Pathways Events
Recent Events
- Untying Development's Straightjacket
- Women and Politics Roundtable
- Info-Activism Camp 2009
- Feminist Tech Exchange
- AWID Forum 2008
Untying Development's Straightjacket
Pathways joined together with a number of other programmes coordinated by the Institute of Development Studies, UK; and in partnership with Sexuality Studies at York University, Canada, the Dissident Men Programme, UNDP and UNAIDS; to convene a four day symposium on 'Untying Development's Straightjacket: Masculinities, Sexualities and Social Change'.
The meeting, held in Cape Town from 18-22 September 2009, brought together theorists, researchers, activists, policy actors and practitioners working on gender and development, men and masculinities, HIV prevention, gender violence and sexual rights. The focus of the symposium was both on addressing the limits to thinking and the limits of practice, and on finding ways towards greater recognition of sexual and gender diversity, and more active engagement in addressing the oppressive effects of dominant norms about gender and sexuality. By stimulating dialogue across fields and communities of practice, the symposium sought to catalyse exchanges that can generate new networks, ideas, connections and opportunities for collaboration.
Three key questions guided the dialogue:
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How are binary ideologies of gender and sexuality being produced and subverted by social, economic and political institutions operating nationally and transnationally? And how do these ideologies shape the implicit and explicit assumptions that are made about the gender and sexualities of those in whose name and for whose purported benefit development organisations operate? What are the consequences for those who do and who do not conform to the norm?
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To what extent have existing development interventions seeking greater justice and equality - such as those associated with Gender and Development, the Men and Masculinities field, Rights-Based Development, empowerment and participation - served to challenge or reinforce these assumptions and their consequences?
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How can development policies, programme and practices be refashioned so as to actively address the harmful effects of oppressive norms of gender and sexuality? What has worked to do this and what can be learnt from it? And what is needed, concretely, if we are to untie development’s straightjacket and pursue ways of doing development and HIV/AIDS work that can be both more just and respectful of diversity and difference and more effective at transforming oppressive structures and relations of power?
More news from the symposium will be available on this webpage soon...
Women and Politics Roundtable
The One World Action and Pathways co-hosted roundtable on 19 March 2009 on Women in Politics: Women's Political Effectiveness aimed to explore and highlight examples of support and training which are effective in promoting women's participation in politics. The meeting took place at the Palace of Westminster and we heard presentations on experiences from Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Zambia. One of the themes of Pathways work is Building Constituencies for Equality and Justice and as part of this work we are looking at women's involvement within all levels of government in order to institutionalise and legitimise women's empowerment in policies. One World Action supports women’s organisations and movements to remove barriers that exclude women from political participation and in their More Women More Power campaign launched in October 2008 they are calling for radical measures to enable women to occupy 50 per cent or more of seats in parliaments and elected bodies in the UK and globally.
Read the summary from the meeting at the One World Action website.
Listen to some of the participants from the roundtable talking about the challenges facing women in participating within politics:
Info-Activism Camp 2009
Tessa Lewin and Akofa Anyidoho from the Pathways WERPC communications team joined over 130 participants in Green Valley, Bangalore, India for the Info-Activism Camp from 19 to 25th February, 2009. The one week meeting brought together rights activists, ICT experts, journalists and communications specialists from over 30 countries to learn and share skills useful for networking, movement building and advocacy.
The Info-Activism Camp was organised by Tactical Technology Collective (TTC) along with its long term partner Aspiration and funded by Oak Foundation, Sigrid Rausing Trust, Open Society Institute and Hivos. TTC is a global, non-governmental collective dedicated to equipping journalists, human rights and technology advocates, and small and medium sized NGOs, with information, communication and digital technologies to enhance their advocacy work. Primarily based in the South, TTC produces open source software, provides guides and organises ‘sources camps’ and other events to bring together activists who need technical skills and technologists who are in the field of advocacy to learn, share and engage together.
The multi-cultural, highly interactive Info-Activism camp is one of TTC’s projects to achieving their aim of impacting global advocacy work, particularly through the adoption of new technologies and utilising information for action-oriented campaigns.
The first day of the camp focused on framing what info-activism meant to the participants and defining strategies for successful advocacy campaigns, brainstorming on local ideas and offering cases studies of successful applications of some of the strategies. The agenda for the following days was based on the diversity of participant needs with corresponding peer sharing which included sessions on Strategy, Issues Areas, Visualisation and Story-telling, Cooperation and Collaboration, Security and Privacy, Publishing Information and Engaging audiences, Telephony and Voice Communications, and Increasing and Sustaining Participation. Within these sessions were sub-sessions and lab sessions for those who needed one-to-one or small group tutorials for hands-on training.
The camp generated opportunities for networking with advocates and technologists working within similar geographical regions and more importantly for those involved in similar thematic campaigns. This was greatly facilitated by the network mapping peer-experts and sessions.
Links: Info-Activism Web; Info-Activism Camp 2009 Wiki; Tactical Technology Collective; Aspiration
Feminist Tech Exchange and AWID Forum - November 2008
Tessa Lewin is a visual artist and media practitioner and is the Communications and Learning Manager at the Pathways RPC. Here is her blog from the Feminist Tech Exchange and AWID meetings.
I’m more exhausted than I’ve been in a long time, but equally exhilarated, vibing off some strange collective energy. I feel like a much older version of my teenage self, unable to sleep because there’s too much to do, too many things to learn, too many interesting people to get to know. It’s normally a feeling that fades as one becomes more exhausted and consequently more jaded, but I think the glow of excitement from this particular interaction will last for a long time, and I think it’s because many of the people here have been genuinely, collectively transformed by what they have learnt, and by their interactions. They are excited about having access to new tools and skills that they have not previously had access to. I’ve just given a 10-minute lesson in video editing to 2 Nigerian women, who have always been intimidated by the technology and by the mostly young, mostly male operators of this technology. Showing them that it’s really not rocket science was particularly rewarding and made me feel unusually useful.
Today is the first day of AWID, the Association of Women in Development, a forum that brings together academics, activists, and development practitioners from all over the world to showcase their work, debate key issues, and network with other people in the field. AWID happens once every three years. This year we’re in Cape Town.
For the past week, I’ve been at an extraordinary event, leading up to the AWID Forum, called FTX – the Feminist Technology Exchange. It was particularly interesting for me because the work that many of the people involved do has so many linkages with my own work in that it links technology and communications and advocacy.
FTX is the brainchild of the APC WNSP (Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Networking Support Programme) in partnership with AWID and local South African partners Women’s Net. The Feminist Tech Exchange, also known as the FTX, was developed in response to calls from feminist and women's rights movements for greater understanding of emerging technologies, their potential and impact on the rights and lives of women.
Here’s an extract from one of the FTX participant’s blogs:
‘I am participating in video training.
Day 1 really scared me– theory seemed so complicated! I thought it was impossible to make the video with impact on the audience with very small skills, knowledge and no experience.
Day 2 – I tried! WOW! It works! I can do it! Making something with your own hands, not just with your brains… the process is so exciting. I even didn’t want to stop for breaks!’
Participants at FTX explored feminist practices and politics of technology, and the critical role of communication rights in the struggle to advance women’s rights. Srilatha Batliwala, on behalf of AWID, stressed in her opening address to FTX, the importance of communications technology in movement building, and the need for feminists to be involved not only in strategically utilizing technology tools, but also in shaping their development.
The theme of this year’s AWID is ‘The Power of Movements’ – strengthening movements to advance women’s rights and gender equality worldwide. Today my communications team are all wandering around the Cape Town International Conference centre, attending sessions, interviewing people, and taking photographs, proudly dressed in their FTX t-shirts, with almost a hundred other communications activists from all over the world. It feels like a movement. I haven’t felt part of something so vibrant for quite some time.
For more information see: http://www.awid.org/; http://ftx.apcwomen.org/; www.womensnet.org.za; IDS News; and Tessa's piece for The Guardian at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/20/gender-equality-technology
AWID Forum 2008: The Power of Movements
Over 1,500 women's rights leaders and activists met in Cape Town, South Africa for the 11th Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) Forum from 14-17 November 2008. Around 15 members of the Pathways Programme (from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Brazil, Ghana and Egypt) joined them to present panels on:
- The NGOization of Women's movements and its Implications for Feminist Organizing
(flyer Pdf file 252KB) (presenter bios Pdf file 138KB)
Listen to audio from the panel and read the summary at the AWID Forum website - Women's Empowerment: What do Men have to do with it? (co-organised with BRIDGE)
(flyer Pdf file 277KB) (presenter bios Pdf file 52KB)
See a summary and session notes on the AWID Forum website
Prior to the event starting, Pathways joined up with our sister RPC - Women's Empowerment in Muslim Contexts (WEMC) to host a Roundtable at the Cullinan Hotel on 13 November on 'Negotiating Alliances, Overcoming Opposition:
Women’s Movements and other Social Movements'
(flyer Pdf file 98KB; Programme Pdf file 131KB). See presentations from this roundtable at the youtube Pathways channel.
For more information on the Forum see the AWID Forum website.
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