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Women in Politics: A Space for Social Changes |
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European Feminist Initiative, EFI-IFE was invited to participate and share experiences at the seminar “Women in Politics: A Space for Social Changes” organized on Dec 14th -15th, 2008 by the Swedish Institute in Alexandria and the Swedish Foundation Kvinna till Kvinna.
Women’s participation in political decision making and political leadership is very low in the whole Middle East region. Patriarchal, tribal and sectarian politics have left their fingerprints on political parties as well as on the status of women in public life. Percentage of women participation in the parliaments is the lowest in the world. Moreover, women’s economical dependence and a lack of own income is another factor that limits the space for participation in decision making both within family and in the society. How is it this situation similar to the situation of women living in democracies and peace in Europe or in Caucasus, another region torn of military conflicts?
The objectives of the seminar were:
- To provide safe space for empowerment discussions on the opportunities and obstacles for women in politics through exchange of experiences and knowledge regionally and internationally.
- To visualize strategies for strengthening of women’s capacities and self confidence to be candidates in the up coming parliamentary and local elections in the region.
- To strengthen the cooperation between female politicians on both local and national level and women’s rights activists from the civil society: encouraging mutual support and action.
In the mythic town of Alexandria this meeting gathered over 35 feminist activists for women’s rights, women Members of Parliaments and women politicians from local self governments coming from 10 countries from the Middle East, Europe and Caucasus. Through speeches of high quality and deep sincerity, convergence of the analyses and conviction of the participants, in a warm climate of sisterhood and mutual respect of differences, the seminar demonstrated brilliantly that the feminist movement is a necessary force in the common effort to counter the women’s right’s violations over borders, over the diversity of cultures and historical backgrounds.
This is in itself a great success!
The importance of the Alexandria seminar, of its following-ups is directly linked to the deteriorating of the situation of millions of women all over the world. All the testimonies - from Jordan to Sweden, from Iraq to Georgia, from Croatia to Egypt – gave clear indication of the universality of the patriarchal system built on domination and control of women. It helped all of us think about which policies, according to our different contexts, are needed to be designed and implemented in order to gather more feminists, to raise awareness of more women with our analyses and to ultimately accumulate more opportunities for more women and women’s friendly politics to enter the political sphere, traditionally reserved for men.
The seminar showed vividly the refusal of women’s imprisonment in the nests of traditional patterns, the necessity to act together and to widen together the space of women’s resistance. One of the main conclusions of the seminar was the necessity but also the will to coordinate between the different networks, to extend intercommunication and dissemination of information, to work on complementarities and accumulation, to encourage initiatives and women alliances and mobilize all feminist efforts both regionally but also internationally.
Lilian Halls –French
President European Feminist Initiative |
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