History

The first UN Women’s Conference was held in Mexico City in 1975. There it was declared that the UN Decade for Women would begin in 1976. The United Nations Decade for Women was a period from 1975 to 1985 focused on the policies and issues that impact women, such as pay equity, gendered violence, land holding, and other human rights. It was adopted December 15, 1975, by the United Nations General Assembly by Resolution 31/136.

DAWN’s first sparks came from a now famous meeting in Bangalore, in 1984. Women from the global South got together to share their experiences about what was happening in their countries, in their regions.

This meeting was called as a preparation for The Third World Conference on Women that was going to take place in Nairobi the following year, 1985. It was an assessment of progress meeting after the 1975-1985 UN Decade for Women.

We discussed the rise of religious fundamentalism, now a common topic, militarism in the Pacific and the testing of nuclear weapons, the debt crisis of the 1980s, among other geopolitical themes. DAWN’s first analysis linked these topics, situating them in the context of the global South, of colonialism and the international development agenda.

A group called a meeting in Bergen, Norway to look at a draft of what would become the first DAWN book. Norwegians & Ford Foundation helped in this early stage.

It was considered a game-changer in feminist literature at the time, for bringing the voices of women from the economic South to the forefront of the global women’s movement. The book was a success and made a huge impact.

Our group’s approach was to ask a critical question about development in the context of gender equality: The critique of the development paradigm of the time from the perspective of women from the South had great resonance at the conference and DAWN was born out of that.

“WHO NEEDS A LARGER
SHARE OF A POISONED PIE”

The Third World Conference on Women took place between 15 and 26 July 1985 in Nairobi, Kenya, as the end-decade assessment of progress and failure in implementing the goals established by the World Plan of Action from the 1975 inaugural conference on women in Mexico City.

The Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985 ushered in the era of the international women’s movement, with its multitude of diverse regional and global manifestations. Women’s groups and feminist leaders had been emerging over the decade in all regions, and more Southern voices now took center stage. For example, DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era) – a new Southern network of researchers – launched its feminist critique of development in Nairobi. The vibrant NGO forum embraced women’s diversity as strength and reflected the growing consensus that all issues are women’s issues and all would benefit from gender analysis. The “Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women Towards 2000” coming out of the Inter-governmental conference contained a detailed and sophisticated approach to what achieving women’s equality required.

Oxford Handbook on the United Nations, edited by Thomas G. Weiss & Sam Daws, 2007

In 1986, the Secretariat relocated from its original home in Bangalore to the Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ) in Brazil, when Neuma Aguiar became General Coordinator.

Peggy Antrobus is appointed General Coordinator and the DAWN Secretariat relocates to the Women and Development Unit (WAND) at the University of the West Indies in Barbados.

UN Conference on environment and development (UNCED) Rio in 1992.
Also known as “Earth Summit”, this conference was held as a response for member states to cooperate together internationally on development issues after the Cold War. Due to issues relating to sustainability being too big for individual member states to handle, Earth Summit was held as a platform for other member states to collaborate.

During this summit, DAWN held a panel on Debt and Trade, drafted a Declaration by Women, and discussed the burden on women of the devastating and diverse consequences of Structural Adjustment Policies. We also launched a DAWN booklet: Environment and Development: Grass Roots Women’s Perspective by Rosina Wiltshire.

Although the United Nations had long been active in the field of human rights, the Vienna conference was only the second global conference to focus exclusively on human rights, with the first having been the International Conference on Human Rights held in Teheran, Iran, during April–May 1968 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The World Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993 was where DAWN, along with other women’s organisations, was successful in establishing the concept that “women’s rights are human rights” to delegitimize violence against women globally.

In 1994 the United Nations coordinated an International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt. The term ‘reproductive health’ was defined and agreed upon by UN member states in the Programme of Action adopted at Cairo.

At the International Conference on Population and Development, DAWN launched a platform analysis, Population and Reproductive Rights: Feminist Perspectives from the South, by Sonia Corrêa, and was amongst those who initiated a Women’s Declaration on Population Policies.

Known as the Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace, this conference was convened by the United Nations in September 1995 in Beijing, China. At this conference, governments from around the world agreed on a comprehensive plan to achieve global legal equality, known as the Beijing Platform for Action (The Third World Conference on Women had taken place in Nairobi, 1985).

In this conference DAWN launched ‘‘Markers on the Way: the DAWN Debates on Alternative Development’’, coordinated by Gita Sen. This text represents DAWN’s contribution to the debates and discussions on economic issues at the time.

In 1998, the DAWN Secretariat shifted to Fiji, at the University of the South Pacific, with Claire Slatter as General Coordinator.

The first DAWN Training Institute, a three-week intensive training programme for young feminist activists and advocates was launched in 2003. Its objective was to upgrade advocacy skills and analytical capabilities, and particularly an understanding of interlinkages and power relationships. DAWN’s four themes – the Political Economy of Globalization; Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights; Political Restructuring and Social Transformation; and Sustainable Livelihoods and Environmental Justice – and the way in which they link provided the core of the programme.

Participants were trained by experienced feminist advocates to assist them to understand the changing terrain of the struggle for gender justice. They were exposed to the ideas and work of other activist scholars, and examined critical issues under each theme in the context of current debates at the global level, and interlinkages with issues under other themes.

From 2004 to 2008, Bene Madunagu was DAWN’s General Coordinator, with the Secretariat having its base at the Girl’s Power Initiative (GPI), Cross River State, Nigeria.

The DAWN Steering Committee initiated this process which was aimed at bringing DAWN to a new phase in its organizational life to better respond to the need for stronger political analyses and leadership within global feminist movements as these engage with global forces and issues in the years to come.

Gigi Francisco was the next DAWN’s General Coordinator and the Secretariat found a new home at Miriam College, Quezon City, Philippines, after the turnover in November 2008 in Chiangmai, Thailand.

DAWN launches its new book on 31 October 2014, entitled “The Remaking of Social Contracts: Feminists in a Fierce New World”. The book, published by ZED Books London is a result of a long process of debate and reflection by DAWN members, partners and allies in various civil society organisations and social movements. It follows from previous groundbreaking books published by DAWN in the past, beginning with Development, Crises and Alternative Visions: Third World Women’s Perspectives (Sen and Grown, 1987).

In November 2014, the Secretariat returned to Fiji, on Rodwell Road in Suva, with Gita Sen as General Coordinator. In 2016 she is joined by María Graciela Cuervo, from the Dominican Republic, and they have been DAWN’s Co-Coordinators ever since.

DAWN Intergenerational Dialogues: The meeting aimed at building a collective memory and inter-generational dialogues to share, reflect and plan on feminist resistance strategies for the future. This was also an opportunity to test methodologies and improve the design of the broader project on collective memory and the series of IGDs towards DAWN’s 40th anniversary.