WEMC’s overarching purpose is to understand how women can and do empower themselves to overcome economic, legal and politically obstructive forces, including those using culture and religion as sources of legitimation. WEMC aims to build a body of knowledge that would throw light on context-specific ways of supporting women’s initiatives to empower themselves.

Research based on the WEMC research framework has identified arenas of contestation, including access to resources and decision-making forums and women's resistance to violence as a mechanism of control.

In this second issue, we continue to present stories of women in the various contexts where research is being done, and their strategies to reject the discrimination and inequality they experience in their daily lives.

Farida Shaheed, WEMC Acting Director, is the new UN Independent Expert on Culture

Farida Shaheed was appointed as an Independent Expert in the field of cultural rights by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations in October 2009.

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Instead of teaching religious curriculum only, Fatimah, a teacher and also a WEMC researcher, used the Majalis Taklim as a platform for women to learn gender and social issues through discussions and activities. At the beginning of the WEMC research, women in Mulyasari did not think that women have equal rights to make autonomous decisions and express themselves as their male counterparts whether at home or in the community. During the course of WEMC activities, they have become increasingly confident to express their views and to question and challenge men’s domination in the family. Some husbands started accepting gender equality and sharing household chores with their wife. Women's voices are more accepted in the community. Male village leaders and male villagers even requested WEMC researchers to carry out the same trainings and education for the male Majalis Taklim groups in the village.

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WEMC will be at:

Symposium on Chinese Women Organising: Looking Back, looking Forward, Beijing (July 2010) organised by Beijing Foreign Studies University, Oxford University & Freie Universität Berlin

The deadline for abstract submission is March 31, 2010. Abstracts should be approximately 500-800 words (written either in English or Chinese) and provide an overview of the paper and its relevance to the proposed themes of the Symposium. All submitted abstracts will be peer-reviewed. An official invitation letter will be sent in May 2010 to those whose papers we have been able to accept.

WEMC was at:

Asia-Pacific NGO Forum on Beijing+15 Manila, the Philippines (22-24 October 2009)

Documenting women's voices and their stories of empowerment is one of WEMC's main objectives. Apart from sharing experiences and insights in papers and publications, video documentary has proven to be an important advocacy and communication medium. With a shared concern for women whose rights are denied by culture, WEMC and the Institute for Women's Empowerment (IWE) collaborated to showcase five WEMC documentaries at the AP NGO Forum on Beijing+15 in October 22-25, 2009 in Manila, Philippines.

The five films cover five different women's rights issues in four countries: how conditions of drought affect women’s lives in a village in Indonesia; the functioning of the oldest women’s mosque in China; how a 11-year-old girl fought for education for thel children in a conservative squatter community in Pakistan; how a mother in Iran ecaped death-by-stoning; the implementation of a controversial ‘whipping law’ on a teenage girl in a village in Indonesia. This being the first time that WEMC researchers and filmmakers presented their work to an external audience, they were happy with the useul and inspiring feedback. These documentaries are now available on the WEMC website. See also the final Declaration of the AP-NGO Forum on Beijing +15, which will feed into the UNESCAP input into the CSW deliberations in March.

University-Community Engagement Conference(UCEC)Penang, Malaysia (23-25 November 2009)

University-Community Engagement Conference 2009 (UCEC) in Penang, Malaysia (23-26 November 2009). 23 WEMC researchers participated in the conference. Six papers on their experiences and learning from applying WEMC’s research Framework were presented in two parallel sessions: 'Engaged Research: Lessons from RPC-WEMC's Participatory and Transformative Process' and 'Engagement, Empowerment and Agency: Lessons from PRC-WEMC's Participatory and Transofrmative Processes'. All the presentations are on the website of UCEC.

For the first time in Sultanabad, a low-income settlement in Pakistan, women stepped into local decision-making. In August 2008, in a local level policy dialogue with policy/decision makers, a group of poorly educated women complained about problems like poor education facilities, bad hygienic conditions and unemployment in the community as well as the social environment that restricted women's advancement and mobility. Immediate response was given by the officials to improve the situations. The Sultanabad dialogue exemplifies the WEMC research process that aims to seek women’s empowerment and democratisation from inside out.

This significant advancement was catalysed by the Aga Khan University (AKU) - WEMC research team. Having more than 10 years experience in social and health development in Sultanabad, the AKU team, a partner of the WEMC-RPC, took on the challenge in November 2007 to engage with the deep-rooted perceptions of women being subordinate to men and men's honour resting on the action of the women in the family. These family and community traditions dictate the life in Pakistan. Before the dialogue, the AKU-WEMC research team organised meetings and sharing for the women to strengthen their collective effort and enhance their capacities.

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Similar to other research sites in Pakistan, the life and role of women in Usta Mohammed is greatly restricted by family and community traditions. In this multi-tribes community which is acutely cut-off from development, tribal culture justifies the murder or killing of women. In 2008, 55 women were identified to be killed or sold off because they had been declared “kari” or “blackened one” referring to their fall from moral grace due to illicit sexual relations.

The set up of a women's organisation Nissa Welfare and Development Organization in this poverty-stricken and tradition-bound area brought transformative changes to the life of the women in Usta Mohammed. Encouraged and supported by WEMC, Nur Jahan, who has joined WEMC focus group discussion on empowerment and other WEMC research activities established Nissa with her husband and others in May 2009. Nissa offers health service and occupation trainings to women in Usta Mohammed. It also broke tradition to enable 5 couples, marrying without family approval, to return/remain in the area without being killed soon after Usta Mohammed made national and international headlines with the murder of four women alleged (incorrectly) to have been buried alive for alleged “sexual misdemeanor.”

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'Gender, Religion and the Quest for Justice in Pakistan' Final Research Report prepared for the project Religion, Politics and Gender Equality of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) September 2009 by Farida Shaheed

By analysing how Islam was completely changed from a religious identity to a system that dictates every part of life in Pakistan, WEMC Acting Director Fairda Shaheed unveils the real force that disempowers women in the name of religion and culture. In her report, Shaheed highlights the unjust world dominated by restrictive gender rules and entrenched paternalistic attitudes in culturally traditionalist countries like Pakistan. Shaheed found that rescinding women's rights, however, did not take place rampantly until the 'Islamisation' during the rule of General Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988), which was actually a fusing of politics and religion with paramount concern to capture state power and to assert political influence.
Read the full paper

• 'Education, Gender and Islam in China: the place of religious education in challenging and sustaining “undisputed traditions” among Chinese Muslim women’, Article co-written with Hau Ming Vicky Chan, International Journal of Educational Development as part of Special Issue on ‘Education in China’. 2009. doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.04.004.
  Translated into Farsi and published in Farzaneh Journal of Women's Studies and Research, Vol. 9, No.15, Summer 2009. http://www.farzanehjournal.com/farsi/

• Activism Under the Radar: Volunteer Women Health Workers in Iran, Homa Hoodfar, in MERIP 250: Spring 2009.

• Against All Odds: The women`s movement in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Homa Hoodfar and Fatemeh Sadeghi, Development June 2009, Vol. 52, Issue 2, pages 215-223; re-worked and re-printed in The Context, AWID publication.

• Her Story – Stories of indonesian Migrant Workers who Struggled, Won and Carried On, a project of Mission for Migrant Workers and Engender, supported by WEMC, March 2009.

If you would like to receive a copy of these publications, please write to : info@wemc.com.hk, (attention: Communication Division)