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- Convenors:
-
Deepta Chopra
(Institute of Development Studies)
Tessa Lewin (Institute of Development Studies)
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- Chair:
-
Sohela Nazneen
(Institute of Development Studiesies, University of Sussex)
- Discussant:
-
Sohela Nazneen
(Institute of Development Studiesies, University of Sussex)
- Formats:
- Papers
- Stream:
- Global inequalities
- Sessions:
- Monday 28 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel will explore women's struggles that visibilise inequalities and intersectional oppressions, with a focus on their strategies to counter or unsettle backlash. We will showcase women's lived experiences of resistance, and new and emerging forms, spaces and methodologies of this resistance.
Long Abstract:
This panel will explore women's organising and struggles that visibilise inequalities and intersectional oppressions created as a result of backlash against women's rights and exacerbated by Covid-19 effects, with a focus on their strategies to counter or unsettle this backlash.
We will pay special attention to whether women's organising has taken new forms, including: length of organising; formation of intersectional alliances, creation of new counter-spaces (physical or virtual) and emergence of new kinds of leadership. We will reflect on the extent to which these struggles have managed to draw in new members, because of new forms or modes of organising and methodologies that include digital and visual-cultural forms of protests. The panel will draw attention to the continuities and discontinuities between women's struggles against backlash, and their everyday lives. In this way, we will interrogate boundaries between 'public', visible spaces of organising and 'private' (often invisible) spaces of women's lives; We will also examine the multiple roles played by women as activists and the interaction of the nature of the civic space with these roles.
Special importance will be given to showcasing women's lived experiences of organising, leading and participating in resistance. We invite papers that focus on the nature of the resistance, and their real impact or perceived effects - including changes in discourses regarding women's rights; changes in in policy/ practice; or changes in the perception of women by themselves and others as political actors. We will showcase new and emerging forms, spaces and methodologies of this resistance.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 28 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the multi-stakeholder activist front leading the legalisation of abortion in Argentina between 2005 and 2020, in the form of a Campaign for Access to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion. Discourse and policy change implications will be the focus of the present analysis.
Paper long abstract:
After the passing of a bill that finally legalised voluntary abortion access in Argentina in late December of 2020, this paper seeks to address the main takeaways from the efforts made by the Campaign for Access to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion since its inception in 2005 until the law received a favourable vote in Congress to answer the following questions: i) what factors account for differentiated impacts in agenda-setting for the legislative treatment - or lack thereof - of several iterations of an abortion bill?; ii) what impact did the Campaign have in providing a discourse change that was paramount in treating abortion access as an issue of public health?; and iii) what can we learn from the Campaign from a feminist and activist perspective in regards to the future of abortion access and feminist struggles in Argentina, the Latin American region and the Global South as a whole?
Paper short abstract:
This article examines the motivations and experiences of first time muslim women protestors in the Shaheen Bagh resistance in India. It shows how, these women personified an identity of 'mother-activists', and in doing so, erased the binaries between the 'ghar' (home) and the 'bahir' (outside).
Paper long abstract:
This article examines the motivations of first time women protestors for participating in the Shaheen Bagh resistance against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act. It highlights women’s experiences of protesting for their and their children’s citizenship rights, and the impact that women’s presence in this struggle has made to the nature of the struggle itself. It argues firstly, that the role that these first-time women protestors played in these protests made them express and grow their political subjectivities as activists. Pinpointing the conditions under which women feel compelled to take up issues in the public domain of protest, or the ‘bahir’ (outside), this article shows that the threat that women felt to their and their children’s citizenship rights in their ‘ghar’ or home, was a primary consideration. Secondly, the article reflects on how these women brought their caring roles, hitherto carried out in the personal space of their ‘ghar’ (home), into the public space of protests, or the ‘bahir’ – thereby impacting the very nature and form of the struggle. In this way, the article proposes that the women protestors have personified and lived out a composite identity as ‘mother-activists’. This case shows how the public space of protest (or the ‘bahir’) can, and indeed has to, co-exist within and in conjunction to the private realm of women’s everyday lives (or the ‘ghar’), for their sustained participation in struggles. The paper proposes that in becoming mother-activists, women protestors erase and deconstruct the binaries between the ‘ghar’ and the ‘bahir’.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores Jahangirnagar University students' mobilization and struggle for implementation of the anti-sexual harassment policy in Bangladesh. It analyses the movement's strategies to counter stigmatization of activists and masculinized political norms to transform to a national movement.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores how the Jahangirnagar University students mobilised for a sexual harassment policy in educational institutes since the 1990s, and how the struggle for effective implementation of the guidelines still continues. Based on ongoing research, the paper analyses the current strategies of Chatro Union (left student wing of JU) to keep the movement alive with changing mediums of activism, in response to COVID 19.
Female students of JU decided to speak openly about sexual harassment for the first time in public in the 1990s, and protested against perpetrators at the university. The movement witnessed multiple turning points over the years and strategized to expand their reach involving other student organisations, left wing parties, students and teachers. Incidents at JU ignited the anti-sexual harassment movement at other universities, ultimately resulting in the High Court Directives in 2009 against sexual harassment. Though the HC Directive was to be treated strictly as law and followed with immediate effect; there has been negligible progress in the implementation. Most of the universities do not have a written policy on sexual harassment; and students and staff are unaware about what constitutes sexual harassment. In Bangladesh’s “masculinised political culture”, sexually harassed students hesitate to file complaints for fear of stigmatisation and criticism, and for the possibility of not getting any redress due to the politically influential role of the alleged offender. The paper explores the resistances faced by the anti-sexual harassment movement and how its seeking to position itself and create alliances to overcome this opposition.
Paper short abstract:
Despite being prominent actors in public protests demanding state accountability, why do women find it hard to be visible in protests’ leadership as well as in decision-making inside their homes? We probe this invisibility analyzing the intersection of patriarchy and leadership in conflict settings.
Paper long abstract:
In the past three years protesters in Quetta have twice demanded the presence of Pakistan’s chief of army staff and the prime minister to hold them accountable over the killings of Hazaras, an ethnic minority in the region. Twice the most powerful man in the country came. Key in these protests was the public role of Hazara women demanding answers. Yet, despite being prominent actors in public protests demanding state accountability, many of these women found it hard to be part of the male-dominated decision-making leadership bodies controlling these protests. Additionally, the empowering feeling of holding the most powerful actors in the country accountable publicly did not translate into any emancipation in the privacy of the home for most of these women. In this paper, we analyze a series of interviews conducted with key female participants in these protests to unpack the intersection of institutional barriers such as patriarchy and leadership attributes, and its impact on women’s visibility in decision-making processes both inside and outside the home. Through a deeper understanding of why women’s social and political actions that are visible publicly in conflict and violence-affected settings do not trigger larger institutional changes, we aim to contribute to the literature on women leadership and resistance.