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Transforming Economic Power to Advance Womens Rights &

JusticeThe 12th AWID International Forum on Womens Rights and Development

April 19-22, 2012 | Istanbul, Turkey

Call for ProposalsDeadline: May 27, 2011

Transforming economic power are you up to the challenge?

Are you willing to move beyond your comfort zone? To question your usual thinking? To engage

with actors outside of your every day activism or workplace? Are you ready to build alliances

across boundaries so that together we can transform economic power?

Through the 2012 AWID Forum, we aim to explore how economic power is impacting on womenand the planet, and to facilitate connections among the very diverse groups working on theseissues from both human rights and justice approaches so that together we contribute tostronger, more effective strategies to advance womens rights and justice.

Legacies of colonization, tumultuous transitions from communism and decades of neoliberal

policy prescriptions have put public resources in the hands of the private sector, irrevocably

damaged the environment, fostered rampant militarization, eroded human rights and, with few

exceptions, allowed capitalist markets, rather than lived human experience, to determine what

has value. The financial crisis and economic recession that began in 2008, part of a broader

systemic crisis of food, energy, and the environment, laid bare the failures and falsities of thecurrent dominant economic model in ways that even the strongest proponents of the systemfound difficult to defend. While some of the economies that exist outside the dominant model

are also built on unequal power relations, others are founded on more equitable principles,offering important insights and possibilities for those committed to transforming economicpower.

Now, the broad-based mobilizations across the Middle East and North of Africa are inspiringwomen and men around the globe to see new opportunities for confronting what once seemedto be unchangeable structures of power. Significant geopolitical shiftsstronger roles ofemerging countries and fortified regional blocs to name a feware also raising questionsabout the possibilities for radically shifting the balance of economic power, even as dominanteconomic actors are fast re-grouping to defend their interests and avoid making significantchanges.

Regardless of the circumstances and contexts in which we live, economic power cuts across alldimensions of our lives, from negotiating household expenditures to allocating national budgets

and campaigning for recognition of the care economy, fair wages, decent working conditions,

and affordable, common access to the worlds resources including food, water, energy and

land.

Economic power also impacts on and intersects with all womens rights issues and agendas -

from reproductive and sexual rights to violence against women, education, political participation


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and health. Without economic systems that take account of womens needs and realities and

value their contributions, rights and justice are not possible.

Throughout history, patriarchy and other systems of oppression, including persistent racism,

have influenced the way we organize ourselves in society and permeated our politics,

economies, knowledge and culture. As a result, many people, particularly women, have been

systematically shut out of economic and other decision-making. Yet women, in all their diversity,

have long been negotiating the fractures and fissures in the system as well as filling the gaps

left by cuts in spending and services.

There are many important experiences from which to learn and build. Indigenous, peasant and

rural women building food sovereignty. Grassroots women developing strategies of resilience

and empowerment in the face of both environmental and economic disasters. Young women

and girls using new information and communication technologies in diverse and creative ways

to mobilize and bring about social change. Sex workers, migrant workers and domestic workers

redefining what it means to work and why care work should count. Women with disabilities,

trans activists and women living with HIV/AIDS continuing to question unbridled emphasis on

growth and productivity at the expense of human dignity. And feminist economists naming and

analyzing the forces shaping and assigning value to social production and reproduction.

As womens rights and justice activists, we have a responsibility at this historic moment to jointogether across lines of difference. Now is the time to listen and learn from each other. Now isthe time to build our collective power as political actors, to gather our years of experience andknowledge to more effectively participate in the current critical economic debates. Now is thetime to contribute together to building diverse alternative visions and just practices and tocontinue building our movements. Now is the time to transform economic power!

Join us at the 2012 AWID International Forum and be part of deepening our understanding of

economic injustice, equipping ourselves to engage in economic debates, and devising

strategies to transform and reclaim economic power.

Are you up to the challenge?

How you can contribute to the Forum:Contribute to shaping the conversation and the strategies at the 2012 AWID Forum by

submitting a proposal to organize a session.

We have selected 10 broad themes to frame our exploration of economic power. The themes

reflect some of the core dimensions and manifestations of economic power. They are also

crucial areas in which economic power impacts on and intersects with a diverse range ofwomens rights issues. The next section provides brief descriptions of each theme. Since the

themes are profoundly inter-related, you will have the option, when submitting your sessionproposal, to indicate the primary theme to which your session proposal relates and whetheryour session is closely linked to a second theme as well.

The ten themes are:

Labor & Work


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Militarism, Violence & Conflict

The Role of the State

Sexuality

The Planet & Ecological Health

Financial Flows

Access to & Control of Resources Private Sector & Corporate Power

Culture & Religion

Global Governance

We strongly encourage session organizers to use an intersectional approach by considering the

relevance and significance of how diverse identities intersect to define peoples experiences and

how people are impacted by the issues explored in your session. This includes consideration of

diverse gender identities, class, ability, race, ethnicity, age, and locality, among others.

Forum sessions are 1.5 hours in length. In addition to relating to one or two of the themes

above, your session proposal should respond to at least one of the questions below .

1. What are key insights, lessons or debates about how economic power works in this

theme, keeping in mind the realities and experiences of women in all their diversities?

2. What are existing experiences in building towards transformative, alternative visions and

practices within this themewhether at local, national, regional and/or international levelsand

what are the roles of womens movements and/or other social movements in these

experiences?

3. What skills do activists need to transform economic power in relation to this theme?

4. What are concrete strategies, including the kinds of alliance building needed, for

transforming economic power in relation to this theme?5. What are concrete forward-looking proposals for change and visions to transform

economic power in relation to this theme?

More about the themes:Each of the ten themes could be the subject of an entire Forum. Nonetheless, we would like the

Forum to explore some of the complexities and nuances of the debates related to these themes.

The following descriptions of the themes are intended to provide basic yet flexible parameters

for the discussions at the Forum.You are encouraged to use your creativity and insight

in articulating how your session links to one or more of these themes.

Labor & Work

Formal, informal, subsistence, household, community, caring, voluntary, reproductivewomen

are in a number of these classes of work at any one time. Yet a large part of womens work is

rendered invisible and is often either outside of what is officially counted as work or isundervalued and underpaid. Women face barriers to advancement across the economy fromexploitation and unsafe working conditions in agro-industry, garment factories and other sectors,


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to the glass ceiling that blocks advancement to managerial positions within major corporations,to their exclusion from more profitable sectors of informal trade.

Recent years have witnessed important changes in the nature of work in many contexts. At thesame time there is a growing recognition of the diverse ways in which women engage ineconomic relations and their means of livelihood. New technologies are facilitating greater

flexibility of labor relations, at times contributing to growing precariousness in womens workingsituations. Lack of time and resources and the demands of productive work life have

contributed to a crisis of care in many contexts. Shifting trends in womens migration are also

having a significant impact on work patterns. Barriers to and opportunities for work also vary

significantly across womens diversities, including gender, ability, age, ethnicity, class, and

sexual orientation.

Transforming economic power to facilitate just, sustainable ways for women to generate a

livelihood requires influencing how work is defined and what gets valued. Valuing the care

economy takes place through public provisioning of social protection and basic social services.

There is much to learn from women organizing in trade unions, sex worker organizations, and

domestic and home-based worker organizing, as well as experiences of co-operativeeconomies and the decent work agenda.

How are women organizing against existing labor inequalities and what are their key strategies

and proposals for alternatives? What have been government responses to womens labour

rights and needs in recent decades? How are trade unions responding (or not) to womens

demands? How is womens informal work contributing to economic development, and how have

women from this sector organized to see their contributions recognized and their labor rights

fulfilled? In what ways are women building alternatives related to the care economy?

Militarism, Conflict and Violence

Militarization is an increasing and global phenomenon. Spending for arms, security forces and

wars make up major proportions of national budgets and fuel the global economy. A number of

actors, increasingly from the private sector, profit hugely from militarization. Meanwhile, military

might is used to sustain, and sometimes challenge, dominant economic powers. Very often,

conflicts are directly linked to economic interests such as control of territories and natural

resources such as land, oil, water and minerals.

Increased militarism and conflict has a number of gender-specific impacts. Gender-based

violence escalates before, during and after wars, with some forms of violence against women

such as rape already recognized as war crimes. In militarized contexts, with paramilitary groups

and organized crimeand their scope of control and poweron the rise, feminicides andattacks on womens human rights defenders have become commonplace and increasingly

normalized.

How is womens limited economic power in homes, in national and global budgets linked to

gender-based violence, in particular for those women who are multiply marginalized? How are

womens anti-militarism campaigns and roles in transitional justice processes directly

addressing economic inequalities? What strategies have been successful in ensuring that


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womens rights defenders are adequately protected? What kind of responses are womens

rights defenders themselves building? Which tools used in peace building processes and which

visions of security encompass economic well being for women?

The Role of the State

Worldwide, the role and strength of states is constantly changing. In many countries, neoliberal

policy prescriptions have drastically limited the state role to that of social control and policing,

thereby undermining democracy. This limited role services private sector interests and facilitates

deregulation and the lifting of protectionist policies to benefit trade and investment at the

expense of spending on health, education, and housing. Some states have implemented

protectionist policies, while other governments have both protected and grown the role and size

of the state. Meanwhile, post-socialist states have struggled to ensure benefits amidst

transitions to political democracy and capitalism. In the last few years, multiple, systemic crises

have challenged the status quo for all states. Despite the attention that some governments have

given to womens demands for equality, the lack of comprehensive policies (including

appropriate fiscal policy to support social spending or proper recognition of womens

contributions to national revenue) has prevented many countries from achieving womens full

and equal participation and economic and social autonomy.

How are womens rights advocates, including those working inside governments, redefining and

strengthening the role of the state to advance the rights of women and others, including people

without states such as Roma communities, pastoralists and refugees? How are womens

movements and their allies reconfiguring relationships between governments and civil society

within an economic democracy framework? What are effective strategies for holding states

accountable to protect and fulfill womens human rights, including their economic and social

rights? Which governments have put in place effective policies responsive to womens rights?

What are effective mechanisms for increasing womens participation in local and national

governance, including decision-making processes for redistributing national resources andbudget allocations? What are alternative visions for transformative social protection?

Sexuality

The current dominant economic system has profound impacts on womens sexual andreproductive rights and LGBTQI rightsincluding and beyond the commodification of sex,sexuality and womens bodies. Times of economic crisis often lead to even greater attempts tocontrol sexuality and further limit access to sexual and reproductive health services and rights,especially for women living in poverty and other marginalized groups. Economic and

development policies are highly gendered and heteronormative; they are part of social

mechanisms to control and regulate peoples sexualities. The dominant vision of the intersectionbetween the economy and sexualities is most commonly associated with problems and reduced

to sex work, pornography and trafficking. This limited vision renders invisible key dimensions of

sexuality that both affect and are affected by economic systems and relations.

These dimensions include, for example, the prevalence of sexual and gender-based

harassment and policing in workplaces. New social media as purveyors of sexual and gender

stereotypes and exploitation as well as sites of sexual and gender experimentation and

transgression. The ways in which controversial issues relating to sexuality are used to obscure


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public debate on economic policies or practices e.g. tabling policies restricting sexual rights that

also serve to distract attention from trade agreements under negotiation or cuts being made to

social services. The limitations of efforts to cope with the HIV and AIDS pandemic, the

stereotyping and discrimination that some HIV and AIDS programs have fostered and the

gender-blindness of many existing responses.

What are the economics of desire? For example, how does the mainstream media and

advertising target certain populations to stimulate and profit from desire? What are effective

ways to break the silo that places sexuality outside of economic and development debates?

How can strategizing to advance sexual rights take into account influencing economic policies at

different levels? To what extent does the disconnect between sexuality and economic policies

impact gender equality and the advancement of womens rights? Can sexual rights be a useful

framework to inform economic and development policy so that policies are more focused on

pleasure and not only on harm?

The Planet and Ecological Health

Humanity is witnessing the unprecedented impact of its erroneous assumptions about unlimited

natural resources and patterns of production and consumption. Despite numerous global

agreements to protect the environment, international institutions and governments have not

significantly curbed environmental degradation, which includes not only climate change, but also

biodiversity loss, the pollution of rivers and water basins, and the depletion of forests.

Meanwhile, governments and the private sector promote responses to the environment based

on financial markets and technologies that exacerbate inequalities, leaving underlying

consumption and production models unquestioned. Environmental degradation hurts grassroots

women and poor, peasant and indigenous communities the most, threatening their livelihoods

and forcing unsustainable adaptation strategies. Recurrent and worsening natural disasters are

making evident the need for stronger regulation that places communities above market

interests. Also needed are responses that take into account the particular impacts of disasters

on women and womens own experiences in building community resilience and dealing with

disasters.

How are women and other marginalized communities such as peasant and indigenous

communities organizing and implementing sustainable environmental alternatives? What are

the strategies and tools being used by grassroots women and other key actors to broaden the

debates and responses to climate change beyond market-based approaches? What are the

lessons to learn from womens experiences in responding to natural disasters? How can

feminisms both inform the strategizing in response to environmental degradation and be

enriched by perspectives from the ecological, environmental and climate justice movements?

Financial Flows

Daily, money in the form of either currency or credit, exchanges hands between a host of actors

from individuals, governments and creditors (including banks and international financial

institutions), to private corporations, donor agencies and philanthropists. The conditions of these

transactions are spelled out in fiscal and monetary policies; loan, debt, trade and aid

agreements; philanthropic contracts; and informal, unspoken agreements between individuals


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and within families. Remittances sent by migrants, in some cases, have contributed more to

national incomes than foreign direct investment and official development assistance combined.

At the same time, the world of private philanthropy (and wealthy individuals like Bill Gates)

represents greater financial flows than the GDP of several low-income countries put together.

Funding that flows from international donor agencies has long been subject to debate about its

development effectiveness. Also widely criticized is the role that aid conditionalities have oftenplayed in decreasing national policy space in aid-recipient countries and advancing the trade

and investment related interests of donors. In recent years, climate change financing has also

become a crucial area for attention in advancing climate justice for those most affected by

environmental degradation.

Through the international, regional and bilateral agreements of the past decades, trade,

exchange rates and capital markets have fostered the dominance of the financial market over

actual production (real economy). Women are implicated in the terms and flows of these

agreements, but are often excluded from negotiating tables. These experiences have

underscored the need for greater financial regulation and for trade agreements that are linked to

sustainable development for all people and the respect of human rights. In response, diverse

organizations and movements have proposed alternative financing mechanisms for

development, such as the international financial transaction tax, commonly referred to as the

Robin Hood tax.

How are technologies enabling greater transparency and accountability for womens access to

diverse financial flows? How, and with what tools, can women influence tax policy? What are

important mechanisms of regulation and taxation to keep powerful actors in check? How can

womens rights activists and organizations join forces with other social movements demanding

regulation of financial markets and capital flows and the establishment of an equitable

international monetary and financial system?

Access to and Control of Resources

Resources are critical to peoples identities and livelihoods and to advance autonomy, agency,

and rights. Yet, historically, due to gendered divisions of labor, patriarchal cultural norms and

laws and economic inequalities, women in all their diversity have been denied access to

resources such as education, health services, credit, land and technologies. Assessment of

access to and control of resources has been a fundamental tool of gender analysis. But in the

face of the race for resources, including the intensifying pressures on land, so-called land

grabs in many countries of the global south and the predicted wars for access to basics such as

water, there is a need for new tools and strategies. Land reform and redistribution, especially in

post-colonial contexts, remain unfinished business.

What strategies are womens movements and other allied movements such as indigenous

peoples, migrant rights, landless peoples, smallholder and peasant farmers, and disability rights

movements using to advance equal access to and distribution of resources? How are women

contributing to resource struggles through, for example, food sovereignty demands and

campaigns against land grabs? What have we learned from the significant focus and resources

given to initiatives on womens access to credit, including microcredit? What other economic

alternatives are women building, from the grassroots to the international level, to transform


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unequal access to and control over resources?

Private Sector & Corporate Power

Corporations and other private sector actors are often influential players in defining global and

national economic agendas. The rising importance of transnational corporations on the globalstage, and in a broad range of critical sectors in national economies, raises many challenges for

democracy around the world. These companies have enormous power, often with little or no

accountability, over many human, technological, and environmental resources. Corporations

also have significant impacts on diverse areas of development from food security, to resource

depletion to labor rights. Corporate media and technology companies have a huge impact on

womens rights and are often overlooked as targets for action. Public-private partnerships

have become a mantra in many development circles yet their significance for womens rights

and environmental sustainability requires further exploration. Still, here to stay, the private

sector is not homogeneous. It is a significant source of employment for many women and at

times, small businesses have been allies for womens rights campaigns. In some cases, efforts

to ensure safe, fair working conditions for women and gender-equitable access to supply

chains are gaining ground with positive impacts for womens rights.

How can we move beyond limited frameworks of corporate social responsibility to use human

rights standards and mechanisms to hold corporations and other private sector actors

accountable? What types of strategiesfor example from labor organizing and campaigns

around extractive industrieshave been successful in changing the course of corporations?

Culture & Religion

In all countries of the world there are cultural practices that hinder and in some cases prevent

womens and entire communities full enjoyment of their human rights. Different forms of

gender-based violence are commonly justified in the name of culture, tradition or religion.

Agendas grounded in the political manipulation of religion or culture often work in powerful

combination with other forms of absolutist identity politics such as racism, tribalism,

communalism, nationalism, and xenophobia, to restrict womens rights and equality. Cultural

and religious interpretations and practices are institutionalized through unequal family laws,

laws and policies restricting womens reproductive and economic choices, and the absence of

laws banning gender-based violence and harmful traditional practices, to name a few.

Yet culture is not static. It is a highly dynamic process that shapes and reflects the diverse ways

of living of different populations around the world. Neither is religion monolithic. All religions

have groups within them that use different interpretations and practices that challenge

discriminatory gender roles and economic policies and practices in order to advance justice and

human rights. Women in all their diversity have historically struggled against the ways in which

dominant culture is defined, using their agency to transform cultural practices and traditions that

undermine their human rights.

How have womens organizations and movements successfully strategized to counter the role

played by religious and cultural fundamentalisms in obstructing womens economic autonomy

from the family to the international level? How are religious and cultural practices manipulated


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and imposed by powerful economic actors from individuals and businesses to organizations and

states for their benefit? How can women actively claim their cultural rights and strengthen their

agency to transform cultural or religious practices that hinder their capacity to exercise human

rights, particularly their economic and social rights?

Global Governance

Global geopolitics is rapidly changing. Triggered in part by systemic crises, and alongside the

ever-present power of private sector actors, new powers are emerging. These new powers

include the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), regional political and economic blocs and

communities such as the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations

(ASEAN), the Mercosur, the African Union, and the Southern African Development Community

(SADC), and new groupings like the G20. At the same time, transnational networks of civil

society organizations, loose associations of diverse groups and social movements are coming

together in powerful ways. Making increasing use of tools such as social media, they are

influencing the agendas of these new powers and working to hold them accountable to the

demands of women and other excluded groups. Meanwhile, powerful nations and actors, have

systematically weakened the UNs power as a multilateral negotiating body, undermining its

capacity to uphold human rights and influence global economic and development policies.

International financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have

lost credibility but continue advancing market-oriented policies and have been reinvigorated by

resources made available to respond to the financial crisis.

What are the implications of these geopolitical changes for transforming how economic

power is exercised at the global level? What do they mean for the advancement of

womens rights, gender equality and justice agendas? How are feminists and

womens rights activists engaging with regional processes and blocks, including

South-South cooperation efforts? And how are those processes advancing or

hindering womens rights and justice? What kind of global system could ensure

more democratic participation of all states, particularly the poorest ones, in the

enforcement and implementation of international reforms, rules, and standard

setting? How can diverse civil society groups effectively participate in global

economic decision-making? How should UN Women play its part and what does this

new body mean for womens and feminist movements? Participation

Formats

| 2012 AWID Forum Themes | Questions for Proposals| Participation Formats | Submit a Proposal |

Below are suggestions of possible formats for your Forum session. Please consider what formatwill best achieve the objectives of your session in about an hour and a half. You are also

welcome to use your creativity in designing another kind of format for your session. Please keep

in mind that Forum participants are a very diverse group and consider how your session can berelevant and useful for participants of diverse experiences and identities.
http://www.forum.awid.org/forum12/call-for-proposals/thematic-streams/http://www.forum.awid.org/forum12/call-for-proposals/questions-for-proposalshttp://www.forum.awid.org/forum12/call-for-proposals/participation-formats/http://www.forum.awid.org/forum12/call-for-proposals/submit-a-proposal/%20http://www.forum.awid.org/forum12/call-for-proposals/questions-for-proposalshttp://www.forum.awid.org/forum12/call-for-proposals/participation-formats/http://www.forum.awid.org/forum12/call-for-proposals/submit-a-proposal/%20http://www.forum.awid.org/forum12/call-for-proposals/thematic-streams/


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Interactive panel or debate:

Up to 3 speakers and a moderator speak in turns in a panel-style discussion. Alternatively, two

sides could debate a question formally, prepared with research and other documentation tobolster their position. A significant portion of the discussion should be devoted to audience

interaction. The audience should come away with a much richer idea of the complexitiesinvolved in the theme.

Skills-building workshop:

Share specific, hands-on knowledge and how-tos regarding particular tools, skills, or processesrelevant to the Forum theme. Ideally, there should be opportunities for participants to not only

learn about a new tool or technique, but to also try it out for themselves and receive resources

they can take with them to help them practice the skill being shared. These session sizes tend tobe smaller, to facilitate audience interaction.

World Cafe session:

Discussion is held in multiple rounds of 15-30 minutes. Participants are seated around small

tables to discuss the issue at hand around their table and at regular intervals they move to a new

table. One participant (the table host) remains and summarizes the previous conversation to thenewly arrived participants. By moving participants around the room the conversations at each

table are cross-fertilized with ideas from other tables. At the end of the process the main ideas

are summarized in a plenary session and follow-up possibilities are discussed.

Artistic or creative session:

These sessions focus on the use of arts, culture and creativity to stimulate new ways of thinkingand create change, and are intended not merely to discuss the use of art, but to actually display,

perform, debate, and/or create it collectively during the session. Examples of artistic or creativesessions include such things as film, mural painting, creating public art for activism, and popular

theatre.

Talk show:

A disparate group of people are brought together in television talk show style, with a host

who moderates the discussion, posing questions as well as taking questions from the audience.Fluid and improvisational, this type of session takes its cue from the audience.

Strategy session:

Individuals or groups come together to discuss a concrete situation (be it a problem or

opportunity) they are facing, with an eye to strategizing with others in the session and planningcampaigns or other kinds of actions. The momentum from these sessions aims to carry beyond

the forum itself into action.


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