What's our agenda?

Feminist Tech Exchange (FTX), 10th to 13th Nov 2008, Monkey Valley

AWID Forum, 14th to 17th Nov 2008, Cape Town – Forgotten Voices: Women with Disabilities and the AIDS Pandemic – Sex Workers Meet Feminism

Srilatha shared during the FTX that as a movement we must have a common agenda. But what is our common agenda as the women’s rights movement? Are we still working on rights but constrained by our understanding of the change that we want to effect within thematic areas and issues? Or are we as the women’s rights movement working on ensuring women’s autonomy, self-determination and her right to choose? What does it mean if we disapprove of a woman’s choice when it doesn’t agree with our values, our beliefs and what we conveniently assume would be our choice if we were in the exact same context but pretend to know that it “should” be her choice?

What happens when women after pre-natal tests find out that the unborn child will probably be someone with disabilities? And she decides to abort? Maybe because there is no support system? Maybe because she just doesn’t have the financial means and other resources? Maybe because she isn’t properly informed? Maybe because she’ll be discriminated against and stigmatised? Maybe because she’s afraid to find out what kind of mother she’d be to this child? How is this different from women choosing to abort when they don’t want the pregnancy? Because maybe there is no support system? Maybe because she doesn’t have the financial means and other resources? Maybe because she isn’t properly informed? Maybe because she’ll be discriminated against and stigmatised? Maybe because she’s afraid to find out what kind of mother she’d be to this child?

What happens when women choose to sell sex as a means of earning income, and that choice troubles our own sense of morals, makes us realise we’re not as progressive and open-minded as we’d like to think, when we “victimise” sex workers rather than recognise their own agency as women? What does it mean for us when it’s women who are selling sex over the internet, from their own bedrooms and through their personal online ads rather than being trafficked and prostituted?

Geetanjali Misra reflected that the women’s rights movement seems to be struggling increasingly with the issue of agency, consent and criminalisation. So where are we going as a women’s rights movement? Do we have a feminist agenda? Whose feelings of injustices do we defend? Whose understanding of oppression? Who is “powerless” here among us and do we fully recognise them?

The AWID Forum has always been a space to claim and make it work for ourselves. For me, it has always been a space to re-energise, to connect and re-connect, ask questions and not just any type of question but questions you wouldn’t dare ask your boss, questions you’ve been struggling with. It’s a space to find answers or sometimes just end up having more questions. But more importantly, it’s a space to engage and even disengage and realise it’s an ongoing dialogue, a dialogue that is probably going to be repetitive with the generations to come. And maybe, just maybe, this space doesn’t have to be perfected. Maybe, just maybe, It’s a space to continue making our own mistakes and to learn from these.