Insightful reflections on the 3rd International Feminist Dialogues (2007)/Reflexions pleines d'inspiration sur la 3eme edition International des Dialogues Femninistes (2007).

• Author: Harcourt, Wendy

'Another world will not be possible without another conception of democracy. And another democracy is only possible through a process of personal and subjective revolutions, of men and women, with an active recognition of diversity, taking on the intersectionalities of struggles as a collective challenge.' (FD 2007 background note).

The feminist agenda within the World Social Forum (WSF) has been to try and bring in what Virginia Vargas, a Peruvian feminist leader and writer calls, cultural subversion. The aim is to include gender equality and sexuality as an integral component of the agenda of the broader movement for social and economic justice. In other words for the WSF to understand the impact of neoliberalism, not only in relation to social and economic rights, but also in relation to the gender dimensions of social change and cultural struggles, including feminist struggles around sexuality and equity.

Interestingly, although there was not much mainstream media coverage (due to major logistical problems) during and after the WSF 2007, many commentaries (blogs and newsletters,) recognized the space women and feminist politics now inhabits in the Forum. That being said, the WSF is not only a terrain of engagement, but also one of contestation between new and old structures of thought and action. The Feminist Dialogues (FDs), which begun in 2004 were created because the global women's rights agenda was not being taken on board by many others in the WSF. The FDs have been held in order to define and elaborate a transnational feminist agenda and also to understand the role of feminists in the larger social movements, and specifically to bring feminist concerns much more centrally to the core of WSF concerns. To date the FDs have focused on neoliberal globalization, militarism and war and fundamentalisms. Crosscutting these themes are the politics that act as a mediator of lived social and cultural relations.

It is interesting to note that whereas the first aim to deliberate on a transnational global agenda was some what questioned earlier, in Nairobi a decision was taken at the FD2007 for participating feminists to explore how to work together beyond the WSF space. As a result joint campaigns leading up to March 8 and beyond were agreed on with various themes. The success of the second more complex aim to integrate the feminist agenda into the WSF is less easy to judge. The struggle for women's rights and sexual diversity and abortion...