openDemocracy is partnering the Nobel Women's Initiative to cover their second international conference in Guatemala, May 10-12th 2009. Conference participants, rapporteurs and openDemocracy's team - Isabel Hilton, Rosemary Bechler and Jane Gabriel - will provide analysis and a view from inside the gathering as 80 women activists and scholars meet to redefine democracy. The conference is being organized in partnership with Just Associates and the local host partner is the Rigoberta Menchu Tum foundation.
openDemocracy's coverage will be linked with FIRE (Feminist International Radio Endeavour) and the Nobel Women's Initiative website and will feature a blog, photos and video reports.
We are grateful to the Barrow Cadbury Trust and Tides Foundation for their financial support in making this coverage possible.
Only by starting from common principles agreed upon by all, rather than limiting ourselves to the principles which only we believe in, will we make progress with human rights. Shirin Ebadi writes from the Nobel Women's Initiative conference.Read now...
We call upon all states and multilateral institutions to recognize that the democratization process is incomplete, and does not end with elections. No country or society can claim to be democratic when the women who form half its citizens are denied their right to life, to their human rights and entitlements, and to safety and security. Read more...
It's hard to believe it's the third and final day of the conference. In a way, it seems like we just arrived. In another, it feels like we've been here for weeks, if not longer. We've come to expect conversations across meals and coffee breaks that span region, sector, discipline, and point of view. Read more...
Shirin Ebadi, Jody Williams and Mairead Corrigan speak to FIRE about their involvement with the Nobel Women's Initiative. Listen now...
All events of this kind have their own shape and dynamics. If Day One was an eager and passionate Tatiana's letter, not to Onegin, but to an already cynical yet surely reclaimable democracy – we seem to have collectively matured overnight. There are three major themes to this great day's proceedings Read more...
Monday's program was full of provocative and interesting discussions by women working for rights and democracy in repressive and violent contexts. Upcoming elections in both Sudan and Burma will present opportunities for democratic transformation, but also significant challenges. In Sudan, the first general election since 1984 will be held in 2010. Read more...
Participants in the three-day conference reflect on the messages they've taken away from the second morning's sessions. Watch now...
STEPS is a women's organization founded in 1991 and registered under the Tamil Nadu Societies Act 1975, based in Pudukottai, Tamil Nadu, to work on the empowerment of all poor women, and particularly Muslim women in the region. It aims to bring about a change in the dominant perception – including among Muslim women themselves – about the rights of women in Islam. Read now...
Mairead Corrigan rounds up the first day of the Nobel Women Redefining Democracy Conference 2009. Listen now...
Jody Williams, Nobel Laureate, speaks to delegates at the Nobel Women Redefining Democracy Conference 2009, addressing the topic 'Why are we here?' Listen now...
Yesterday, the presenter from Palestine made an impassioned speech, arguing that feminists in Palestine should be primarily part of the struggle against Israeli imperialism, rather than focusing on patriarchy within their own culture. In a further discussion on challenges to democracy in national contexts, participants from Mexico, and myself from Canada, discussed the pressure on feminists not to "divide" the progressive forces in societyRead more...
The first day of deliberations was Women's Day in Guatemala, and participants at the Nobel Women's Initiative conference had awoken to the sound of firecrackers in Antigua celebrating the role of mothers and the sight of a local volcano erupting ash, apparently an every day occurrence. Read more...
Democracy is about competition, competition on an uneven playing field, and if women want to win there is no substitute to building constituencies for gender equality, matched with building women's economic power. Efforts to level the playing field through affirmative action are essential but have got to be temporary if they are to avoid damaging democracy, for they are too easily subverted or distorted by leaders more interested in flashing their credentials as modernisers than in supporting genuine gender equality.Read more...
María Suárez and Margaret Thompson discuss the context of the conference, its agenda, and take a look at the first day's proceedings. Listen now...
In Day One's morning conversation, we discussed the meaning of democracy from a feminist perspective - how it had been defined, traditionally, through a patriarchal lens, and how it could be redefined to be more encompassing, holistic, and deeply permeating not only the political sphere but the personal sphere of our lives. A sister from the Sudan remarked that while the conversation about democracy was interesting, that it would have no bearing on the reality of the women she worked with Read more...
FIRE (Feminist International Radio Endeavour) speak to Erin Simpson, Manager of Policy and Advocacy for the Nobel Women's Initiative. Listen now...
What can a government do to harass women fighting for their rights when they are not breaking the law? In Iran, according to Shirin Ebadi, Nobel prize winner, lawyer and human rights defender, one answer is to use the power of the courts against them. Read more...
Participants in the three-day conference reflect on the messages they've taken away from the first morning's sessions. Watch now...
The path to Guatemala and "women redefining democracy" is walked by Isabel Hilton
Watch a video clip of the opening words of the conference.
I was invited to participate at the Nobel Women's Initiative conference on behalf of Generation X Feminists, a movement of Palestinian and Jewish feminists in Israel working to rejuvenate feminist leadership in the Left. I am traveling to Antigua from the USA, where I currently pursue my graduate studies, with two immediate objectives Read more...
I would have come to Antigua to speak with you on this topic, because it concerns me greatly, but prior engagements have prevented me. When I look at what is happening in Africa, I make the following observation: since the wind of democracy finally blew through the continent, after long dictatorships, elections were organized in several countries to elect leaders of the people. However, of the presidents elected democratically, some are killed before the end of their term of office, while others grant themselves life in office, and even manage to change the constitution, if necessary to keep power. Read more...
As a staff member of the Nobel Women's Initiative, the path to Guatemala for NWI's 2nd International Conference - Women Redefining Democracy - began long before my colleague Liz Bernstein and I boarded a plane in Ottawa on Tuesday morning. It began in meetings, conference calls and concept note drafts, and culminated in the big questions and reflections about the conversations we'll be having here in Guatemala. Read more...
Mary Parker Follett defined democracy in a particularly feminist way - a definition unlike that of any male philosopher, from the Greeks, to Rousseauists, to Marxists and neo-liberals Read more...
It was the nineteenth day of August, 1951. It was a typical day in the tropical, sun-bathed town of Koforidua, the Eastern regional capital of Ghana that Beatrice Bernice Boateng was born. It was not long before I felt the pangs of real disaffection from my parents, especially my mother. My father, who was a nurse anaesthetist, worked outside Koforidua. Read more...
In 1998, nearly a decade after his influential post-Cold War piece, 'The End of History?', Francis Fukuyama addressed himself to the question of Women and the Evolution of World Politics in the influential journal, Foreign Affairs. Commenting on what was then an emerging gender gap in support for (US) national defence spending, he announced that it was quite evident that women were more peaceful than men. Women, he argued, are different. Read more...
Five days before coming to Antigua, I stopped by my neighbourhood salon. It's become a little hang out for me, where the ladies love to chit-chat as they scrub scalps, push back cuticles and fight to straighten Egyptian curls. All the workers come from working class families, so the salon is also a slice of Egypt that isn't as easily accessible to expatriates like myself. Read more...
It is difficult to fully appreciate the importance of the historic moment we are living. The fact that we are on our way to a global intercultural meeting in Guatemala, with our esteemed colleague Rigoberta Menchu as host, along with the majority of other women who have been Nobel Peace Prize winners, amounts to a truly excellent opportunity to ponder our changing circumstances. Read more...
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