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Young feminist activists play a critical role in women’s rights organizations and movements worldwide by bringing up new issues that feminists face today. Their strength, creativity and adaptability are vital to the sustainability of feminist organizing.
At the same time, they face specific impediments to their activism such as limited access to funding and support, lack of capacity-building opportunities, and a significant increase of attacks on young women human rights defenders. This creates a lack of visibility that makes more difficult their inclusion and effective participation within women’s rights movements.
AWID’s young feminist activism program was created to make sure the voices of young women are heard and reflected in feminist discourse. We want to ensure that young feminists have better access to funding, capacity-building opportunities and international processes. In addition to supporting young feminists directly, we are also working with women’s rights activists of all ages on practical models and strategies for effective multigenerational organizing.
We want young feminist activists to play a role in decision-making affecting their rights by:
Fostering community and sharing information through the Young Feminist Wire. Recognizing the importance of online media for the work of young feminists, our team launched the Young Feminist Wire in May 2010 to share information, build capacity through online webinars and e-discussions, and encourage community building.
Researching and building knowledge on young feminist activism, to increase the visibility and impact of young feminist activism within and across women’s rights movements and other key actors such as donors.
Promoting more effective multigenerational organizing, exploring better ways to work together.
Supporting young feminists to engage in global development processes such as those within the United Nations
Collaboration across all of AWID’s priority areas, including the Forum, to ensure young feminists’ key contributions, perspectives, needs and activism are reflected in debates, policies and programs affecting them.
Isabel is a feminist from the United Kingdom with over a decade of experience in feminist responses to fascisms, fundamentalisms, and anti-rights trends. At AWID, her work centers on knowledge-building and has included leading the production of the Rights at Risk series in collaboration with the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs). She holds a Master’s degree in Gender Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and previously worked with Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML). She is passionate about cross-movement work, movement-centered knowledge-building, and the use of creative expression to disrupt systems of oppression. Outside of work, Isabel is active in various disability justice spaces for collective care, learning, and advocacy.
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Ester Lopes est une danseuse et une écrivaine dont les recherches portent sur le corps, le genre, la race et les rapports de classe. Elle est professeure de Pilates et enseigne l’art. Ester est diplômée en théâtre contemporain – processus créatifs (à la FAINC) et en danse et conscience du corps (à l’USCS). Parmi ses spécialisations musicales figurent le chant populaire et les percussions. Elle a suivi une formation à Novos Brincantes avec Flaira Ferro, Mateus Prado et Antonio Meira à l’Institut Brincante en 2015 et 2016.
Marianne Mesfin Asfaw es una feminista panafricana dedicada a la justicia social y la construcción de comunidad. Es Licenciada en Estudios de Género y Relaciones Internacionales de la Universidad de Columbia Británica (UBC) y posee una maestría en Estudios de Género y Derecho de la Escuela de Estudios Orientales y Africanos de la Universidad de Londres. Anteriormente, trabajó en administración académica y apoyo para estudiantes internacionales. Asimismo, se desempeñó como investigadora y facilitadora en espacios feministas y sin fines de lucro. También ha trabajado como voluntaria en organizaciones no gubernamentales, incluida Plan International, donde cumplió funciones administrativas. Antes de asumir sus funciones actuales, se desempeñó en logística y apoyo administrativo para AWID. Marianne nació en Etiopía, se crió en Ruanda y, actualmente, reside en Tkaronto/Toronto (Canadá). Le encanta leer, viajar y pasar el tiempo con su familia y amistades. En los meses más cálidos, se la puede ver paseando por barrios conocidos y buscando cafés y librerías desconocidas donde pasar el tiempo.
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Sí, por favor. El mundo ha cambiado desde 2021, y te invitamos a proponer una actividad que refleje tus realidades y prioridades actuales.
Umyra Ahmad est une féministe malaisienne expérimentée en plaidoyer international et régional et en éducation aux droits humains. Au sein de l'AWID, elle travaille à la promotion des droits liés au genre et à la sexualité à l'ONU. Avant de nous rejoindre, elle était chargée de programme à IWRAW Asie-Pacifique, où elle a aidé des organisations de terrain régionales, nationales et locales à utiliser les mécanismes des organes conventionnels de l'ONU comme outils de redevabilité des États et d'accès à la justice. En Malaisie, elle travaille avec des collectifs queer et de réfugié·e·s, et soutient la coordination de diverses initiatives d'entraide.
“Now might be a good time to rethink what a revolution can look like. Perhaps it doesn’t look like a march of angry, abled bodies in the streets. Perhaps it looks something more like the world standing still because all the bodies in it are exhausted—because care has to be prioritized before it’s too late.”
- Johanna Hedva (https://getwellsoon.labr.io/)
Hospitals are institutions, living sites of capitalism, and what gets played out when somebody is supposed to be resting is a microcosm of the larger system itself.
Institutions are set out to separate us from our care systems – we find ourselves isolated in structures that are rigidly hierarchical, and it often feels as if care is something done to us rather than given/taken as part of a conversation. Institutional care, because of its integration into capitalist demand, is silo-ed: one person is treating your leg and only your leg, another is treating your blood pressure, etc.
Photographer Mariam Mekiwi had to have surgery last month and documented the process. Her portraits of sanitized environments – neon white lights, rows after rows of repetitive structures – in a washed-out color palette reflect a place that was drained of life and movement. This was one of the ways Mariam kept her own spirit alive. It was a form of protest from within the confines of an institution she had to engage with.
The photos form a portrait of something incredibly vulnerable, because watching someone live through their own body’s breakdown is always a sacred reminder of our own fragility. It is also a reminder of the fragility of these care systems, which can be denied to us for a variety of reasons – from not having money to not being in a body that’s considered valuable enough, one that’s maybe too feminine, too queer or too brown.
Care experienced as disembodied and solitary, that is subject to revocation at any moment, doesn’t help us thrive. And it is very different from how human beings actually behave when they take care of each other. How different would our world look like if we committed to dismantling the current capitalist structures around our health? What would it look like if we radically reimagined it?
Sanyu is a Pan-African feminist based in Nairobi, Kenya. She has spent the last decade supporting labour, feminist and human rights movements advocating for corporate accountability, economic justice and gender justice. She has worked with the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, IWRAW Asia Pacific and the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. She has a Master’s of Laws in Human Rights Law and a Bachelor’s of Laws from the University of Nottingham. Her writing has been published in the Business and Human Rights Journal, Human Rights Law Review, Open Global Rights, Open Democracy and more. In her free time, she loves walking in the forest and chasing butterflies.
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Veena Singh es una isleña de Fiyi, feminista y mujer de color Nacida y criada en un pequeño pueblo rural de Fiyi, su fuerza proviene de su rica herencia mixta (su madre es una mujer fiyiana indígena y su padre es fiyiano de ascendencia India). La identidad y las experiencias vividas de Veena han influido profundamente en su compromiso con la justicia, la equidad y la inclusión. Con más de dos décadas de experiencia en derechos humanos, igualdad de género, desarrollo comunitario e inclusión social, Veena es una activista apasionada por la reconfiguración del poder para crear un cambio transformativo y construir una «economía de la amabilidad» Su trabajo se expande por diversas áreas que incluyen: desarrollo comunitario, mujeres, paz y seguridad, políticas sociales, derechos humanos y defensa de políticas.
Veena está profundamente comprometida en hacer avanzar la inclusión, la paz y la justicia, los derechos sexuales y por la justicia reproductiva (SRHR, por sus siglas en inglés), la justicia climática y los derechos humanos. Aporta un gran acervo de experiencia trabajando con redes de base, organizaciones internacionales e instituciones gubernamentales, siempre con foco en los abordajes locales y liderados por la comunidad y los principios feministas.
Fuera de su ‘vida de oficina’, Veena es activista por el medio ambiente, defensora de la salud mental y escritora. Es la mamá de 11 gatos, se viste con sari y es amante del correo postal y las postales. Como observadora atenta de los movimientos feministas en Fiyi y el Pacífico, Veena está en un recorrido personal para «decolonizar la mente y el yo a través de la autoreflexión radical» Sobre todo, la impulsa el deseo y el sueño de producir una escritura convocante y resonante que conecte con la diáspora del Pacífico y difunda las voces de los márgenes.
المضيفة: نحن نميل إلى الاعتقاد أنّ التعبير عن الرغبة يقتصر على العلاقة الحميمة داخل غرفة النوم وعلى علاقاتنا الشخصيّة. ولكن هل يمكننا أيضًا اعتبار هذا النوع من التعبير كبُنية، أو ممارسة أيديولوجيّة توجّه عملنا، وما نحن عليه، وكيف سنكون في هذا العالم؟