January 2005
Joeyta Bose & Peg Snyder
LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD:
Perspectives on building global women's movements
This booklink is a Beijing + 10 and Beyond special feature introducing just a few of the new resources that are coming available as women around the world prepare for the 10-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action at the UN Commission on the Status of Women (February 28-March 11, 2005 at UN headquarters in New York). Although there is no world conference to mark this event, the passage of 10 years since the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and 30 years since the 1975 International Women's Year U.N. World Conference in Mexico City - has triggered an extraordinary outpouring of writing from women in all regions and in all sectors. During the coming weeks we hope to be featuring several other new releases related to or being launched at this event. For further information on these and other new resources, or to order any of these publications, check out our website at http://www.womenink.org or contact Women, Ink at 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, New York 10017, telephone (212) 687-8633._____________________________________________________________________
The Future of Women's Rights: Global Visions and Strategies
Edited by Joanna Kerr, Ellen Sprenger & Alison Symington
Leaders of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID), with almost 6,000 members in over 100 countries, and Mama Cash, the independent women's foundation based in Amsterdam, saw the importance of forward thinking, both for the women's movements globally and for their own organizations. This book produced by 16 authors is the result; it is likely to be identified as the most important book of the new century on its subject.The authors are deeply concerned at the recent emergence of various trends that may threaten the ongoing work of women's movements in advancing gender equality, women's human rights and sustainable human development. These trends include the impacts of globalization and neo-liberal economics, developments in biotechnology, the neo-conservative backlash against women's rights, monopolistic ownership of information technologies that exclude women, fundamentalisms of various kinds and the rise of identity politics that subordinate or marginalize women's issues, and the increase in violent conflict and war.
Contributors to the volume see a pressing need for women's movements to evaluate their methods, with a view to improving political work. They show how women should prepare for the current trends and what strategies they should prioritize in order to protect and advance their agenda. The authors challenge readers not to be pushed onto the defensive, but to regain the initiative and be more proactive. The Future of Women's Rights is a must-read for anyone who is concerned with the fate of contemporary women's movements.
2004. ISBN 1-55861-484-2. 224 pages. WE679. $25
Developing Power: How Women Transformed International Development
Edited by Arvonne S. Fraser and Irene Tinker
This book uncurls the 35-year-old battle to integrate women into international development programs through 27 stirring testimonies of activists, practitioners and academics who have contributed to the creation and fostering of the global women's movement. Set into individual chapters that explore the struggle within the United Nations and government agencies as well as the challenges of crystallizing innovative non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and formulating development policies, each personal account brings to life the risks, struggles and behind-the-scenes negotiations that took place in the early years as these women became effective agents of change.As one of these change makers, Aziza Hussein describes how she, in her role as the first Arab member of the 1961 U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, broke taboos to address Islam and its impact on women, introduced planned parenthood as the right of women and facilitated an understanding of the gendered effects of war. In another chapter, distinguished academic Irene Tinker discusses how she contested development programming on food and poverty through her seminal research on street food vendors and her insight that the real energy crisis is a woman's time. Peggy Antrobus, economist and founder member of both Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA), traces the development of her own feminist consciousness as mirroring the growth of the Women and Development Unit at the University of the West Indies, of which she was founder and director.
Ultimately, this book takes on the questions that are central to societal change - i.e., how are institutions shaken up? how do out groups get in? how do new ideas get attention and how are they translated into programs and policies? Why is NGO organization necessary for the creation of civil societies?
2004. ISBN 1-55861-484-2. 320 pages. WE680. $24.95
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Events and Related Resources:
Organizing
The Global Week of Action - Beijing and Beyond, March 1-8, 2005 is a decentralized week of activities that will take place around the world to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women. Planned to take place locally, nationally and regionally during the time of the 2005 Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) session in New York which will review implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA), this project is seen as a global effort to link NGO actions to show that women are united in holding governments accountable for commitments made in 1995 and 2000, that we won't accept rollback from those commitments, and that we must move beyond the gains made in the last decade.To join in this campaign as an individual endorsing organization, write to endorse@beijingandbeyond.org. A calendar of events and activities (including yours!) will be found on the soon-to-be-launched website: http://www.beijingandbeyond.org/
Building feminist movements and organizations: Learning from Experience
AWID is gathering insights into feminist organizational strengthening and movement building and has invited contributors to send in essays or case studies related to these topics by January 31, 2005. Accepted in French, Spanish and English, selected contributions will be published by AWID and showcased at the 10th International AWID Forum on Women's Rights in Development, October 27-30, in Bangkok, Thailand.
The call for contributions is available at: http://www.awid.org/femo/Reflections on where we have been
UN History Project: Women enrich the United Nations and Development
Steered by Deviki Jain and forthcoming in 2005, this project is an examination of the UN's evolving role in fostering change in values and policies toward women across the world. Issues covered in this volume include the UN's attempts to forge gender equality from the 1940s through the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and other declarations, resolutions and recommendations of principles that translated into programs and action for women, often far in advance of the legal or actual situations in individual countries.The volume also tracks changes wrought from the first world conference on women in Mexico City to the fourth world conference in Beijing as well as the U.N.'s role in measuring the undervalued contribution of women to economic development and the use of new indices to identify potential for future generations. Also in the focus are funding agencies, including the creation of the women's own innovative and experimental fund that was proposed at the Mexico Conference - the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM); support for women's training through the UN Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), also proposed at Mexico; as well as concern for reproductive health through UNFPA, and for the girl child through UNICEF.
To find out more, access: http://www.unhistory.org/publications/women.html
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