AWID Forum 2012:
Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women’s Rights and Justice
Concept Note for Wellness Area: Self-Care, Safety and Security
A collective reflection[1]
As part of the invitation to participate in the Forum, AWID has challenged participants – women’s rights and social-justice activists – to make use of this space to gather, unite and synergise, crossing all the boundaries that may separate us, as we need to listen to each other and learn from one another. AWID has affirmed that this is the moment to strengthen our collective power as political actors, sum up our years of experience and knowledge to participate more effectively in the vital economic debates of our time and construct new global and local strategies for sustaining our activism. This call is a challenge to us to contribute to the development of diverse alternative visions, such as joint practices, and continue building and strengthening our movements in more sustainable ways for ourselves as feminist activists, human rights defenders and for each of our organisations.
The Wellness Area at the Forum has a double purpose: a space where participants can recuperate, reinvigorate and calm their minds during the Forum, and a space toengage in conversations about different tools and approaches for self-care, safety and security, in addition to encouraging on-going self-care and wellness practices.
With this spirit of construction and reflection, the Wellness Area provides an excellent opportunity to share among participants debates, challenges, experiences and tools that allow our diverse movements in the world to strengthen personal, organizational, and movement consciousness. This strength will focus us towards the political importance of working for the well-being, security, and self-care of women’s rights activists – practicing these as part of our human rights work, which are also fulfilled in the first person at individual level, and not solely sought for the women and men we work to defend.
Using the Forum’s theme as a framework, we would like to highlight that in order to transform economic power in favor of women’s rights, we need to bring global attention to the high importance and value of women’s contribution to the care, development and well-being of others in the world. We need to raise our voice and design practices and strategies that enable the [re]distribution of care between men and women, at the community and societal levels and with the responsibility on the States. So far, self-care, security and well-being have not yet received the adequate attention as keys to the sustainability of women’s activism and leadership, as well as of the women’s movement.
Some points to thread the work within the WellnessArea:
The political meaning of self-care – thepersonal is political:
It seems useful to share the meaning that we give to self-care linked to the sustainability of our movements; since our struggles, campaigns and strategies as activists are aimed at a radical transformation that seeks to shake and deconstruct the capitalist patriarchal world, its symbolic and material structures, the large economic powers, the hierarchical relationships with the intersectionality of domination, and to construct a world that treats women and men equally. It is from here that we seek to generate self-care and sustainability practices[2] (including the understanding of sustainable leadership) that counter the conservative visions that place the responsibility for its exercise simply in the personal willingness, not taking into account the contexts and the conditions of patriarchal and intersectional oppression, and blaming women for not “taking care of themselves”. In the end, these visions propose changes that focus on the ways and habits to better adapt to the permanent demands of taking care of others, reproducing the stereotyped role of women as the “care-givers of the world.”
Instead, there are other visions of self-care that are proposed and practiced, which are potentially liberating. At the recent 12th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Gathering, there was a reflection on this regard: Self-care is a wisdom that feminists have developed over a long period of time. Therefore, it takes us in personal and collective journeys of consciousness-raising, reflection and action, from the perspective of enforcement and exercise of rights in order to make them effective in first person.
We practice self-care in many forms: through the way we treat ourselves; the balance we give to the time we dedicate to work and rest; the energy and space we dedicate to undressing and dislodging the knots that we carry from our daily struggles; when we learn to give ourselves and our bodies the same care and attention that we demand from the bodies and lives of other women; when we know, recognize, and take ownership of the resources that exist around us to gain wellness; and when we [re]generate in our personal and organizational surroundings practices that contribute to the sustainability of our movement.
For other activists, self-care is the capacity to commit ourselves to the work in defense and promotion of women’s human rights without sacrificing other important parts of our personal life. The capacity to maintain a positive attitude toward the work despite the challenges is another important dimension. Self-care can also be understood as the right of an activist to feel healthy, secure, and satisfied. It brings the need to question the assumption that a “good activist” is one who dedicates all of her energy to others, which frequently leads to exhaustion. An activist idea of wellness suggests that she must meet her own needs in balance with her surroundings, with options and autonomy to define personal boundaries.
Women activists must guarantee the reclaiming of self-care, not just as a personal and basic human right to rest, recreation, dance, and laughter, but also as a strategy that is deeply political and subversive. The sustainability of our movements depends on this self-care, so that we may count on women who are healthy and that we may know how to set limits to our actions. The ability to set limits can develop a longer time-frame for work that is more pleasurable and balanced.
Self-care, security, and protection: A priority for activists? In diverse conversations among women activists – and in some publications relating to living and working conditions – on their practices and strategies for taking care of themselves and finding sustainability, it is clear that one of the latent needs that is rarely addressed among activists is the reflection regarding the precariousness of the measures, tools, and practices that we use for self-care, security and protection – both at the personal and collective level. This has its impact in weakening our movements. This situation of vulnerability takes place in the global and local contexts of poverty, war, patriarchal violence, lack of justice and access to economic resources, discrimination, persecution, and killings of activists, among others.
The assessments and statistics on violence against women human rights defenders and activists show the high risk in which they conduct their work, the multiple threats to their personal integrity and that of their families and sisters in their groups or organizations. Despite the emotional, economic and health impacts, physical deterioration and losses of many types, it is too common for these issues not to be approached as part of “what is important for our work”. Instead, we often reinforce the role of the “strong activist who can do it all” and we apply it to ourselves and to others, with the risk of imposing a model that can compromise the sustainability of the group and the self-care and protection we require.
Wellness, Sustainability and Leadership
Self-care and wellness is also a leadership issue. Stress from work and fatigue of activists contribute to lack of a well-being (and their ability to take leadership in the work of human rights defense) by fueling choices that are often reactionary, such as smoking, over-eating and drinking, rather than taking a walk or working-out at the gym. These responses can be endemic, leading to negative perceptions and disillusionment of leadership, and perpetuating lack of attention to self-care in the organizational culture. The sustainable engagement of women human rights defenders and social justice activists is critical to develop a culture of wellness that leads to real and transformative change, in both individual lifestyle and the organizational culture. As change in the organizational culture often starts with the leadership, it is therefore necessary for organizations to engage with leaders, colleagues and partners to develop a wellness and self-care culture not only for their respective organizations but also for the sustainability of the women’s movement at large.
What are the common themes that we find among AWID Forum participants’ experiences, that limit many of us in making visible and acting in favour of self-care and security of ourselves, our groups and movements? What are the main obstacles to make this issue a daily part of the agendas and priorities for most activists? How to counteract the negative effects of violence and discrimination contexts? It would be interesting to be able to share these reflections among participants to generate space to think and act in favor of self-care, reinvigoration and security.
Deconstruct the gender mandates to advance self-care and wellness:In the patriarchal world in which we find ourselves, recognizing that we activists are also affected by gender mandates and that these mark the ways in which we give ourselves to the work that we do in defense of women’s rights, it is very important to understand the personal, family, and general relationship dynamics we establish with the outside world. Gender mandates express and reproduce themselves at the personal and collective levels, they pressure and condition us to give ourselves to others, and in many situations this leads us to dismiss the satisfaction of our own care and protection needs. Identifying the mandates that limit us, and becoming conscious of self-care and protection as a political right, could help us in modifying those mandates and offer and share some proposals and plans to put them into practice in our daily lives – personally and at the organizational level. Particularly, if we are able to modify the feeling of guilt or selfishness when we put limits and express our needs, this would be useful to strengthen new positive values to practices of self-care and protection.
Towards self-care in our groups, organizations, and movements: It is common to find daily stressful practices in our routines, for example: overload in responsibilities, high standards of demand that the context of violence impose on us, the pressure from the State and donor agencies, the limited attention and conditions that we give ourselves to enjoy recreation and relaxation in the personal and the work-spaces, the permanent conflict between family gendered roles and the demands of activism.
As demonstrated by the experiences and testimonies from activists from around the world, alternatives have been developed – both at the personal and organizational level – to strengthen a culture and practice of self-care and protection with the goal of increasing the sustainability of our movements. We speak of group/personal dynamics and of the strategies that promote the well-being of activists such as: dignity in the work-place and right to a decent salary, social security, retirement, “tagged” funds for peaceful conflict-resolution, safe and protected places of work, among others. It would be recommended for Forum participants to be able to establish a dialogue with donors to increase the visibility of the need to invest economic resources in order to strengthen the strategies of self-care and protection for activists at the global level, as well as direct support to groups and organizations. Some of these issues are addressed in the new publication from AWID and the WHRD International Coalition, Ten Insights to Strengthen Responses for Women Human Rights Defenders at Risk, which can serve as a resource for conversations with donors.
Working with and among women’s rights activists commits us to deconstruct and learn again from each other in a more liberating way and act in coherence to the reference points of wellness, dignity, liberty, pleasure, and respect that we seek for those who we defend and for whom we work.
Pleasure, expression of emotions, spiritual manifestation and care among activists empowers and strengthens us: The AWID Forum will offer a unique space for participants and activists to feel that they are in a trusting and protected environment; a space that respects different opinions that do not always converge but that enrich us through their diversity; where we can feel understood and not judged, listen and be listened to, and learn and share our own wisdoms. In this context, the sessions offered for conversation, personal enjoyment and rejuvenation could flourish if they are organized as part of a global proposal for self-care, protection, security, and wellness and not as fragmented entities. That is where the importance of an integrating thread comes from. The usefulness of having a closing session will allow us to produce a collective expression of what was learned and shared in the Area during the Forum: it can be a document, statement, painting, theatrical expression, dance, song, ritual, a one-min ‘story catcher’ video clip, etc. We will explore and allow the creativity and happiness of activists to emerge!
Bibliography (from Spanish version of document)
- Autocuidado y autodefensa para Mujeres Activistas. Manual de auto-aplicación. Artemisa, Grupo Interdisciplinario en género, Sexualidad, Juventud y Derechos Humanos y Elige, Red de Jóvenes por los Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos. 2006.
- Ayudándonos para ayudar a otros: Guía para el autocuidado de quienes trabajan en el campo de la violencia intrafamiliar. Cecilia Claramunt. Mujer, Salud y Desarrollo. Serie Género y Salud Pública. Organización Panamericana de la Salud, San José, Costa Rica, 1999. OPS (74 pp)
- Autoestima y Género. Marcela Lagarde en Cuadernos Inacabados 39, Claves Feministas para la Autoestima de las Mujeres. 2000
- Autocuidado, protección y Bienestar Feminista. Comisión de Metodología y Temática del 12 Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe, 2011
- Autocuidado para defensoras de Derechos Humanos. Ana María Hernández para módulo de formación a defensoras de derechos humanos de la Iniciativa Mesoamericana de Defensoras de Derechos Humanos
- What’s the point of revolution if we can’t dance?Jane Barry and Jelena Dordevic. Urgent Action Fund for Women Human Rights (UAF). 2007
- List Of Materials And Resources For Women Human Rights Defenders. Inmaculada Barcia and AWID, as part of the Urgent Responses for WHRDs at Risk Working group of the Women Human Rights International Coalition.2011
[1] The text gathers a collective reflection from the organizers of sessions in the Wellness Area at the AWID Forum regarding the themes we intend to weave together. Readings and contributions from several feminists and activists have been integrated as a framework of work. (Original text in Spanish.)
[2] Sustainability refers to well-being, the capacity of an activist to conduct her political and social work in balance with her physical, spiritual, and emotional needs. Both spheres are important for generating satisfaction and fulfillment. Self-care alludes to the daily consciousness-action to feel healthy, secure, and satisfied. Both are sought in the personal and collective space, within activists and their organizations.