STRUGGLES OF THE GLOBAL WOMEN'S MOVEMENT REVIEWED

Women who figured significantly in the global women's movement in the last three decades were invited to speak on their experiences working in advocacy for human rights at an event called Bagels and Books at the International Women's Tribune Centre (IWTC) in New York on 01 March 2005.

Featured speakers were Peggy Antrobus who has worked as a consultant for various international organisations as well as various UN Agencies including UNDP, FAO, UNIFEM and UNFPA and is currently with the Development Alternatives for Women for a New Era (DAWN); and Leticia Ramos Shahani, a former Philippine senator and served as UN Assistant Secretary General.

Antrobus criticised how currently the women's movement has been rendered invisible by being lumped among other 'civil society' by international agencies such as the UN. "I don't like people talking about civil society organisations. It takes the politics out of it, it takes the feminism out of it." But she was hopeful about the current composition of the women's movement, that there is new energy coming out from young women who are organising their own movements. "This is a whole generation that is giving us new leadership," she mused. Antrobus introduced her book entitled The Global Women's Movement.

Shahani shared her own recollections of how women did pioneering work in organising around the first world conferences as well as the context of the organising amidst the political environment of that decade. She was the chair of the 2nd world conference on women in held in Nairobi, Kenya in 1980. At the time, she recalls how they fought for gender mainstreaming policy. Women were invisible in policy-making back then. She also recalled how even women were excluded in policies on issues such as science and technology, family planning or human rights.

Reported by Aileen Familara
Isis International-Manila for Asia Pacific Women's Watch