RESISTING AND CHALLENGING RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISMS

Background

AWID’s Resisting and Challenging Religious Fundamentalisms initiative is an advocacy-research project that seeks to strengthen the responses of women’s rights activists to the rise of religious fundamentalisms across regions and religions. It aims to contribute to greater strategic thinking, dialogue and advocacy on religious fundamentalisms, and to develop more knowledge and resources on the issue. It also hopes to foster a deeper and shared understanding of the way fundamentalisms work, grow and undermine women's rights, and to share strategies that have been used by women’s rights activists to resist and challenge religious fundamentalisms.

The initiative responds to the need for more strategic spaces and knowledge on fundamentalisms that span regions and religions, and for more international and inter-regional dialogue toward the development of coherent global responses. In 2007-2008, AWID conducted a broad survey of over 1,600 women’s rights advocates on the impact and workings of religious fundamentalisms, and has published the initial results of the research, and held workshops and dialogues on the issue. The initiative also continues to issue timely news and analyses on women’s rights and religious fundamentalisms.

In 2009, we will continue to produce documentation on the issue, to make the case for greater advocacy to challenge religious fundamentalisms, and to open up spaces for dialogue on the issue among women’s rights activists and organizations, and other progressive social movements.

What we hope to achieve:

• Develop and strengthen joint strategies and advocacy efforts that are transnational, and across religions and regions to confront religious fundamentalisms and their negative impacts on women’s rights.
• Create strategic spaces and the necessary conditions to build common platforms across religions and regions to foster more global responses to the global challenge of religious fundamentalisms.
• Produce new and strategic knowledge, tools and frameworks on the issue and disseminate to women’s rights movements and organizations and allies in other progressive social movements, in order to strengthen advocacy.
• Build greater understanding and awareness of religious fundamentalisms and women’s rights among key actors in women’s rights movements and organizations and other progressive social movements.

Activities for the project in 2009 include:

• Disseminate research results on fundamentalisms and women’s rights in relevant and strategic spaces, as well as electronically, for use by women’s rights activists and other interested groups.
• Produce new knowledge on the workings of fundamentalisms and impacts on women’s rights based on the survey and interviews that the initiative conducted in 2007-2008.
• Convene strategic spaces for women’s rights activists working to challenge fundamentalisms to dialogue about different approaches and strategies.
• Produce documentation on successful counterstrategies, including a collection of previously undocumented case studies of strategies to resist and challenge religious fundamentalisms around the world.
• Strengthen and expand resources on the “Challenging Fundamentalisms” section of the AWID website to include relevant news, updates and analysis on fundamentalisms in English, French and Spanish

Strategic initiative team

Cassandra Balchin – Lead Research Consultant

Deepa Shankaran – Research Associate

Juan Marco Vaggione – Research Consultant

Saira Zuberi – Programme Coordinator

Shareen Gokal – Strategic Initiative Manager

Note: The above image is courtesy of FIRE and taken by Gabriela Arguello on the Nicaraguan Nine March. To learn more about the March, click here