Feminists around the world have come together in a moment of collective organizing to outline key principles for a just and resilient recovery from our current pandemic, as well as to track responses and uplift collective action of feminists around the world. Check out the new website: http://www.feministcovidresponse.com, and read the blog post outlining how […]
Feminists around the world have come together in a moment of collective organizing to outline key principles for a just and resilient recovery from our current pandemic, as well as to track responses and uplift collective action of feminists around the world.
Check out the new website: http://www.feministcovidresponse.com, and read the blog post outlining how it came to be, and where we will be going next, below.
Blog post is cross-posted on Medium
By Bridget Burns and Emilia Reyes
Today, we come together to launch www.feministcovidresponse.com, a volunteer online data repository of information on feminist principles and actions, as well as policy responses to the COVID crisis.
We find ourselves in a crisis among crises. A global pandemic that does not serve as a great equalizer, but as a great exacerbator, similarly to how climate change magnifies, amplifies, and compounds inequalities. It’s a moment that is challenging us to create deep, urgent and systemic change, and that is showing the deep fault lines in how our societies are organized. It’s a moment of reckoning, of revaluation of whose labor is essential, of how to create resilient communities able to provide social protection and care.
Working at the intersections of multiple forms of crisis is not a new task for feminist advocates. As the world’s consciousness awoke to the devastating scale of the COVID-19 pandemic, it took only a matter of days for global feminist networks to come together to share reflections on the crisis and how we could build together towards collective action.
Many of these networks had spent the months of January and February strategizing together to influence the 64th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) due to take place in New York in early March and to undertake a critical review of the Beijing Platform for Action — signed by Governments in 1995. The CSW was canceled at the end of February, the first major UN conference canceled due to coronavirus. For these groups of feminists, in addition to local and national concerns, a void in multilateral efforts to address the crisis posed a clear risk for the effectiveness of the responses. Bearing in mind the need to hear about different realities on the ground as well as to share personal concerns after building meaningful friendships and alliances through many years of joint activism, a collective response was called for.
In our first call at the end of March, the agenda was quite simple: How are you doing? What are you feeling and experiencing? What do we need to respond to this crisis? Both familiar and unfamiliar voices of the activists who joined were immediate balms of comfort for all of us. It was an intense hour and a half call, with a multiplicity of dimensions laid out: we shared concerning reports of local challenges and started to exert analysis of the current situation from different angles. But most of all, we shared our personal assessments and collective fears.
That first call resulted in a number of key reflections that have framed our work in the short term:
These were the starting points for deciding we wanted to promote collective action. Our first initiative was to develop a set of principles to outline a Feminist Response to COVID-19. We are very proud of launching these principles globally today. They include that, COVID-19 responses:
Cross-cutting and inherent to all these principles is the promotion, protection and fulfillment of human rights and gender equality.
In addition, as part of our collective reflections we noted that 1) there was a lot of impressive feminist work and analysis already being published in response to COVID-19, 2) there were policy and community responses, both progressive and regressive, that had to be tracked across countries and, 3) that there was a need to support activists with tools in feminist digital organizing.
On parts 1 & 2, the collective embarked on building out a voluntary database to serve as an online repository of the work of feminist activists in response to the COVID crisis. The project became an immense and powerful locus to concentrate the collective effort and promises to be a source for many future actions. The site has four key sections:
The site is dynamic, with new data and features being added weekly, and fueled currently by a team of over 25 volunteer researchers from around the world. In the coming weeks, a public facing form will allow for individuals to upload information and analysis themselves that has been omitted.
On digital organizing, while we know there are a great many tools and platforms available to host virtual forums and conferences, collectively write and brainstorm digital media, reach broad audiences online, and more, there are also a variety of challenges to accessing these tools. The digital divide, as well as lack of information about how to use various platforms that exist, often limit feminists’ (and everyone’s) chances to participate in virtual organizing. To respond to this, members of the collective from Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) and Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF) planned a series of three teach-ins for organizing virtual meetings, centered around three kinds of skills to grow together, which can be accessed here. The series of teach-ins were a great success, with feminists all around the world exploring new possibilities and sharing technical expertise of tools and best practices on how to navigate current risks and challenges for activists in the digital era.
What do some of these resources look like?
We have seen collective feminist responses in relation to:
What’s Next?
Global solidarity is the starting point. To map out possible scenarios, to react in an effective way, to shift them within our capacities, to envision the just and equitable post-pandemic future we want, and to promote collective action to achieve it — these are our drivers. Our means are varied.
Sharing, tracking and building out collective action from all of this work is part of what our collective reflections have aimed to do: first putting in place the infrastructure and methodologies to mark this moment, and now building a collective response. We expect to be able to promote more articulated work towards the urgent challenges at the global level with this pandemic, such as:
We will be mapping collectively the challenges we will address together, and we have no doubt our voices will contribute to a larger global call for a meaningful paradigm shift instead of a return to an unjust “normal.”
We continue to hold our calls weekly, finding in inspiring voices the strength to keep on promoting change. To be in collective is a political act. Being in community, with allies, partners, friends, is what drives effective and resilient responses to the current crisis. Feminist organizing, principles and solidarity in the face of COVID-19 can be a powerful driver of transformation.
Emilia Reyes is the Program Director of Policies and Budgets for Equality and Sustainable Development, at the Mexican feminist organization Equidad de Genero: Ciudadania, Trabajo y Familia. Activist and expert on gender responsive public policies and budgets and sustainable development, including comprehensive disaster risk management and climate change. At the global level, she is the former Co-Chair of the HLPF Major Groups and other Stakeholders Coordination Mechanism, and Organizing Partner of the Women’s Major Group for the Sustainable Development Agenda. She is the Co-Convener of the Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development.
Bridget Burns is the Director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) in the United States. A feminist and environmental activist, Bridget specializes in policy advocacy, research and movement building at the intersection of gender equality, women’s rights and environment/climate justice. Bridget serves as the co-Focal Point of the Women and Gender Constituency, which supports the political participation of women’s rights advocates into the United Nations climate process.
Resources
Support Our Work
Your donation provides us with the stable foundation we need to build the feminist future we’re working to realize.
Donate Today
