DAWN’s training institutes and meetings have provided tools to many young feminists around the world to apply feminist and interlinkage analysis in their everyday work, which takes place at the local, national, regional and global level. The following article provides and example.

Fabiola Virginia Morales Ortiz is a Political Scientist and Master in Public Policies at Universidad de Chile.  She attended DAWN Training Institute in 2016.

by Fabiola Virginia Morales Ortiz (Guatemala)1

In reflecting on DAWN’s (2014) concept of social contracts, especially under a dynamic of unequal power relations, I ask myself how, from the political proposal of feminism, mainly through theoretical and practical tools, we can construct mechanisms of resistance and transformation of the different spaces of participation, organizations and social movements?

This question becomes more relevant as a result of the stories and experiences shared at the DAWN Workshop: Feminist challenges in the context of resistances, held in Porto Alegre in January 2017, where different women reminded us that in Brazil, under a context of a coup, it is necessary to continue fighting and at the same time to innovate our strategies of change.

For several years now, social discourse has manifested the rejection of a capitalist system that reinforces relations of inequality, where inequities are mainly the result of poor distribution of wealth. This focus of analysis has allowed the class concept to remain valid in the discussion, adding other variables such as ethnic inequality and racism.

In this struggle to survive and confront the ‘fierce world’, women have been present in spaces of action through public complaint, analysis and collective work. Their participation has allowed to introduce and make visible certain issues that are not so frequent in the public and social imagination, mainly to speak about conditions of vulnerability not only depends on the class and ethnicity to which you belong, but in turn are linked to gender and to sexual identity itself.

Francisco and Antrobus (2014)2 describe this as follows: Feminist women have assured that the issues of equality and rights they have secured as part of global agreements are included in the agendas of social justice and development.

Reality shows us that thanks to the work done by the women’s and feminist movement in the world, today, talking about violence against women, femicide and abortion is not the same as it used to be. However, the current challenge in a context of resistance raises the need to go a little beyond those spaces won by women and use the tools of feminism in other contexts of action and issues of debate.

From the space of reflection in which I move, the Migrant Action Movement – MAM- , work has begun on incorporating new approaches to the analysis, for example, how to understand migration from the analysis of gender inequalities? How is this reality of leaving your country of origin in search of better opportunities, impacting in different ways?

The approach of the subject has been mainly from the analysis of racism and discrimination, being a powerful analysis framework that allows to derive other questions. However, it is still less analyzed how men, women and persons of sexual diversity face their process as immigrants in a differentiated way.

There is no clear analysis, for example, of the social and family costs of not allowing people who have a dependency status visa to be prohibited from developing work activities, knowing that a large percentage of women choose this type of entry permit.

What is happening to people in the LGBTQUI community? What are the main problems they are facing, not only as immigrants but because of their sexual identity? These and other questions make me think that it is not yet part of the central analysis, to interpret migration from the lens of gender inequalities, it is not part of the official discourse nor of most social organizations that work on the subject.

It seems to be that we have clear problems and limitations, but where do we begin? With whom do we resist? Where to look for alliances to refound the current social contracts?

In the case of migration, it has probably been from the academy and some social organizations that discussions have begun on gender inequalities. However, the challenge is how to transmit this knowledge to the communities, not only to raise awareness but also to develop concrete actions. In MAM, we believe that a first step is the approval of a new immigration law, especially as it is a minimum umbrella of rights.

Current experiences show us that the first step is to rely on women, men and people of sexual diversity who believe in feminism as a flag of struggle and transformation. How to build from the contributions and possibilities of each of the actors involved? We are aware that changing ways of thinking and cultural patterns requires a lot of time and patience, the important thing is to learn to recognize our mistakes and setbacks, but at the same time to congratulate ourselves on the small steps we take in this path of resisting and making this world a more human space.

1 This article was translated from spanish by Maria Graciela Cuervo.

2 Franciso and Antrobus (2014). Feminist activisms for new global contracts amidst civil indignationl, in Sen, Durano (2014). The Remaking of Social Contracts: Global Feminists in the Twenty-First Century. Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era. A group of social organizations created in 2014, in order to defend and promote the Human Rights of the migrant community in Chile. From its origins we have focused on the approval of a new immigration law, the current date to 1975, created in the government of Augusto Pinochet in which migration is framed within the concept of national security.