July/August 2004

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

The Women's Web at the Boston Social Forum: A Feminist Agenda for Peace and Justice

Laura Roskos is helping to pull together the diverse strands of the Women's Web at the Boston Social Forum.

What differentiates a feminist agenda for peace and justice from other approaches to social change? Is it a holding a vision of positive peace? A commitment to using what Barbara Deming called "the two hands of nonviolent practice"? The building of inclusive civic structures which diffuse responsibility throughout all of society? Is it recognizing that, as Virginia Woolf proclaimed, "As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world"?

The events and activities planned under the umbrella of the women's web at the Boston Social forum explore each of these partial answers in trying to understand what "other worlds" might be possible for feminists today. The women's web is the brainchild of Elisabeth Leonard and Joan Ecklein, co-chairs of the Boston branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Drawing on the resources of that organization, they convened a meeting of women and organizations from the greater Boston area to plan for July's social forum.

From these early meetings, it soon became clear that in addition to a variety of skills and insights necessary for creating a sustainable future, many women also brought fear and anger focused on a range of ongoing grievances and violations. As a means of giving voice and venue to the full range of participants' needs, programming for the women's web evolved in two strands: The Women's Tribunal to hold and heal, and The Women's Tent to build skills and consolidate know-how.

Both strands will feature workshops and presentations that question, test, and develop a human rights-based approach to human security. For women, as for any non-dominant social group, enforcement of laws and norms is a vexing issue. Yet changing laws and social norms has been one fairly effective way of improving women's lives. The question of how to promote the rule of law without exacerbating the problem of enforcement violence will permeate the Women's Tribunal on violence against women to be held on Saturday of the BSF.

In preparation for Saturday's events, Friday's schedule for the Women's Web includes a series of workshops and performances examining the uses and effects of testimony by, among others, organizers of the World Tribunal on Iraq, and cast-members of Body and Sold (a theatrical production based on the testimonies of runaway teens lured into sex industries). At the tribunal, women will present testimony to a community of wise women (or crones), and to the public, about the violence in their lives as a result of institutionalized sexism and racism. This process will begin with a performance of "Refugee Ragas" by Aparna Sindhoor and close with a Poetry Jam for Transformation coordinated by Jaclyn Friedman of the Center for New Words. The findings of the Council of Wisewomen will be presented at the BSF's closing convocation on Sunday afternoon.

Since 2000, WILPF's international program of action has involved work with and around the United Nation's Security Council Resolution 1325. Resolution 1325 provides guidelines for protecting women and girls during armed conflict and calls for equal participation of women and men in post-conflict negotiations and reconstruction. Building on the insights developed in the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women (a process based on an appraisal of the UN Decade for Women made at the UN Women's Conference in Nairobi, Kenya in 1985), 1325 attempts to institutionalize gender equity as the cornerstone of peacebuilding by speaking simultaneously to the need for women's physical security and political power. All of the activities planned for the BSF's women's tent assume that women have active moral and political roles to play in overcoming violence at the interpersonal, structural, and international levels.

The social forum process of which the BSF is a part "creates space for all existing progressive social movements" to come together for networking, alliance-building, and cross fertilization. This spring, over 35 women's organizations have used the occasion of the Boston Social Forum to test the waters of working together. We hope the friendships and trust sparked by this process will strengthen our movement over the coming years.

Women's Web activities are integrated into the overall program for the Social Forum; if you have questions about the location or time of any of our sponsored events, please see the BSF program, or ask one of the volunteers in the Women's Tent for assistance. Learn more about the Women's Web and the BSF at www.bostonsocialforum.org/tracks/womens/, or contact the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom at 215/ 563-7110, wilpf@wilpf.org.

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