Women's worlds 2008: not a utopia

(See introduction above)

The Women’s Worlds Congress convenes every three years in a new country and naturally takes on a different flavour or focus according to its location. The first was held in Haifa, Israel. I attended the eighth Women’s Worlds in Kampala, 2002. That was the first time the congress had been held in Africa and it was an important event for Uganda itself, widely covered in the national media and actively supported by President Museveni. It provided a platform particularly for African women, and especially Ugandans, to highlight current issues of concern around government policies, political participation and women’s rights.

Co-ownership of land for women and recognised rights for second (unofficial) wives in a polygamous society were two aspects of the proposed Domestic Relations bill which had been under discussion then for four years by the government. Ugandan friends suggested to me that one reason for its slow progress was the fact that President Museveni had more than one wife himself.

At Makerere University, we had the official ceremonies in the open air under a large awning, were entertained by African drummers, enjoyed a fashion show featuring fabulous African prints and were able to browse the stalls of goods and services from local publishers, non-governmental organisations and women’s campaigns on the lawn of Freedom Square. And frankly, there was some dissonance between the language of western feminist academics and the articulation of hard-pressed needs of African women, whether working in national government or at the grassroots.

At the congress in Seoul 2005, aiming to address something of that paradox, the theme was north-south, east-west. For Madrid 2008 the slogan was “equality is not a utopia.”

At the congress opening in Spain, our first delight was the highly acclaimed flamenco singer Carmen Linares, whose powerful voice, interpreting raw pain and passion, transcends time, space and culture: “history is always the same for women.” And adding to the colour of this congress were the Arab women - both visitors and residents - in the hijab and shalwar-kameez.

The contradictions of the context also resonated clearly here. The (male) Secretary of State for Education and Innovation was convinced that the future of the world depends on bringing women and their talents on board, yet the (female) representative from the Ministry of Equality (with “an agenda fully supported by the government of Spain”) highlighted a list of problems still to be tackled: domestic violence, sex trafficking and the high level of abuse and discrimination against immigrant women. The (male) chancellor of the Universidad Complutense applauded the efforts of the (female) vice chancellor in pulling off the logistical feat of organising the Women’s Worlds Congress while the university’s office of gender equality talks about raising awareness among the academic community “by means of various actions including the gradual elimination of sexist language,” which scarcely sounds a hard-hitting approach.

To be fair, the opening ceremony provided a platform to air “the numerous obstacles to equality in our country” including inequity in the labour market and the “predominant white machismo of liberal democracy.” Spanish women are still in a minority in decision-making positions. Yet again, the congress is clearly a prestigious national event from which the male côterie wish to benefit.

My friend Irene Norman suggested that each country hosting the congress should be held accountable for achieving national changes in the three years leading up to the following gathering. (Irene was awarded “woman of the year for learning” by the Wales Assembly Government in 2002 and named one of Wales’ 2003 “top ten regenerators” in community education through projects such as promoting women’s enterprise.)

We were told by the convenors that the logo of this year’s congress represented “a woman, like a butterfly, emerging from her chrysalis, symbol of the change we are all going through, with her wings open to the future of possibilities.”

To what extent is this meaningful?

We can’t deny the fact that, in one sense, the Women’s Worlds phenomenon is located within what is still a man’s world, deriving permission, sponsorship and credibility from it. Can, indeed, women’s worlds exist independently outside? Yes, in terms of our collective intellect and imagination, our capacity to inspire each other, the connections we make and our conversations together. All this leaves little doubt that a woman’s world (for want of a better phrase) would be a smarter, safer, fairer, wittier, more colourful and sustainable place for both men and women to live in. Not a utopia, but a different paradigm – and an urgent necessity.

The Women’s Worlds 2008 website is at

www.mmww08.org

Read more: Wales Women’s Studies Monographs

International Women’s Day: Sharing our Histories

Last weekend I enjoyed International Women’s Day at the Department of Lifelong Learning, University of Bangor thanks to the great organisational efforts of Shan Ashton and courtesy of a grant from the Welsh Assembly Government to celebrate women’s heritage in Wales. A range of women were there, different ages and stages in life, community development workers, micro-entrepreneurs, students, educationalists and organisations such as the Wales Women’s Archive.

Keynote speakers included Angharad Tomos, Wales’ foremost female Welsh language writer, novelist, journalist and political activist for language rights and Charlotte Williams, now professor of social justice at Keele university who read from her autobiographical work Sugar and Slate about being mixed race (Afro-Caribbean Welsh).

Although I’m only Welsh by adoption (having spent 20 years here) I was honoured to be invited to speak about another minority interest – women and revolution. My theme was: how can we women be true to our own revolutionary nature rather than merely revolving on someone else’s old record?

Interestingly enough, although each of the three of us had gone on quite a different journey through life and took quite a different approach in presenting our theme, we had crossed paths along the way and somehow seemed to have reached the same destination. You can read my talk here with an accompanying powerpoint here .

Spotlight on the Cuban experience

Sometimes I have good news to report. On 20th October – which is Cuba’s national day - I attended a prestigious event at Clwyd Theatre in Flintshire celebrating 25 years of solidarity between Cuba and Wales (Cymru Cuba).

“We’re proud that the Welsh Assembly has official government links with Cuba,” emphasised MP Elfyn Llwyd, highlighting the memorandum of understanding for cooperation in higher education, which has been developed by Welsh Minister for Education Jane Davidson in collaboration with Silvia Nogales, First Secretary of the Cuban embassy.

In contrast, explained Rob Miller, Director of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, our UK central government still does not have normalised relations with Cuba. Trade amounts to less than £4 million a year, despite assurances of “supporting open communications with Cuba rather than using an isolationist approach to influencing change” (Angela Smith). The impact on the Cuban people of the 40-year old US economic blockade continues to be officially ignored. In addition, international banks and other companies operating in Britain have been forced by the US to stop trading with Cuba – an act which both contravenes UK law and compromises our own sovereignty.

In spite of negative images of Cuba in the media, over 100,000 British tourists visit the island annually - not counting exchange visits, study tours and delegations of parliamentarians, trade unionists, academics and others. What do they find there? “People like us,” says Tyrone O’Sullivan, ex-miner chair of the worker-owned Tower Colliery in south Wales, “hard-working, good-natured, good at fixing things. Cuba still remains the example of what can be achieved by putting people first, of how ordinary people can change their own destiny.”

In summer of 2006 I got a little frustrated with the press coverage about Castro and wrote an article, archived on the Cynefin Y Werin (Wales Common Ground) website, called Cuba Sí: Let’s dream the impossible which began:

‘Cuba seems to be easy target practice for journalists these days: Fidel is dying, the revolutionary ideal is dead, communism is rotten and the vultures are circling. Soon the US will overrun the island, capitalism will be reinstated and the paradox which is Cuba will finally be resolved.’

Well, according to the speakers at Theatr Clwyd - and as I predicted - none of that has happened yet.



But what do the rest of us have to learn from the Cuban experience?

On October 10th London Metropolitan University saw the successful launch of the new International Institute for the Study of Cuba (IISC). At a time when Cuba is certainly facing a period of change, the IISC aims to provide an in-depth objective appraisal of the ‘social experience’ and to examine its holistic approach to development, particularly in the fields of education and health. IISC executive director, Professor Patrick Pietroni, former Dean of General Practice, who started mobilising resources for the institute just over a year ago, describes to me how ‘academics, managers and scientists in Cuba all seem to have an understanding of the social dimension of their work; an ability to link the macro to the micro and vice versa.’



The online, open-access International Journal of Cuban Studies - first issue due out in spring 2008 - will publish scholarly work on Cuba (and related topics) in all disciplines including science and medicine. So here’s the opportunity to develop some interesting ideas, for example: If the Cuban approach to development had been used in Africa rather than the World Bank model, would the continent be in much better shape? How is a caring holistic approach to housekeeping feasible when prevailing wisdom tells us that only market-oriented policies can bring prosperity? And how to explain the apparent contradiction that women are highly educated, economically independent and equally involved in community decision-making in Cuba, but not in so-called democracies like Mali?

His Excellency René Mujica Cantelar, Cuban ambassador to Britain, concluded his speech at Theatr Clwyd:

'We all need to address the issues of war, poverty, ecological disaster facing the world today, but it is not through weapons or market forces that we will overcome these challenges: it is through cooperation and solidarity.'

Read Cuba Sí. Let’s dream the impossible

Also read about the Caring Economy in Venezuela



human rights

Military recruitment or What's education for anyway?

I’d like to put the record straight for those readers who have the impression I’m not concerned about boys’ poor communication skills and under-performance at school. I am, because we all know what happens to some of those boys: they join the army.

And as the UK armed forces are currently operating below full strength according to statistics from the Defence Analytical Service Agency, there’s a new vigorous recruitment campaign encouraging 17s year olds to fly apache helicopters instead of going to university.

The case is especially relevant to the wild Welsh highlands of Gwynedd where the city of Bangor’s recruiting office has the second highest recruitment rate in the whole of the UK. I don’t think it’s anything to with the persuasion skills of the recruiting officers – it’s because there’s not much else on offer in the way of youth employment opportunities, as I’ve blogged elsewhere. So, despite parental opposition (particularly since the invasion of Iraq) the youth of the area depart, telling themselves as they’ve been told, that they have the chance to learn a trade and ignoring the fact that it may involve killing or getting killed. The news still makes it clear that it’s a man’s job and, in fact, this is one area of life where sex discrimination does work in women’s favour: it is still boys who are wanted as cannon fodder. On the other hand, it is the wives and mothers of soldiers who have been campaigning to bring troops home.



As I’m recounting this to my daughter who’s studying in England, she informs me of something I should have known about a long time ago: the university officer training corps (UOTC). Operational since the beginning of the 20th century, this programme currently comprises 19 units across the UK and aims:

To develop the leadership potential of selected university students through enjoyable training in order to communicate the values, ethos and career opportunities of the British Army.

It recruits students into weekend boot camp activities and offers the perk of free holidays abroad (or as it is stated: ‘we learn to plan and carry out expeditions overseas’). The purpose is not to persuade them to join the armed forces per se but to foster pro-army attitudes among the middle-class, according to one student’s analysis, “so that the future captains of industry will encourage their less well-educated workers to join up if there’s a war.”

The Khaki Dragon

This kind if inequality is particularly striking in Wales, which, as one of the poorest areas of the UK, seems to have become central government’s backyard for military developments, increasingly dependent on the British war machine for economic survival.

It was Plaid Cymru who late last year blew one whistle, providing figures to show that the army recruitment division visited schools in deprived areas of Wales twice as often as those in wealthy areas and thus highlighting the trend across Britain - which led to the MoD curtailing its practice of school visits (although the Welsh Assembly itself refused to take action).

However, cadet training, which takes place outside schools, is still booming in Wales: there are an estimated 7000 young people between 12 and 18 in over 100 cadet units and up to 4000 17- 32 year olds trained as Territorial Army soldiers in 23 TA units. Such enlightening statistics can be found in comprehensive research commissioned by Wales CND into the militarisation of the region. Their report entitled The Khaki Dragon - which is available to download here - also provides a full listing of sites in Wales that are used by arms related industries (at least 35 involved in military contracts) and military-sponsored education and research (Defence Technology Centres at Cardiff and Swansea universities).

And as Ray Davies, chair of Cardiff UNA, blogs:

Between 2001 and 2004 the Ministry of Defence provided military training for over 12,000 personnel from 137 countries, many with poor human rights records. All of this raises the prospect of Wales being used as a training ground for any corrupt dictator who happens to have a million pounds to spare.

What’s education for anyway?

I wrote an earlier post on the St Athans military academy and the involvement of the Open University there. But I’m pleased to see that there are some instances in Britain where higher education questions its own role in contemporary society. Prior to the No Border camp, London academics ran a 2-day free open access event at Goldsmiths University entitled The migrating university: No detention, no deportation, no borders in education where one of the panels discussed the following:

Does a university education offer a passport to a world of opportunity? Are the old exclusions of race, class, gender and ability fully redeemed by our policies and ‘inclusive’ programs? Or is the new hierarchy a filtering mechanism which promises precarious labour for some, security and success for others? While some may never question their right to access, do some have to fight to move at all and others struggle daily simply to pass or fail? Is education really a social good, a pass to freedom; or is it rather a ticket to a new set of subjugations?

There’s not much sense of autonomy here in north Wales. Along with RAF Valley (which trains fighter pilots from all over the world) the picturesque Isle of Anglesey also houses Britain’s largest magnox type nuclear power station at Wylfa. This is likely to be replaced soon by Wylfa ‘B’ if the latest 'consultation’ gives the government the go-ahead to build a new generation of power stations across the UK.



Though I’ve returned home from my travels, I still seem to be living in a developing country which has been forced to sell out under external pressures, is subject to cynical class-based control and where political leaders like to take the name of the Lord in vain as they make empty promises of peace and security for everyone. Our elitist society where intellectuals criticise exceptions like President Chavez - for closing down private schools in Venezuela and daring to say that capitalist ideology destroys the values of cooperation and egalitarianism.



Read The Khaki Dragon: download the Wales CND report here



human rights