Feminist engage in dialogues/Les feministes s'engagent dans les dialogues.

If you have noticed an upsurge of bold feisty women in Nairobi in the past few days, breath out, you are not imagining things. The 3rd International Feminist Dialogues (FD) was held on January 17-19 2007 at a Nairobi hotel, bringing women from all over the world to deliberate on matters affecting them and coming up with common positions for the World Social Forum (WSF) 2007.

The ongoing series of the FDs has been a safe space for feminist sharing experiences and views on issues affecting women on the context of the growing forces of fundamentalism, militarism, neo-liberal globalisation and their collusions. At first the FD was meant to strengthen the feminist presence within the WSF; later the objective broadened to providing a space for transnational feminist discussions, strategising and alliance building as well as linking up with other social movements in the politics of global resistance.

Under the theme 'Feminist Transforming Democracies: Visions and Strategies', the FD 2007 was conceptualised as a gathering of various women's networks and feminists that would work towards revitalising a trans-national women's movement and its solidarity actions with other social movements.

It was hoped it would contribute to enhancing feminist advocacies that reflect an interlinking of recognition-based issues and distribution--based issues of political actions that reproduce women's oppressions and subordination. It was hoped it would eventually build strategies that focus on establishing inter-connections between women's partial experiences, weave in new actors, sites and political actions that sustain women's openness and vitality for continuous movement building. It was also hoped that it would promote new relationships between feminists and other social movements--especially the excluded ones--even as women continuously debate and critique one another within an uncertain changing critique of resistance and change.

The first feminist dialogues were held in Mumbai, India in 2004. it was entitled 'Building Solidarities'. The FD 2007 had the sharing of personal experiences and the attempt to formulate strategies for change. The sub-themes were Globalisation; Fundamentalism and Body Politics; Feminist ways of Working and Articulation; Democracy and Militarism; and Global Feminist Strategies, Challenges and Common Approaches. Many issues that were common to women of all continents emerged. The most common was the lack of access to land and property...