Kinsey Dialogue Series #4: Claiming Global Space: Global Grassroots Movements

The influence of transnational civil society organizations and networks - both civil and uncivil - in global politics and unprecedented. Among them, those dedicated to greater social and economic equity and equality, to human security, ecological sustainability, peace, inclusion, and tolerance, have played a particularly effective role in restructuring the norms that inform policy and regulatory frameworks for the world. Some scholarly analysts grant that they have in fact effectively restructured global politics in visible and lasting ways. For this very reason, perhaps, their legitimacy, accountability and constituency base is being challenged by states, multinational corporations, scholars, and leaders of the powerful global institutions they seek to influence or discipline. These challenges make it imperative that they democratize their own structures and the processes by which they generate their agendas. They also bring into the limelight the emerging set of transnational grassroots networks and movements that are contesting for space in global policy making. These newer entities can teach us a great deal about how to create more grounded, constituency-based, accountable global advocacy structures that embody the right to represent those for whom they speak

Feminist Mentoring For Feminist Futures Part 1: The Theory

Feminist leadership is essential for transformation at the individual level, as well as organizations and movements, and has been one of CREA's core strategies since its inceptionHowever, translating feminist leadership from concept to practice is a challenging task. The work of undoing and rebuilding systemic and internalized models of power and leadership requires structured and ongoing support — namely, feminist mentoring. In 2016, CREA and Global Fund for Women designed the SAYWLM (South Asia Young Women's Leadership and Mentoring) initiative to build a cadre of young feminist leaders and movement builders through a process of systematic mentoring. This initiative's theory and practice of feminist mentoring breaks traditional models of mentoring that often do not interrogate patriarchal power structures — including in the mentoring relationship itself — and pioneered a model that centers and performs feminist values in the mentoring context. It also demonstrated the vital role that mentoring can play in strengthening feminist leadership in practice.Based on the learning from this initiative, the three-part guide 'Feminist Mentoring for Feminist Futures' was developed to support others who wish to explore the feminist mentoring pathway. The guide explores the theory and practice of feminist mentoring and its impact on both Mentors and young women leaders

Crossborder feminisms: Wendy harcourt in conversation with Srilatha Batliwala, Sunila Abeysekera and Rawwida Baksh

Wendy Harcourt interviews three feminist activists who have been engaged in feminist action from the grassroots to transnational levels. They reflect on changes in feminist and women's movement organizing, both in terms of what are the new issues emerging today and what feminist organizing has given to transformational movement building

Status of Rural Women in Karnataka (NIAS Books and Special Publications No. SP4-2006)

Since the beginning of the UN decade for Women, women activists and scholars have systematically brought to light the oppression, exploitation and marginalization of Indian women in all walks of life. The benchmark in this respect was the Status of Women in India report of 1974. The role played by economic, social, cultural and political institutions in reinforcing this subordination was highlighted in this report and is now better understood. The growing women's movement in the country increasingly brought pressure on the government and political parties to acknowledge the low status of women, and, more important, respond to women's concerns through a series of preventive and promotive programs and supportive legislation

Poder y empoderamiento de las mujeres

El empoderamiento representa un desafío a las relaciones de poder existentes y busca obtener mayor control sobre las fuentes de poder. Conduce a lograr autonomía individual, a estimular la resistencia, la organización colectiva y la protesta mediante la movilización. En suma, los procesos de empoderamiento son, para las mujeres, un desafío a la ideología patriarcal con miras a transformar las estructuras que refuerzan la discriminación de género y la desigualdad social. El empoderamiento, por lo tanto, se entiende como un proceso de superación de la desigualdad de género. El empoderamiento no un es proceso lineal con un inicio y un fin definidos de manera igual para las diferentes mujeres o grupos de mujeres. El empoderamiento es diferente para cada individuo o grupo según su vida, contexto e historia y según la localización de la subordinación en lo personal, familiar comunitario, nacional, regional y global. En este libro se privilegia el uso de los términos empoderamiento y empoderar, porque ellos señalan la acción, y porque empoderamiento implica que el sujeto se convierte en agente activo como resultado de un accionar, que varía de acuerdo con cada situación concreta

Gendering Farmer Producer companies at the Agricultural Frontier of India: Empowerment or Burden?

Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) are driving agricultural frontier expansions in India. Their main objectives are to mobilize small-scale farmers to collectivize and organize in order to gain collective bargaining power, in the process empowering farmers and eliminating middlemen. However, they have not established any demonstrable success in achieving these goals. This chapter seeks firstly, to draw transnational connections between agro-ecological transformations in India and larger market/capital expansions through FPCs, contextualized amidst national development goals for farmer empowerment, changing labor patterns, and ecological degradation. In doing so, it will, secondly, explore the gendered dimension of FPCs in India by analyzing how the process of establishing women-only FPCs by using mandatory inclusion as a participation tool can serve to disempower and further burden women. While mandatory involvement of women farmers on their Board of Directors as an empowerment strategy can prove crucial to enhancing women’s decision-making roles, this chapter asks whether such an inclusionary approach remains meaningful to achieve FPC success in a context where external support for women’s empowerment is not provided