AWSA conferenece

The Arab Women's Solidarity Association (AWSA):

AWSA was founded in Egypt in 1982 with Dr. Nawal El Saadawi as president. It was established by a group of 120 women who agreed that the struggle for the liberation of Arab people and freedom from economic, cultural and media domination cannot be separated from the liberation of Arab women. As an international non-profit organization, AWSA promotes Arab women's active participation in social, economic, cultural, and political life.

AWSA has had consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations since April 1985. It is also registered with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Egypt, and has branches in a number of Arab countries, as well as working groups amongst Arab women emigrants in a few European countries, the United States, Canada, and Australia.

The Fifth International Conference was held in Cairo from 11-13 October 1997 in the great Cairo library one of the institutions related to the Ministry of Culture.

Aims of the conference:

During the last quarter of the twentieth century the world has witnessed the increasing economic, political, military, and cultural hegemony exercised by a minority of super capitalist circles organized in transnational companies with headquarters in a limited number of countries (mainly the United States, a few European countries and Japan). This minority of companies and national governments has consistently pursued policies aimed at subordinating the interests of the vast majority of the peoples of the world to the exigencies of their world market, leading to the economic and cultural phenomenon now known as capitalist Globalization.

The result of this process has been the rapid polarization of wealth in the hands of an extremely small minority of people and nations on the one hand, and increasing poverty for the vast majority of people in the North and especially in the South on the other, coupled with the marginalization of entire populations especially in the African continent. Tragically, it is the women and children that suffer the most in this process because they are the least provided with the power and the means to fight back. On the economic level, for example, we are witnessing what is now known as "feminization of poverty."

The wealthy minority, in pursuing its aims and reinforcing the hegemony it exercises, has had recourse to the range of economic, political, military, cultural, and mediatic means at its disposal; means that are continuously strengthened by the scientific and technological revolution and by a growing monopoly of knowledge. It depends on a network of interests in the different domains, and in the different countries of the world, on encouraging and supporting social, political, cultural and religious currents, institutions, organizations and movements that can serve to weaken, divide, confuse or divert the resistance of people and their democratic endeavors to build an economy which responds to their needs and to move further in the direction of freedom, popular participation, justice and greater equality.

Women in particular, even though they constitute more than half of society, are affected more than other sectors of any population, through the impact of globalization on all aspects of their lives. This is evident in the Arab countries where antagonism to women's rights has grown over the past years, encouraged by pseudo-modernization in some sectors of society by the increasing influence of fundamentalist movements and conservative religious thinking, as well as by the media. The media in particular served to create a false consciousness and false perceptions of women's roles, women's problems, and women's rights, all in the name of religion, authenticity, identity, tradition, motherhood, morality, of the "true" nature of women, and other similar arguments, albeit in different forms, in all countries of the world, even those considered to be much more advanced in many ways.

The situation faced by women in this so-called post-modern era requires reevaluation, and an analysis of the circumstances and reality in which they have to struggle and live. Women need to find out what they can do to face the economic, political, sexual, and cultural backlashes that have affected their lives throughout the world. Women need to present a new and clear understanding of their position and role in society, how to continuously unite their efforts, how to cooperate with other sector of society and engage the efforts of men, how to build up solidarity locally, nationally, and regionally between Arab women, and between women of the South. Taking into consideration the need to start with those who are closest, they need to study and know the particularities which bring together women and those who separate them in order to build up growing solidarity at all levels, solidarity between women of the South and women of the North as an integral part of solidarity between all those who believe in globalization for the peoples, and not against the peoples of the world.

Venue:

Greater Cairo library. ( or another place in Cairo )

Dates:

Cairo 3 - 5 January 2002.

Conference papers will be posted here soon. Please check back.