International: Publication: "Building Feminist Movements and Organisations: Global Perspectives"

A collection of 144 contributions from 42 different countries, the book reveals the multiplicity of work being undertaken by feminist movements and organisations worldwide. In addition, the range of contributions extrapolates key issues and processes that can be used as building blocks to further strengthen feminist agendas as women's rights face unprecedented challenges from increasing fundamentalisms, poverty and militarism, andreduced funding.

Acknowledging the potency of diverse perspectives that this book showcases - it importantly does a lot more than this - provoking questions and exposing challenging issues. Lydia Alpízar Durán, AWID's Executive Director, sets the tone of the publication and addresses three main questions in the introduction: Why do we see building feminist movements and stronger organisations as so important to social, economic and cultural change? What are the key issues and insights that have emerged while putting this book together? And how are we to move forward?

AWID's online survey carried out in 2006 - 'Where is the Money for Women's Rights?' - revealed that "87 percent of almost 1000 women's and feminist organisations who responded had been created within the last 16 years". Given the relatively young nature of these organisations, Alpízar Durán maintains that "analysing and documenting our experience of organising and movement building is key to ensuring the transfer of knowledge and experience" (p3). 'Building Feminist Movements and Organisations: Global Perspectives' opens up spaces for reflection and discussion to assist our organisations and movements evolve.

The book explores several main themes:

Part 1: Challenging Power and Revisioning Leadership:

This section focuses on the fluid definition of leadership, and how women and feminist organisations construct and use different models of leadership to challenge power in praxis.

Andrea D'Atri's contribution (p.15), for example, tells the story of Pan y Rosas - a women's organisation born within the context of a deeply fragmented Argentina - that evolved from a group of 10 women defending worker's rights and gained momentum to facilitate a repoliticisation of the women's movement. Their amazing determination in a climate where the 'criminalisation of social protest' was the norm in Argentina, reveals how different women's struggles are linked, and how collective leadership can be important in initiating change and challenging power.

Part 2: Revisiting Organisational Practices

Organisational practices can be influenced by the values that are imbued in its workers. This section raises issues of how feminist values are integrated into organisational practices, and particularly how (and if) these values translate into feminist practice. Nicholas Piálek's contribution asserts that the way feminist discourse is framed will have a huge impact on "how it is assumed and practiced by staff within an organisation" (p.79). Using the gender mainstreaming program within international organisation Oxfam GB as a case study, Piálek shows how this program has failed in its endeavour to establish gender analysis as a responsibility of all staff - the major reason being that gender terminology has been presented and consequently construed as being technical and therefore the domain of the gender 'expert': "Gender... becomes a knowledge enclave, with its own tools, operational frameworks, and jargon fortifying its walls. The distancing of 'ordinary' staff members by this type of discourse means that responsibility for implementing GAD (Gender and Development) is, in effect, shifted from staff members to the 'expert'" (p.80).

Part 3: Building Organisational Capacity and Resources

Optimising the capacity and resources of our organisations and movements is critical for achieving our goals. In the current context of reduced funding for women's rights work however, this can be an immense challenge. In this section, contributors share their experiences of capacity building and how they prioritise their energy and funds. Pramada Menon, for example, shares with us the work of Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action (CREA) - a women's human rights organisation based in Delhi, India (p.109). Their Community-Based Leadership Programme evolved from a careful analysis of local needs, as well as taking into account CREA's holistic vision to address discrimination, injustice and lack of access to information. Manon outlines the process taken to develop the Programme, as well as some of the challenges faced. This paper also touches on the importance of individual values and ownership of issues, rather than just a process-based approach.

Part 4: Broadening the Support Base of Movements

Alpízar Durán asserts that "constituency building and establishing the support base of our agendas and causes have not emerged as top priorities for thousands of women's and feminist organisations" (p.7). This section brings together innovative and inspirational contributions from Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Germany, Korea and Romania. Camelia Blaga's piece on spreading feminist values in Romania, for example, is set against the backdrop of a country where "femininity continues to be associated mainly with beauty, with marrying 'the prince', attending to his needs and looking sexy" (p160).

Blaga discusses the work of women's rights organisation ALEG - meaning 'I choose' in Romanian - and their highly successful Gender Equality Festival that challenges gender stereotypes amongst young people. Their strategy to construct a support base was to "build bridges, reaching out to different local stakeholders as well as internationally... raising funds, recruiting volunteers, finding local partners and triggering media attention" (p162).

Thinking outside the box is what motivated ALEG in developing ideas for the festival. To realise their vision required what Blaga describes as the "power of effective networking" - not being afraid of sharing projects with partners.

Part 5: Sustaining Work in Situations of Conflict

Unfortunately, much of women's rights work is undertaken within a climate of conflict. How can we sustain our work under circumstances where communities and activists are already subject to heightened political challenges? Part five of the book considers perspectives from Israeli and Palestinian feminists, as well as the experience of women's organisations in Colombia and Indonesia.

The 'Motherhood' strategy from Indonesia, contributed by Monika S. W. Doxey (p.209), is a particularly innovative example of how women's rights work was sustained in Indonesia during times of political upheaval - discussing the strategic use of Motherhood as an essentialist identity during the end of Suharto's 30-year authoritarian government. All four contributions in this section, however, highlight the challenges facing women's rights work in a landscape of protracted conflict, and provide valuable insight into strategies of resilience and determination.

Part 6: Campaigns as a Means for Movement Building

The last section of the book looks at what, for many feminists, is the crux of their work. Linking strongly with building the support base of movements, this section examines the importance of campaigning and advocacy for movement building. Whilst "not all forms of organisational strengthening necessarily contribute to movement building, and the same applies to campaigns... campaigns have considerable potential in contributing to key movement-building processes" (p.9).

Titi Salaam's contribution walks us through the campaign in Nigeria to protest the sentencing to death of three young women under Shari'a law. The internationally recognised campaign not only resulted in the overturning of the three death sentences, but broadened in scope to contribute significantly to the building of the women's movement in Nigeria and raise awareness of women's rights and access to justice under Shari'a law.

"Building Feminist Movements and Organisations: Global Perspectives" is multidimensional and open in its capacity to inform and inspire women's rights work. This review has only touched on a few of the 144 contributions - but a common element that seems to emerge is the strategy of inclusion - to involve everyone at all different levels in the struggle, whether they be the perpetrators or the victims, the oppressed or the free. As Alpízar Durán observes: "we need to invent new ways of organising ourselves, and yet see what can be learned from our long and rich history of organizational development... creating spaces for political debates that relate directly to building our collective power to defend and continue advancing our vision of the worlds we would like to build as women" (p.10).

Reviewed by: Rochelle Jones