By staff contributor Milad Pournik

Iran is holding an election today to determine the next President. There may be a second round run-off (which would be held next Friday June 21^st) between the top two candidates if no candidate manages to garner more than 50 percent of the first round vote.

Many are interested in what the election could mean for the future of Iranian relations with the United States and other Western powers. Those in Iran are more worried about which candidate can best address the economic malaise in the country. Women in Iran share these concerns but they are also keenly interested in what the election could mean for their rights and role in society.

There are no women candidates to vote for although some 30 put forward their names to run in the Presidential Election. Women, however, are permitted to run for Iran’s parliament and currently make up just over three percent of Iran’s parliamentarians. When I went to vote this morning I managed to see the irony in the fact that they put “Mr.” in front of the names of all the candidates – is it not sufficiently clear? (more…)

The Huairou Commission

Established in 1995 at the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing, the Huairou Commission has been committed since its founding to grounding the global women’s movement in grassroots community development issues and to ensuring that women are central in the human settlements field. The Huairou Commission develops strategic partnerships and linkages among grassroots women’s organizations, advancing their capacity to collectively influence political spaces on behalf of their communities and enhance their sustainable, resilient community development practices. Currently, the Huairou Commission is structured as a global membership coalition of women’s networks, non-governmental and grassroots women’s organizations in 54 countries. The Huairou Commission holds consultative status with the UN and actively participates in UN conferences and processes.

By staff contributor Milad Pournik 

In May we added almost 100 sources and are now up to 1,914 total sources. The majority of the additions were to the water folder, which now contains 42 sources (compared to four last month) that cover a variety of  topics – from women’s vital role in water management to the link between access to water and education, gender-based violence, and women’s empowerment more broadly.

As always, we welcome any feedback or suggestions for important sources that you may have (if so, please send an e-mail to 1325bib.ggp@gmail.com).

Finally, the Bib can be accessed here.

By staff contributor Ariana Rabindranath and guest contributor Julia Collins

What do a civil engineer, a nurse, a filmmaker and an ecology teacher have in common? The answer: water.

On May 16, 2013, 26 people in 6 different countries met over Google Hangout to discuss their work on water issues and begin collaborating on best practices. The project “Women and Water in South and Central Asia: Building International Social Capital for Sustainable Peace and Development,” co-led by the Global Gender Program and Central Asia Program is proud of the successful first video conference and workshop.

The women participants in Afghanistan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Tajikistan traveled long and far to the partner NGO office in each country to meet one another, receive training on video storytelling, and learn more about the project and the other participants. After the workshop in the morning, the participants and NGO partners got online to meet face to face.

Despite unsteady internet connections, language barriers, and a few initial technical difficulties, the video conference was an hour and a half well spent. Everyone then introduced themselves and their work. The women described facing similar challenges in their rural and urban homes: lack of clean and ample water, long distance to the water supply, lack of a sanitation system, lack of community hygiene awareness, natural resource degradation, and frustration with the pace of local development.

The most fascinating part of the conference was the variety of approaches involved in mitigating these very same water-related challenges. Some women spoke of the spiritual connection to the earth and the moral responsibility to manage water sustainably. Other participants took a systematic approach and cited facts and figures describing their water-related work. The vast differences in responses are exciting. The project looks forward to providing a forum for the wide exchange of ideas, styles and techniques used to address water-related difficulties.

Next up: the first in-person conference in Kyrgyzstan. Everyone will convene in Bishkek this fall to continue the project with peer-to-peer learning, capacity building and leadership training.

The project participants include two Water User Association Chairwomen, a Village Head, a civil engineer, horticulturalist, sanitation awareness organizers, a midwife, a nurse, hygiene educators, an ecology teacher, several trainers, natural resource managers, an irrigation engineer, an environmental filmmaker, an urban watershed improvement manager, economic empowerment advocates, rural women’s rights advocates, a youth mobilizer, a sustainability network manager, and a biodiversity specialist.

Shaping the Motherhood of Indigenous Mexico by Vania Smith-Oka. Vanderbilt University Press, 2013. 

Mainstream Mexican views of indigenous women define them as problematic mothers. Development programs have included the goal of helping these women become “good mothers.” Economic incentives and conditional cash transfers are the vehicles for achieving this goal.

This book examines the dynamics among the various players – indigenous mothers, clinicians, and representatives of development programs. The women’s voices lead the reader to understand the structures of dependency that paradoxically bind indigenous women within a program that calls for their empowerment. The cash transfer program is Oportunidades, which enrolls more than a fifth of Mexico’s population. It expects mothers to become involved in their children’s lives at three nodes–health, nutrition, and education. If women do not comply with the standards of modern motherhood, they are dropped from the program and lose the bi-monthly cash payments.

Smith-Oka explores the everyday implementation of the program and its unintended consequences. The mothers are often berated by clinicians for having too many children (Smith-Oka provides background on the history of eugenics and population control in Mexico) and for other examples of their “backward” ways. One chapter focuses on the humor indigenous women use to cope with disrespectful comments. Ironically, this form of resistance allows the women to accept the situation that controls their behavior.

By staff contributor Milad Pournik

Perhaps you have heard of Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Laureate in 2003, but have you heard of khaneh-yeh-khorshid (translated as “the house of the sun”), an Iranian NGO that works with over 100 female drug addicts in Tehran?

The photo below portrays a scene characterizing the reality that women have been, and continue to, carry out the most painstaking yet unacknowledged work in Iranian society. NGOs working to support women and girls share this feature with their intended beneficiaries. My paper attempts to raise awareness around the work done by Iranian civil society organizations to advance the standing of women and girls.

The report provides a brief history of the women’s movement in Iran and a review of the current state of civil society groups working with women and girls. A statistical background provides the context in which civil society works to empower women and girls. Informed by interviews, the report highlights seven featured NGOs, whose activities range from helping female drug addicts to working with Afghan refugee women and children; from promoting women entrepreneurs to educating adolescent girls; and from supporting HIV/AIDS widows to rehabilitating disabled children.

You can access the paper here.

By staff contributor Milad Pournik

Georgetown University’s Conflict Resolution Program and TIKAD (Turkish Businesswomen Association) co-hosted a conference on “the role of businesswomen in peacebuilding and development” on May 16, 2013 at Washington DC’s Mayflower Renaissance Hotel.

Melanne Verveer, former Ambassador-at-Large for global women’s issues and current Executive Director of the Georgetown University Institute for Women, Peace and Security, delivered the keynote address. She explained that businesswomen can innovate solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Through their entrepreneurial zeal women can advance sustainable development by creating businesses that meet demand but also simultaneously provide gainful employment for countless others.

Verveer referenced several important initiatives outlined below:

• Invest for the Future – a U.S. Department of State funded program providing a support network for female entrepreneurs throughout Southern and Eastern Europe and Eurasia
• 5by20 – Coca Cola’s initiative to empower five million women entrepreneurs by 2020
• A new entrepreneurship center that is to be launched next month out of the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul to support women entrepreneurs in conflict-ridden Afghanistan

Verveer ended with the following quote from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey:

“Humankind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible for humankind to grow by the improvement of only one part while the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains that the other half can soar into skies?” 

The first panel featured the following four speakers. I’ve highlighted their key contributions to the conference:

• Esin Argat,  Board member of the Turkish Industry & Business Association
• Evelyn Thorton,   CEO of Institute for Inclusive Security
• Demet Cetindogan , President of the High Advisory Board of TIKAD
• Robert Berg, Trustee of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences

Argat acknowledged the impressive gains women in Turkey have made in the private sector. Yet, she urged for more involvement of women in information and communications technology (ICT) in Turkey because the gender gap in the sector is still very large, with women only making up 30 percent of the sector. Argat also pressed the audience about the need to create more opportunities for mentoring and support for aspiring women entrepreneurs in Turkey and elsewhere. She pointed to the promising example of the U.S. State Department’s TechWomen initiative, launched in 2011, which includes a component that connects women in Silicon Valley with women interested in ICT in the MENA region. (more…)

By staff contributor Milad Pournik 

In April the bibliography continued to grow in number (up to 1,839 sources) as well as in usability. We created two new folders to help guide navigation; the Peacemaking folder contains 102 sources highlighting the role of women in peace negotiations and peace initiatives, the 1325 Implementation folder contains 57 sources analyzing global, institutional, and country-specific efforts to implement the tenets set out in SCR 1325. The Justice folder, created in March, now has 55 sources that largely focus on the gendered dimensions of transitional justice mechanisms.

We continue to add hyperlinks to the references as well as adding pertinent descriptors. Among the most common descriptors are: 1325 (173), Afghanistan (111), community (136), economics (248), gender mainstreaming (105), security (165), and UN (109). So far, we have identified more than half of our sources as either open access (OA) or not open access (NOA), finding 615 to be open access and 421 requiring a journal subscription.

As always, we welcome any feedback or suggestions for important sources that you may have (if so, please send an e-mail to 1325bib.ggp@gmail.com). Finally, the Bib can be accessed here.

By staff contributor Milad Pournik

In 2012 the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) launched the ‘MENA Agenda 1325′ – Ending Discrimination and Reinforcing Women’s Peace and Security in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) Region –  in 8 countries (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen). The project embarked on a regionally comparative, yet nationally independent, review of the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda and its linkages to human rights work in the MENA region.

After holding national consultations in all eight countries, WILPF organized a conference to bring together civil society members from the region to share their findings. At the conference, participants identified several emerging themes across the national consultations. The highlights of which are:

1)      Concern with exclusion from decision-making

2)      Delivery of gender justice, including transitional justice

3)      Arab uprisings creating an opportunity

• Solidarity with men forged during street-level protests

• The need to build on the personal and cultural changes set in motion, reflecting the “transformational” potential of the WPS agenda

4)      Civil society’s role in monitoring progress on 1325 implementation, even in countries not currently in conflict

5)      Interest in developing National Action Plans to ensure effective implementation of SCR 1325

• MENA is the only region in the world without a NAP, although Jordan has drafted one but is still waiting on the parliament to adopt it!

6)      Interest in developing a regional approach to women’s movements

(more…)

By student contributor Asthaa Chaturvedi

Continuing our series on women and development in this 21st century moment, last week I had a conversation with Christina Fink, GWU professor and founder of Foreign Affairs Training Program (FAT) to discuss the importance of enabling young women, as well as young men, from Burma to engage in political work. In 2000, Fink started FAT, a 10 month course designed to build the capacity of civil society leaders working for democracy and respect for ethnic minority rights in Burma. The training took place in Thailand, and most of the participants have come from Burmese organizations based in Burma’s ethnic states or in Thailand and India. FAT has trained leaders in politics, human rights, advocacy, public speaking, and grant writing. She particularly encouraged young women to join the program.

Since 2011, Burma, also called Myanmar, has been undergoing a political transition. But the reform process is still fragile and armed conflict continues in some ethnic states, so members of some of Burma’s exile women’s organizations still operate from neighboring countries. However, FAT has now moved to Burma and is focused on strengthening civil society inside the country.

Because of military domination and commonly held beliefs that women should not be engaged in public affairs, few women in Burma have engaged in politics. Issues that particularly affect women have been neglected, and as Fink said, “Without women’s participation, gender inequalities that have characterized Burma will continue.”

Burmese women who attended FAT and other women’s political empowerment courses learned about gender quotas in parliament and have pushed for the number of women in government in Burma to be increased. Fink supports this. “The government should be a mirror of society,” she said.

She has seen a change since FAT started. In 2000, many men who were members of Burmese exile organizations argued that women had no role in the political arena. However, the international community’s desire to engage with Burmese women activists helped create space for women’s involvement in the exile movement. Young women who were educated outside the country during the period of military rule were able to develop the confidence to assert themselves.

In her journey of helping young Burmese leaders build the foundations for equal participation for all, Fink placed an emphasis on developing solidarity between women’s organizations which represented different ethnic groups from Burma. In addition, connecting women from Burma to women’s organizations around the globe has had a significant impact on the spirit and confidence of Burmese women activists. Check out the clip below to hear some of our conversation.

Please note that this post has been updated to reflect changes made with the guidance of Professor Fink.