For peace in the Middle East… lose yourself in the dance

It’s a Thursday evening in dark damp British autumn. I roll up at the drafty church hall in Llanfairfechan - a village on the wild north Wales coast – to meet a group of women I may not associate with in the daytime. I ask myself: what am I doing here? I should be blogging about world peace, the Israeli roadblocks and electricity cuts in Palestine or the crisis in Pakistan, the poppy harvest in Afghanistan, nuclear power in Iran, Iraqi factions and back again to Annapolis.

But as soon as Julia our teacher puts on the music, we are transported there, to what is known as the cradle of civilisation - the valley of the Euphrates or the banks of the upper Nile. For this is our weekly belly dancing class and for one short hour we bask in an oasis of female power.

They say that the art of raqs sharqi comes from the worship of Isis - the magical goddess of ancient Egypt whose healing ensures everlasting life. As one famous modern day practitioner Jasmin explains: “Isis is the universal mother who guides women in childbirth and comforts them in bereavement, a reminder to women of their connection to the all-goddess and to each other.”

Another story is that learning the technique of undulating the belly was a preparation for natural childbirth. And then there is the hafla or gathering of different dance groups, to perform for each other - not as a competition but in enjoyment of female beauty and self-expression. Along with massage, foot-baths, sweetmeats… It may be a throwback to the harem or have since degenerated into exotic dancing. But it originates in the time when women as priestesses were free to hold their own celebrations and had control over their own mysteries.

That was before goddess worship was desecrated by the priests of patriarchal religion and the practitioners of manmade medicine, one by one seeking to possess the powers of woman which will always be denied to men: conception in the womb, gestation, parturition and lactation. At the same time they try their best to emphasise the redemptive power of the Madonna, the virgin mother (as Marina Warner tells the story) in some warped logic that somehow, by denying woman’s sexuality, men can redeem their own sins.

In the name of god

Last month it seemed that absolutely everyone was an expert on abortion and human rights. Many missed the point that Polly Toynbee raised but did not unpack: the debate is still about the control of women and their fertility. Because men don’t have that life force, they resort to the opposite: oppression, violence, rape and war. And this is always played out across the female body. Danish artist Jens Galschiot launched his sculpture of a pregnant crucified teenager last December as “an outcry against the crusade against contraception and sexual education orchestrated by Christian fundamentalists with President Bush and the Pope in the lead”.

Fortunately not all men are moralists of the abstract, hypocrites, control freaks or fundamentalists looking “to compete with you / Beat or cheat or mistreat you / Simplify you, classify you / Deny, defy or crucify you” (Bob Dylan).

David Grieg recently wrote about the need for men to get in touch with their feminine side with reference to his updated production of Euripides’ play The Bacchae:

“For me, these concerns remain as relevant as they were 2000 years ago. There are still men who would control women in order to boost their shaky sense of self. There are still men who are lost because they refuse to lose themselves in the dance. And so we still live with the psychotic and uncontrolled violence that will appear whenever a repressed Dionysian force reasserts itself – as it always will.”





World peace and thin thighs

Sometimes I have to wait and wait until the right metaphor comes along. Y’alaouni! As we practice our moves, it all makes sense. After all, I never thought I’d get thin thighs again: world peace cannot be far behind. It may sound frivolous but I’m seriously trying to find a radical alternative to the same old tired performances.

In fact, another definition of hafla is a peace festival, which the eponymous London-based group is planning for 2008: I don’t mind that somebody got the idea before me, as it reinforces my position.

“The word 'HAFLA' is common to both Arabic and Hebrew meaning 'celebration' or 'party', and it has a particular connotation as being the third stage of the peace process that comes after the stages of truce and reconciliation. We bring together Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims, Arabs and Jews and all people who are committed to creating peace in this part of the world. As a group HAFLA asks you to imagine such a celebration.”

So back to Annapolis: boys, please clear the stage, your second-rate snake-charming act is over. And let’s axe the conjuror’s patter. Bring on the dancing girls!

Afterword

HAFLA is also a make of grenade launcher. Go figure.

Read more

The Rise and Rise of the Queen of Heaven

Gender and Trade or Call your bluff

“Critics of the EU’s trade agreements are gambling with livelihoods in the developing world.”

This claim was made last week by Peter Mandelson (EU trade commissioner) and Louis Michel (EU development commissioner) in The Guardian with reference to the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) now under discussion in Brussels. Furthermore, the critics “undermine those in Africa and other ACP countries who are seeking to work constructively for economic reform and a new trade and development relationship with Europe.”

But who are these critics? Clearly not willing to be taken in by a little masculine rhetoric, many of them are representatives of regional and international women’s advocacy groups. They have brought out their own analyses on the likely impact of EPAs, which they believe could blight the future of yet another generation, pushing the dispossessed further to the periphery (Lebohang Pheko’s voice)

Research carried out for the Central American Women’s Network

on the recently launched EU-CA negotiations predicts that women’s working conditions in the ‘free-trade zones’ will get worse, women farmer small-holders will be harder hit by competition and in general “women are likely to be further marginalized, uninformed about their rights and less able to organize to defend them”. Women in Costa Rica are already struggling against the US imposed Central America Trade Agreements (CAFTA).

The International Gender and Trade Network have also published a paper discussing the policy linkage between aid and trade under the Doha Development Agenda. This puts trade at the center of growth promotion and poverty reduction strategies at the national, regional and multilateral level. “This political shift affects the way development policies and technical cooperation (including gender-related activities) are to be designed and implemented in the future and will not go without implications for funding provided for other sectors.”

The paper argues that Aid for Trade should go beyond the general policy declarations related to ‘gender-sensitivity’ and ‘sustainable development’. “It should be part of a specific global plan aimed at improving female employment, ensuring higher employment standards and more stable and sustainable income.”

At the World Social Forum in Nairobi at the beginning of the year, EPAs were top of the agenda, seen as a mechanism for compromising national and regional autonomy (and more: an end to sovereignty in Africa) The organisers of the discussion theme on ‘women farmers cultivating local markets and defending food sovereignty’ talked to me about the importance of the united south-south struggle for fair trade. “Asian women are looking to the African social movements to win over EPAs this year - because we know that Europe will soon be coming after South Asia.”

Sure enough, bilateral EU-India free-trade negotiations are now underway. And the Brussels-based organisation Women in Development Europe have a new report out looking at the implications of EU-India trade for social development and gender equality . The paper questions the main interests behind these free trade agreements on both sides - looking at who is actually going to benefit. It points out that, while Indian economic growth rates now rank second in the world behind China, UNDP ranked India's human development at 126 (out of 177) and gender-related development at 96. One quarter of the population of India lives below the poverty line and female foeticide is systematic.

Since bilateral trade negotiations are held in great secrecy, the paper aims “to provide civil society actors in the EU and India with background information and to build their capacity to engage critically in policy-making on trade and development and in trans-regional networking.” Sounds reasonable in a global democracy?

Speaking out

While I’m on the subject, here’s a plug for another international publication: Unpacking globalisation: markets, gender, work. Edited by Linda E. Lucas this reprints papers from the Women’s Worlds Congress (Kampala, 2002) providing a range of case studies on and by women workers from Mexico through Tanzania to India to exemplify what Saskia Sassen calls the feminisation of survival.

If anyone has real authority to speak about the impact of the current trade system on livelihoods in the south, it has to be the women who live there. And there is plenty of research from women north and south to back them up. In fact, you could say that women have a vested interest in becoming experts on globalisation since they bear the brunt of its effects. And yet it’s still so difficult to be taken seriously.

In December last year Lebohang Pheko took part in a round table on EPAs organised by the European Commission in Brussels where she was due to present a paper giving the gender perspective. What was the response of the EU? She told me:

‘Oh, they said, “let’s stay with the real discussion and look at the gender aspect at the end.” It’s the usual response. But we need to be at the centre of discussions. It’s a question of social inclusion - otherwise, women, men, children, all those who are marginalized, are just taken out of the game. There’s got to be a humanity to these trade agreements.’

As I’ve written before,

it’s easy for western politicians to gamble when someone else is paying for their habit. But if this is a game of poker, the cards are stacked in Europe’s favour. Not a gamble at all then, just a con trick.

Read more

Justice, not globalisation: Lebohang Pheko’s voice

A-Genda. Gender and Trade in Central America. October 2007


The Doha Development Agenda and Aid for Trade: Finding The Policy Link


Economic growth without social justice: EU–India trade negotiations andtheir implications for social development and gender justice

Christian Aid’s campaign for trade justice

Unpacking globalisation: markets, gender, work