forums, and grassroots activists don’t come to UN conferences. A 5th conference on women must have the ambition of building the bridge between these two worlds.
Guarantee no judgment, no hierarchy: the expertise lies in each of us
To achieve such a level of ambition, the global conference would have to avoid a number of traps:
Consensus: we surely don’t need that. We know that the current outcome of UN negotiations, which is an indicator of the current global consensus, will be well reflected in the forthcoming SDGs. We have been so focused at influencing this process that we didn’t collectively put enough energy in discussing the paradigms beneath. What we need is to explore the non-consensual areas, those where strategies are the most needed because they slow down progress towards gender equality. We desperately need to talk about sexualities, intersecting inequalities, body rights. We need to tackle the fact that women’s rights have been lost in the gender and development agenda.
Expertise. We don’t need to invite experts to explain to women what are their needs and priorities. The expertise is in every woman.
Hierarchies. We know that unequal power relationships are the roots of patriarchy. But hierarchy is not only between women and men, it is also between those who have the money and those who don’t; between those who speak English and those who don’t; between younger and older generations of women (and of feminists); between the global North and the global South and all the other Norths and Souths in each of these two binary blocks.
Act in solidarity, remove the barriers and build bridges
Therefore I propose some principles for such a conference:
First, consider that there is no “women’s problem” to solve, but willing women to gather, voices to listen, debates to facilitate. Then, make sure these diverse voices are able to attend: invite individuals to apply to go beyond organizations, largely subsidize the travel costs, and prioritize translation from and to more than the usual 3 languages.
Ensure visibility to women’s voices: create connections and facilitate dialogue between grassroots women and policymakers. Too often are we the lobbyists, pushing our priorities, struggling to be listened. Let the ordinary women be the speakers for once.
And finally, consider that such a conference will be as much useful to ensure a renewed global commitment, as it will be to help strengthen transnational feminist organizing, which is in my opinion the most powerful agent of change. Therefore, decide that these two objectives are equally important.
Actually, let’s call a spade a spade: it shouldn’t be a conference but a gathering. I shouldn’t be on women, but of feminists. It should be a global feminist gathering.
Charlotte Soulary 