AEGIS ECAS 2007 - View abstract

Panel	69. The World Social Forum in Nairobi : exploring the making of African causes.
Paper ID	288
Author(s)	Latoures, Aurelie
Paper	View paper (PDF)
Abstract	Background for gender activism in Africa: “Gender” has been given the status of a cause with a universal vocation, through its setting on the international agenda in the mid- 1990s. Yet, consensus could not be reached on gender equality, reflecting divergent understandings of gender differences (as a concept) and of the appropriate strategies to address these. Additionnally, the women’s movement(s) now starts questionning its involvement in this UN-driven process, which appears to have brought little change for women in the end. New strategies are emerging in the wake of the anti-globalization movement. This “rising tide for gender equality” has also had contradictory effects in Africa. Historically, the african women’s movement has been torn between the neccessity for international networking and the subsequent permanent constraint of being deligitimized as “feminists”, i.e. as a perverse instrument for neo/post colonial western hegemony through the patronage of western based/inspired liberal women’s movements. This suspicion has made necessary for this movement to develop alternative ways of thinking the progress of women’s status. The reject of “feminism” also turned (somehow) into a reject of “gender”, both labelled as western concept and projects. “Extraversion” as a theoretical tool of analysis? J. F. Bayart offers a renewed vision of Africans as “agents of their mise en dependance”. He asserts that the external environment may as well be a “major resource in the process of political centralization and economic accumulation, and also in the conduct of the social struggles of sulbaltern actors, from the moment that they attempt to take control, even in symbolic ways, of the relations with the exterior on which those who dominante the society base their power”. The implication of such “strategies of extraversion” for social struggles has not been developed in depth in his work. We propose to explore such a paradigm in the understanding of the resources and constraints of the women and gender movements in Africa. Research questions, methodolody and expected results for the Nairobi WSF 2007: The WSF is quite an appropriate site of research to study “strategies of extraversion” (international space, specifically dedicated to social movements. and organized in Africa in 2007 whereas the continent has been marginalized in the process). Is “gender” a resource or a constraint for the framing of african women’s movements within the WSF? To what extent can it be described as a significant strategy of extraversion through the lens of this (specific) international arena? in general? The profile of african activits involved in gender activism in the WSF; the specificity (in terms of organizations and strategies ) of this “movement” as compared to its regional/national counterpart(s); the nature of the framing(s) of “gender equality” by such african gender activists in the context of a transantional arena; and eventually the impact of such activism within the forum, are the many questions which would be addressed more specifically during the Nairobi WSF 2007 ‘ field work.

"I am almost like feminist, but.." Malian women's activists of the women's cause at the WSF 2007: tensions between ownership and/or rejection of feminist frame(s) of action