Women in a fierce new world: interview with Gigi Francisco

She looks tired; she’s come a long way from Philippines to participate in the Regional Consultation and Training Institute “Strengthening Policy Analysis and Advocacy on Gender, Economic and Climate Justice in Latin America”, held in Montevideo from 18-21 March. The event was organized by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), the organization in which Gigi Francisco is the Global Coordinator, with the collaboration of ICAE’s Gender and Education Office (GEO), of which she’s also a member.
However, as soon as you start talking with Gigi the smile appears and almost any sign of tiredness seems to abandon her face. Of course we are talking about issues that she talks about every day, but she talks with so much passion and commitment that it seems fresh, young and hopeful, in spite of all the continuing challenges and problems that she addresses. Or perhaps exactly because of that.

Could you give us a brief summary of the reasons why is important to have a meeting like this one?

In 2010, DAWN undertook a systematization of our experience in global and regional advocacy as we struggle to secure women’s rights from being eroded by market-based processes and neoliberal policies. And we came up by the time with the conclusion that we are actually in the midst of what we saw was a fierce new world, and this fierce new world is being driven by a global expansion of capitalism and a development model that had privileged rapid growth over everything else. Part of this privileging of rapid growth is the result a narrow and very economistic viewing of what development is about, which we think is leading or has led to the impoverishment of development itself. This process of impoverishing development itself is ongoing in a context where the negative tendencies and disabilities that a growth-led type of development in different places are now manifesting themselves in some kind of an explosion instantaneously and simultaneously, such that even those who thought that they were able to control and manipulate a growth-led type of development, are themselves lost. They have created a monster of a model of development that has not just created problems for the other but had also generated a backlash on those whose political project it was to begin with.

I’m here speaking in DAWN’s perspective, which is the critical political economy of the relations between countries and peoples. I am here talking about the dominion and the traditional power and privileging of the West, or the developed countries. So, we in DAWN realized that, although the concept of the South itself has been destabilized by these various multiple crisis and destabilizations of this fierce new world, we continue to think that when one uses the lens of dominion and power and privileging the dynamics of hierarchy and asymmetries remain as they did in the past, but this time with more risks and uncertainties for many social groups. And within that, because we are DAWN and we advocate for women’s rights and gender equality, we see a very insecure positioning of women’s human rights and women’s aspirations in the context of both the dominant forces as well as the opposing of more progressive views. We are not sure that progressive views that are coming up will automatically integrate or incorporate feminist perspective or women’s rights into their alternative development models and paradigms – in fact, this has not happened.

So we are in this period of extreme uncertainties and risks and we feel that we need to begin a process reaching out to both young feminist women as well as older feminist colleagues in the different parts of the global South – Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America – to engage in a conversation on alternative models in the hope of generating or dinamysing a crossed generational positive spirit of women’s movements. Such conversation or events, as this consultation, are really meant to be safe spaces for women’s rights activists and feminists to come together and talk about the tensions and the dilemmas and the challenges not just in the interlinking of gender with economic and ecological justice but also internal to the women’s movement, to the feminist movement in relation to intergeneration and leadership, tension between various perspectives on feminist and ideological standpoints within feminism itself.
We begin the conversation and the discussion from an ethical standard of accepting differences among us and, at the same time, also standing on the principle of respect and being comfortable with contesting ideas rather than to hide differences.

Although DAWN welcomed the recent launch of UN Women, you clearly separated the women’s movement from UN Women. What are the main flaws in the creation of UN Women?

First of all DAWN is one of the organizations to immediately recognize that the UN Women entity is a product of women’s organizations’ long-term lobby with the United Nations (UN). When the UN began to think about reforming the UN so that it will be more effective and efficient, the women’s organizations where there immediately saying that we need to consolidate the disparate and separated bodies addressing gender issues throughout the UN, bringing them together in what we imagined would be a powerful, very influential organization or mechanism within the UN that is headed by no less than an Assistant Secretary-General.

That is the part that we celebrate. But what we also as DAWN are saying is that the UN Women is not us; even if its creation is because of us, it is still a part of the UN. So, in other words, as part of the UN it is an institutional mechanism, it is a particular space, and we, who in effect gave birth to it through our advocacy, need to continue to relate to the UN Women critically as we had related to the entire UN system then as well as now. I think this is a very important perspective and understanding for women to have this, because we in DAWN noticed that immediately after the UN Women was announced nobody, or very few feminists, have dare to raise a critical question about the UN Women. They are saying, well, after all this is what we wanted and now they have given it to us. But we are saying; yes, the UN has responded to our demand but that is a response which is firmly still located within an institution that we need to have a critical engagement with.

¿What are the things that we have noticed about the way the UN Women have been put up? One is that the reality is that the UN Women does not have any committed fund. In fact, the budget for two years of the UN was passed in December, or November last year, without any allocation for a UN Women entity, even while at that time the countries were already negotiating the last features of what would eventually be the one UN Women that was launched in February this year. So there is no funding and the big question is, where will the money come from?

The other thing that we need to watch out for is that even within the UN there is still a confusion on the extent which the one UN Women entity would address both normative as well as operational concerns. If it simply remains at the normative level, then it will engage with international agreements but will not have the capacity to implement direct country programs in effect, which is what the UNIFEM is now doing. So what women’s organizations are saying – including DAWN – is that it is important for UN Women to influence the normative expanding of any agreement within the UN, or even the normative expanding of how the UN as a whole will conduct its work. In addition, we are saying it is equally important for UN Women to have funds to be able to implement on-the-ground projects because these funds in the past – although they are small – have been critical in initializing as well as stimulating women’s activities at the ground level where these interventions matter the most.

The third concern that we have is really the lack of very clear commitment to civil society participation. While Michelle Bachelet, being once the president of a country, is very skillful and should be lauded for her skills on being able to talk to countries and get member States support for UN Women, unfortunately she doesn’t have the same level of skills in relating to social movements, specially women’s rights organizations and networks such as DAWN or the GEO of ICAE. We in DAWN have proposed that there should be some advisory group of civil society or women’s rights organization, but in addition to that we have also proposed that in the thematic areas that the UN Women will eventually adopt as its agenda we should also maintain certain thematic consultative groups in the different regions so that you have a very dynamic and wide-spread progressive and continuing discussion or consultation with women’s organizations. And this is something that we expect from a UN entity that we have asked for, which is a very clear and vibrant link back with the women’s organizations in terms of one UN Women actual operation.

What are the main challenges for DAWN and the women’s movement in 2011?

Clearly the most important challenge to women’s rights organizations is to address the multiple crisis and the multiple issues in an interlinked way, and this is precisely what our regional consultation is about. We are stimulating a critical way of looking at – and responding to – crisis from an interlinked perspective. At this moment, in response to global processes that are coming up in the next years, it is important that women’s organizations are able to link our perspective on gender and economic justice with ecological justice. The Rio+20 process is a very important process, a very important moment where all social movements, including women’s rights organizations, can present an alternative for sustainable development. We can not longer, as recent events had shown (the tragedy in Japan, the recurrent financial crisis, the shifting of grounds in terms of political certainties, the massive changes that are happening in the Middle East and, included in this configuration also the backlash reaction on women’s rights and sexual rights from neo-conservatives and fundamentalists). What we need for women’s organizations is to be able to come up with our proposals for alternatives, for a different type of perspective on development and complete them with other possible policies and strategies that could be realized at the global as well as regional and national levels.

The thing with DAWN, which may set us apart from other women’s rights organizations that also carry a very critical stand on neoliberal model of development, is that DAWN thinks that it is important for some groups – and that includes us – to continue engaging with the UN, because we can see everywhere that very valiant and progressive initiatives at the local and national levels could easily be overturned by a hostile global environment in trade or an institutional environment in monetary and finance. So we think that it is important to fight in all fronts and all spheres and that, for a small organization like DAWN, we have opted to continue engaging with the UN but also to engage in non-institutional processes.

As a member of the GEO, will you have a particular gender position at the ICAE’s World Assembly in June?

As far as education is concern, everybody will agree that education is a continuing process, it is a permanent process of educating everybody, including ourselves. But in addition to that, the feminists within the GEO and in ICAE also say that education has to be inclusive and that it has to educate men and women to move beyond the patriarchal mind-sets and mentality. A truly sustainable education, or an education for a sustainable future, cannot be but an education that is also non-sexist, that is inclusive, that respect diversity, sexual diversity, different types of identities, and that will be based on a respect for processes where differences and contestations are embraced, and are dealt with in a respectful way, in a way that – and this is very important for feminists – is safe for everybody. That is something which we have to address and, in fact, there have been some moments in past ICAE conferences where there have been self-censorship on the part of progressive educators because of a feeling of uncertainty about their personal safety.

Number two, the co-leadership of women and men in ICAE needs to be continuously nurtured. I think that the GEO caucus on formation needs to be preserved and continued. Patriarchy after all is an underpinning structure and, in some cases, there are resurgent patriarchies, particularly in situations where we least expect patriarchal reactions to emerge, including from some women. So a permanent commission or permanent groups such as the GEO, within ICAE, continues to be relevant for the organization.

I also want to say that I have a very strong feeling of solidarity with the people and social movements and activists in Latin America, so I will continue to support the Secretary being here in Latin America, especially when – as Latinos and Latinas say – it is a special moment in the region

By Enrique Buchichio
ICAE