Guatemala - Rural Women Diversify Incomes and Build Resilience
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Priority Areas
Supporting feminist, women’s rights and gender justice movements to thrive, to be a driving force in challenging systems of oppression, and to co-create feminist realities.
Building Feminist Economies is about creating a world with clean air to breath and water to drink, with meaningful labour and care for ourselves and our communities, where we can all enjoy our economic, sexual and political autonomy.
In the world we live in today, the economy continues to rely on women’s unpaid and undervalued care work for the profit of others. The pursuit of “growth” only expands extractivism - a model of development based on massive extraction and exploitation of natural resources that keeps destroying people and planet while concentrating wealth in the hands of global elites. Meanwhile, access to healthcare, education, a decent wage and social security is becoming a privilege to few. This economic model sits upon white supremacy, colonialism and patriarchy.
Adopting solely a “women’s economic empowerment approach” is merely to integrate women deeper into this system. It may be a temporary means of survival. We need to plant the seeds to make another world possible while we tear down the walls of the existing one.
We believe in the ability of feminist movements to work for change with broad alliances across social movements. By amplifying feminist proposals and visions, we aim to build new paradigms of just economies.
Our approach must be interconnected and intersectional, because sexual and bodily autonomy will not be possible until each and every one of us enjoys economic rights and independence. We aim to work with those who resist and counter the global rise of the conservative right and religious fundamentalisms as no just economy is possible until we shake the foundations of the current system.
Our Actions
Our work challenges the system from within and exposes its fundamental injustices:
Advance feminist agendas: We counter corporate power and impunity for human rights abuses by working with allies to ensure that we put forward feminist, women’s rights and gender justice perspectives in policy spaces. For example, learn more about our work on the future international legally binding instrument on “transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights” at the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Mobilize solidarity actions: We work to strengthen the links between feminist and tax justice movements, including reclaiming the public resources lost through illicit financial flows (IFFs) to ensure social and gender justice.
Build knowledge: We provide women human rights defenders (WHRDs) with strategic information vital to challenge corporate power and extractivism. We will contribute to build the knowledge about local and global financing and investment mechanisms fuelling extractivism.
Create and amplify alternatives: We engage and mobilize our members and movements in visioning feminist economies and sharing feminist knowledges, practices and agendas for economic justice.
“The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing”.
I know you are so close. You can feel it can't you? How things need to shift and you need to centre yourself.
This is a letter to tell you to do it. Choose your healing. Choose to be OK. Better than OK. Choose to be whole, to be happy. To cry tears for yourself and no one else. Choose to shut out the world and tell them that 'you will be back in 5 mins'. Or five days. Or five years.
Or never.
Choose to not take it all on. Choose to take none of it on. Because none of it is yours. It was never yours. They told you since you were born that it was yours. Your family's problems. Your lovers' problems. Your neighbours' problems. The globe's problems. The constant whisper that these problems belong to you. They are yours. Yours to hold, yours to shoulder. Yours to fix.
That was a lie.
A bamboozle
A long con.
A scam.
The problems of the universe are not yours.
The only problems that are yours are your own. Everyone else can take a hike.
Allow yourself to drop everything and sprint off into the jungle. Befriend a daisy clad nymph, start a small library in the roots of a tree. Dance naked and howl at the moonlight. Converse with Oshun at the river bed.
Or simply drink a cup of tea when you need to take a moment to breathe.
Give yourself permission to disappear into the mist and reappear three countries over as a mysterious chocolatier with a sketchy past and penchant for dramatic cloaks and cigars.
Or stop answering work calls on weekends.
Let yourself swim to deserted island with a lover and dress only in the coconut shells from coconut rum that you make and sip at sunset.
Or say no when you don't have the capacity to create space for someone.
The options for holding yourself are endless.
Whatever you do, know the world will always keep spinning. That's the beauty and the pain of it. No matter who or what you choose over yourself and your soul the world will always keep spinning.
Therefore, choose you.
In the morning when that first light hits, choose you. When it’s lunchtime and it’s time to cry on company time, choose you. In the evening, when you are warming up leftovers because you didn’t have time to cook again, choose you. When anxiety wakes you up and existence is silent at 3:45 am.
Choose you.
Because the world will always keep twirling on a tilt and you deserve to have someone always trying to make it right side up for you.
Imagine opening a door which takes you into a conversation with feminist activists in other continents. This portal will transcend the barriers of UN CSW by pushing beyond language barriers, unaffordable travel, unequal protection from COVID19, and racist visa regimes.
This week, we’re putting a virtual spin on CSW by connecting and amplifying feminist activists' voices, to challenge the discriminatory barriers that limit participation and influence. By setting up connecting “portals” in New York City, Nairobi & Bangalore, we'll host a physical-virtual hybrid space for feminists to connect their struggles and build collective power.
Consider this calendar a gift, one that goes out to you and 9,500 members of our global feminist community. A gift of hope, renewed connection, action and community in a time of immense injustice and violence.
Let its stories remind you that across borders and struggles, we are many, we are powerful, and together we are building the worlds we deserve.
How does the AWID Forum connect to regional and other spaces?
We are in communication with regional, thematic and funder convenings planned for 2023-2024, to ensure flow of conversations and connections. If you are organizing an event and would like to make a connection to the AWID Forum, please get in touch with us!
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” - Maya Angelou
AWID Forum
Welcome to the 15th International AWID Forum!
The International AWID Forum is both a global community event and a space of radical personal transformation. A one-of-a-kind convening, the Forum brings together feminist, women’s rights, gender justice, LBTQI+ and allied movements, in all our diversity and humanity, to connect, heal and thrive. The Forum is a place where Global South feminists and historically marginalized communities take center stage, strategizing with each other and social justice movements, in order to shift power, make strategic alliances, and usher in a different, better world. When people come together on a global scale, as individuals and movements, we generate a sweeping force. Join us in Bangkok, Thailand in 2024. Come dance, sing, dream and rise with us.
Winnie has been described as a “militant firebrand activist” who fought the apartheid regime in South Africa.
She was imprisoned multiple times, and on many occasions placed in solitary confinement.
Ma’Winnie, as she is affectionately remembered, was known for being outspoken about the challenges Black women faced during and after apartheid, having been on the receiving end of these brutalities herself as a mother, wife and activist during the struggle. She transcended the misconception that leadership is gender, class or race-based. Despite being a controversial figure, she is remembered by many by her Xhosa name, “ Nomzamo”, which means "She who endures trials".
Ma’Winnie continues to be an inspiration to many, particularly young South African women for whom her death has spurred a burgeoning movement, with the mantra: "She didn't die, she multiplied."
Known as “Ate Liza,” Annaliza was the president of the Agrarian Reform Council for Mindanao Pioneers, an umbrella group in Tacurong City, Philippines.
A loved mother of four, teacher and community leader, Annaliza is remembered by her community as “she who leads when no one wants to lead, she who talks when no one wants to talk, she who stood with courage to help the agrarian reform beneficiaries to own lands.”
Annaliza was shot dead by unknown assailants in front of the Sultan Kudarat State University (SKSU) while on her way to Salabaca National High School in Esperanza.
Her family have said “Naghihintay pa rin kami ng hustisya para sa kanya” (we are still waiting justice for her).
What criteria are you using to select the activities?
Please refer to the Call for Activities for this information, including the section “What you need to know”.
Mariam was a paralegal at the Kawagib Moro Human Rights Alliance.
Mariam was a staunch critic of militarization in Moro communities, and consistently denounced aerial bombardment and encampment. She had to seek sanctuary after exposing and calling out the injustices committed against Muslim communities in the Philippines.
She is believed to have been killed by suspected military agents because of her work as a WHRD. The assailants who killed Mariam waited for her, caught up with the vehicle she was using and shot her seven times.
