Four activists from Asia Pacific share their analysis of the advances of fundamentalist and fascist forces across the region.

The post-2015 mechanism in development is expected to ensure gender equality and ‘leave no one behind.’ However, gender mainstreaming or even the MDGs and ICPD15 platforms have still failed to address gender inequality in a nuanced manner. 

As I reflect back on my experiences as a girl and woman, and what living in a deeply patriarchal, prejudiced, sexist, racist, ableist and ageist society means, I wonder often about what influenced my [feminist] politics. Was it the ostracizing? The unjust beauty standards for women? The countless times I heard and lived stories of surviving violence? These all added up. But the ability to look at different struggles and forms of oppressions and draw connections strengthened my feminism, as did my willingness to empathize (and not sympathize). These are all elements of “breaking the silos,” building solidarity and forming a sense of sisterhood.

Bondita Acharya is an activist and a member of Women in Governance (WinG) Assam. She received death threats after condemning the arrest of three people for the possession of beef on 4 April 2017. The attacks on her include trolling on her Facebook account and other social media with sexually laden, criminal and defamatory posts.

“Time and history have never seen eye to eye .Time laughs at history and time and time and time again. Time traps history in a lie .But we always ,somehow, managed to roar history back onstage to take another bow to justify, to sanctify the journey until now” by James Baldwin