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Final Issue
July 2010
Dear friends and colleagues,
Regrettably, this will be the last WEMC e-bulletin. For reasons beyond the control of those of us directly involved in the project, the WEMC RPC officially closed on 30 June 2010. Since the project no longer exists, in a sense this e-bulletin reaches you as the voice of the project's spirit. And perhaps that is apt.
Officially, WEMC commenced on 1 July 2006, but it started as musings by a few in late 2004 that were conjured into a proposed dream in July 2005 in the most oppressive pre-monsoon heat of Lahore (complete with electricity outages and office flooding when torrential rains finally burst asunder the skies). All of us involved in the project were infused with such deep-rooted commitment and astonishing energy, with such inspired creativity and dogged perseverance that, in a mere four years instead of five, the RPC shattered the goalposts we thought we had ambitiously set in terms of expected outputs. Tangible measureable results (OVIs for those in the know) were not merely overtaken but made irrelevant as the achievements doubled (or very nearly doubled) all expected results:
18 concrete recommendations accepted and acted upon by authorities have changed laws, policies and practices impacting more than 150,000 women - and that's not counting their families and friends. It's also not counting the amazing 27 new women's rights groups (formal and non-formal, overt or less visible, religious, secular or combining both), directly catalysed through research processes in Indonesia, Pakistan Iran, China and elsewhere, that are happily forging new innovative and indigenous strategies, multiplying manifold the voices for women's empowerment - largely women's own voices. Nor does it include countless other civil society groups, networks and alliances that have re-oriented activities to support women's empowerment strategies, or the allies and champions mobilised in diverse decision-making forums in high governmental institutions as well as at the life-determining meso-level where women daily confront the most immediate obstacles to empowerment. Numbers do not take into account the impact of changing discourses and changing everyday practices that are challenging and overturning the existing power dynamics that keep women disempowered. Nor does it account for the surprisingly impactful 15 documentary films produced by mixing a 10-day training by a professional + one follow up session + pooling expertise for self-improvement across teams, with women's creativity when they are determined to convert a dream into reality or have finally decided to air in public a grievance - when the silence is broken and women's voices can be heard.
Films have reduced audiences to tears, inspired actions for change...and are even used by authorities in their programmes.
WEMC set out to promote 'democratisation from the inside out'. Its approach of a participatory, reflexive and transformative research process is tangible evidence that when an eggshell is broken from outside, a life dies; but when the shell is broken from within, a life is indeed born...
The spirit of the WEMC project lives on through the seeds both scattered and planted and definitely nurtured with loving care in the last few years...enough energies to release and celebrate new life.
So in anticipation of new life...renewed energies...and a life beyond WEMC in the same spirit (or one quite like it) that buoyed us up and kept us together…
Farida Shaheed
Knowing the Rights of Indonesian Migrant Workers from the Perspectives of Islam and Women
By: PP Fatayat NU, Indonesia, 2010
“In Indonesia, religion plays an important role in social change. This makes a religious perspective important in addressing social problems. Indeed, all religions exist for the good of mankind. However, in the hands of many interpreters, religion can have multiple effects; the misuse or misinterpretation of any religion would be a catastrophe for humanity. In the context of women Indonesian migrant workers, the teachings of Islam are misinterpreted as a justification for violations of human rights. Some religious leaders even abuse their power to recruit prospective migrant workers. Many parts of the world have experienced rapid social changes in the past decades. We need to explain the spirit and value of Islam in a way that they can address the contemporary social problems like the issues of migrant workers. This book, written by religious scholars, is an effort to understand the teachings of Islam on issues of women migrant workers in Indonesia. In it, we look into the protection of the rights of Indonesian women migrant workers as citizens, workers, women, and Muslims from the perspective of Islam.”
Power at Work: Understanding Positionality and Gender Dynamics in the Debates on Women’s Empowerment
June 2010, Billy Hébert, Independent Researcher , under the supervision of Dr. Homa Hoodfar, originally prepared for a WEMC workshop.
This paper outlines a theoretical framework applicable to the concept of power, with a specific focus on its relevance for the Women’s Empowerment in Muslim Contexts (WEMC) project. Power is here argued to be a driving force behind the exclusion and marginalization of individuals and groups, and is understood to permeate throughout and across people, groups, and societies. In order to discuss the forces impeding and promoting women’s empowerment, Eric Wolf’s discussion of the four modalities of power (1999, 2001) is combined with the three forms of power discussed in John Gaventa’s (2006) three dimensional approach to the study of power, inspired by VeneKlasen and Miller’s (2002) earlier theorizing. The model here proposed emphasizes the ideological and material conditions governing ‘structural power’ and charts its influence on the contexts in which ‘power to’ and ‘power over’ can be exhibited. An integrative example of this model is proposed and is followed by a discussion of Risse and Sikkink’s (1999) “Five-Phase Spiral Model” of human rights implementation, which illustrates how sustainable structural changes can be achieved.
Proving that research when, instead of being extractive, is designed to be supportive and is attentive to women’s voices, can help lever empowerment, WEMC’s legacy is its self-defined purpose catalysing:
“a sustained, growing critical mass of civil society expertise engaged in policy debates for long-term changes in policies and practices that promote women’s empowerment in Muslim contexts”.
Achievements have been built on a very effective Communication Strategy, tailored to specific audience and socio-political contexts at micro, meso and macro levels, using highly diverse modalities which effectuated local change (catalysing and supporting women’s empowerment initiatives); reoriented local environments to be more supportive (communicating with meso-level policy implementers, opinion-makers, and civil society associations); helped to bring about policy revisions. Success is visible in accepted recommendations, authorities’ usage of outputs, the amplification of voices for women’s empowerment through new groups/initiatives; requests and usage of WEMC products (over 60 websites excerpt/are linked to WEMC materials).
A new development paradigm is supported by research findings that a rights-based development approach resonates deeply with the new paradigm of ‘development with culture’ proposed by the UN Indigenous Peoples Forum. Research suggests there is merit in developing such an approach for women’s empowerment - especially when women suffer from severe exclusion. Similar concerns arise: not merely making services more accessible but strengthening women’s own institutions, not development on behalf of but with, women, and an understanding that success can “depend critically on how one goes about development rather than simply on the choice of the subject matter of a specific intervention.” This last applies to research processes and interventions equally.
Policy Planning lessons
Policies must help overcome the ‘cost of empowerment’ which women identify; understand that empowerment initiatives do not emerge from individual women accessing better services but from collectivised actions for which women prioritise public discursive spaces; that empowerment cannot be achieved without addressing meso-level dynamics where access to information, resources and decision-making forums is most obstructed and justified through misogynistic interpretations of culture and religion; that in negotiating rights collectively, women position themselves variously - making it vital to assess the impact of the contested changing constructions of Muslimness and other other social identities and the interplay amongst these to draw lessons for citizenship and governance/ development planning.
Research Lessons : A unifying framework & diversifying realities
With a consistent focus on power as central to discourses on women’s empowerment, a main feature of the WEMC RPC was the dialogic relationship between a coherent and explicitly conceptualised research framework (RF) as a unifying factor on the one hand, and grounded, context-specific field research to bring forth contextualised understandings and actions on the other. The core research questions, addressing four thematic areas of the WEMC RF stimulated enquiries and analyses about women’s understandings of the power relations in which they are embedded; adapting the RF to contextual specificities engendered new understandings rooted in women’s situational realities. These seemingly oppositional drivers presented significant management challenges, but the dialogic relationship also generated a creative tension that spurred innovative transformations among researchers and community women alike. This propelled new synergies at the grassroots, especially opening public discursive spaces for women to share experiences, views, and analyses of power, and, based on these, to devise indigenous strategies appropriate in their contexts.
WEMC-AKU visits Emory University USA.
By Kausar S.Khan
On March 22, 2010, AKU-WEMC’s participatory action research (PAR) model was presented to the students of the Public Health School of Emory University. This was preceded by a presentation on the WEMC research framework (RF), in which the key WEMC concepts were highlighted. The PAR model was followed by a presentation of the nursing case study which used the WEMC RF to examine the effect of the Aga Khan University School of Nursing’s programme on the empowerment of nurses and nursing profession. Finally, lessons from AKU’s WEMC experience were shared. The exchange between some members of the WEMC–AKU team and the public health students of Emory University was established through video conference facilities of the two universities. The relevance of WEMC-AKU’s research model to students of a public health school is firmly located in the perspective that community participation and mobilisation are central to bringing about the social changes needed to improve the conditions that affect the health and well being of vulnerable populations. All institutions working on community based primary health care, and public health issues are likely to find value in AKU’s experience of PAR which establishes an ethical relationship between community groups and researchers and implementers. Any institution engaged in research for health (as opposed to health research) will find AKU’s experience is a striking example of how PAR is possible. The nursing case study of AKU-WEMC also drew attention to the viability of doing a PAR within the nursing profession in countries like Pakistan, where nurses carry a double burden of subordination as women and within the medical profession. How these are being challenged was outlined in the nursing case study
The integration of WEMC’s work into existing programmes of partners and collaborating groups through capacity-building in research as well as advocacy helps to ensure the continued sharing of WEMC concepts, findings and analysis thus far. The fact that WEMC research findings and outputs are being used by a diverse set of government authorities in every component ensures sustained policy impact. Perhaps most importantly, the 27 new groups catalysed by WEMC and the reorientation of numerous other civil society groups and initiatives ensures a widening impact into the future.
WEMC Key Partners and their local associated partners will continue to promote diverse products in various languages. The WEMC website will be maintained and managed by Shirkat Gah –Women’s Resource Centre through other funding to enable continued access to WEMC products: papers, policy briefs, video documentaries and webcasts as well as draft papers The WLUML Farsi website will publish selected WEMC products, including articles in the newly launched on-line Farsi journal “WLUML Journal of Feminist Studies”.
As an Asia-based RPC, WEMC focused on UNESCAP as the pivotal regional policy forum for influencing the global agenda, but its insights feed into broader UN and international development and rights agendas, beyond UNESCAP’s Gender Equality and Empowerment Section concerning the Beijing Platform for Action, CEDAW as well as the MDGs. WEMC findings are of immediate relevance to the UNDP ‘governance and citizenship’ development plank ; the UNFPA ‘cultural negotiations’ processes and UNESCAP’s focus on non-nationals and migrant women workers. A WEMC policy brief helped UNESCAP prepare for the High-Level Intergovernmental Meeting (Nov 2009); a panel presentation is cited in the outcome document for the UN Secretary General’s UNiTe campaign.
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