Around 700 hundred women activists from different parts of the world gathered in Berlin on Saturday for an international conference to discuss the existing situation and the future of feminist struggle.
After the opening speeches the second international conference organised by the “Network Women Weaving the Future” started with a session entitled “World War III and Smashing the Armour of Immunity of the State and the Dominant Male”, with speakers from Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Australia, Italy and India.
Meghan Bodette from the Kurdish Peace Institute moderated the first session, and started by asking “What can the revolutionary liberation struggle of women and other oppressed genders do in this age of pandemics, wars, landgrabs and ecological crises?”.
“The oppressive capitalist patriarchy continues its war against women and all other oppressed genders, developing new methods and strategies to break down women’s resistance, and trying to hide all the contradictions of the system,” she noted.
Lolita Chávez, a women’s rights activist and Guatemalan indigenous leader as well as an international leader in the struggle to preserve natural resources, took to the stage, emphasising that women have been dismantling borders from Abya Yala (in the Americas) to Kurdistan.
“We are not America, we are the outcome of anti-patriarchal, anti-imperialist and anti-racist expressions,” Chávez said. “All of Abya Yala is going to be feminist,” she continued. “Our embrace of the strength of water, fire, earth and air is going to reach all its territories.”
Ariel Salleh, a sociologist and an eco-feminist from Australia also spoke, focusing on the connection between ecological, economical and patriarchal exploitation.
“The global crisis of modernity is a crisis of masculinity. The struggle is a socialist, ecological and feminist one,” Salleh said.
Indian women’s rights activist Kavita Krishnan discussed how governments and companies are using safety as a tool to replicate the institution of patriarchal family and how safety has become a term that threatens women’s freedom.
“Equality is presented as a western value that can’t be universalised,” she said. “We have to stand in solidarity with all the movements fighting for equality and for the right of self-defence.”
The first day of the conference continued with workshops discussing several topics such as “What is needed for an alternative understanding of the economy?”, “How can we develop an alternative understanding and practice of medicine?”, “How can we ensure that existing movements, organisations and institutions focus on women’s freedom?”, and “Forced migration – How can we organise a resistance that shows the solidarity necessary to meet the needs that arise?”.
