Global Feminism, Plural Leadership
http://alainet.org/publica/femlead/en/
About thePresenters and Commentators
SUNILA ABEYSEKARA: has been a feminist activist for 25 years, working on issues linking human rights to women's rights with a special focus on democracy, peace and social justice in the context of conflict. Abeysekara is a single mother, presently Director of INFORM, a human rights documentation center based in Colombo, Sri Lanka; co-coordinator of the Women and Media Collective and President of the Movement for Inter-Racial Justice and Equality.
BISI ADELEYE-FAYEMI is the Executive Director and co-founder of the African Women's Development Fund, an Africa-wide grant-making initiative for African women. Prior to her work at the Fund, she was the Executive Director of Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA) an international development organisation for African women based in the UK with regional offices in Uganda and Nigeria. She has years of experience as a feminist activist, fundraiser, trainer, and political thinker. She has particular interests in feminist leadership development, inter-generational organising and promoting the interests of black and migrant women. During her time at AMwA, she founded the African Women's Leadership Institute, which is a key training, networking and information sharing forum for African women activists, particularly young women. The AWLI, which is committed to developing the personal and organisational leadership capacities of African women, has trained up to 600 women all over Africa.
Her past and present voluntary experience includes: Vice-Chair of the National Alliance of Women's Organisations of England and Wales (1992-94), Steering Group Member, Women in Development Europe (WIDE), founder member/board member of the Black and Migrant Women in Europe Network, International Advisory Committee, Global Fund for Women, and trustee of Comic Relief (UK). She was recently appointed the Dame Nita Barrow Distinguished Visitor in Women and Community Development, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, for the academic year 2000/2001.
CAROL AÑONUEVO: Having been involved in women's education for 17 years, Añonuevo is now interested in ensuring that the feminist analysis is popularised in her different areas of work. Her background as an activist, popular educator, university teacher and researcher has enriched her already privileged middle class life. Yet, as a feminist, she is constantly faced with many complex and difficult challenges that have consequently helped her reshape her life. "I believe that leadership is one issue that feminists need to comprehensively address with education and training as key components", Añonuevo concludes.
CHARLOTTE BUNCH, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Douglass College, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, has been an activist, author and organizer in the women's and civil rights movements for over three decades. Previously Bunch was a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and a founder of Washington D.C.Women's Liberation and of Quest: A Feminist Quarterly. She has edited seven anthologies, and her latest books are Passionate Politics: Feminist Theory in Action and Demanding Accountability: The Global Campaign and Vienna Tribunal for Women's Human Rights.
Bunch's contributions to networking and organising for women's human rights have been recognised by many and include her induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996 and her receipt of the White House Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights in 1999. Bunch is currently a Professor in Women’s Studies at Rutgers University and serves on the Boards of the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Division and of WHRnet, a global women’s human rights electronic networking project.
SALLY BURCH is a British journalist, resident in Ecuador, who has been working with the Agencia Latinoamericana de Información -ALAI- for some 20 years, where she is at present Executive Director. She was co-ordinator of the global APC Women's Networking Support Program in 1993-95, which organized a communications initiative for the Beijing World Conference on Women. As part of ALAI's Women's Program she has organized several events on women and communication. She has published a number of articles on women, communication and new technologies. She was also active in the women's movement in Canada during 1975-83.
ROXANNA CARRILLO (Peru) is the Human Rights Advisor at the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the author of Battered Dreams: Violence Against Women as an Obstacle to Development (New York, UNIFEM, 1992), a landmark study that helped to shape the international debate on the issue of violence against women and its critical implications for development policies. Carrillo directs the Women’s Human Rights unit at UNIFEM and is responsible for the Trust Fund in Support of Actions for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. She was one of the initiators of the Global Campaign for Women’s Human Rights that placed women’s rights as human rights on the international agenda at the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993. Carrillo has an advanced degree in Women and Politics from Rutgers University, where she also helped to found the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, an international advocacy organisation for women’s human rights. Prior to joining the UN she was a founder of Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristan, one of the first women non-governmental organisations in Peru that played a catalytic role in the mobilisation of the Latin American region for the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. She is UNIFEM’s focal point for the World Conference Against Racism.
IRENE LEON is a sociologist specialized in international affairs and a communicator; member of the Board of Directors of ALAI, she is director of its Women's Program. She has written dozens of articles and publications on social issues. She counsels several regional and world-wide networks, articulations and movements; and is coordinator of the Forum of the Americas for Diversity and Pluralism, preparatory space of NGOs of the region for the World Conference Against Racism.
PATRICIA MCFADDEN: Born in Swaziland and based in Zimbabwe, McFadden works and writes as a radical feminist. Her main areas of focus are sexuality/reproductive and sexual rights/health; conceptualising gender in the African context, and issues of citizenship for women (especially poor women) in relation to property and relationship with the state. Patricia also does feminist training with young women journalists from the Southern African region, and with the African women's leadership institute based in Uganda. She also edited a feminist journal called The Southern African Feminist Review which is in its fifth volume. Besides working 25 hours a day (a bad habit), Patricia grows roses and makes preserves.
PHUMZILE MTETWA: Co-Secretary General of the International Lesbian and Gay Association, Convenor of the LGBT South-South Dialogue, Co-organiser of the Satellite Meeting on Racism, Discrimination and Intolerance of Sexual Diversity (Quito, March 2001); Organisational Sustainability and Development Consultant. Mtetwa co-organised the first South African Human and Legal Rights Conference on Sexual Orientation in 1994, which launched the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality (NCGLE). The NCGLE successfully campaigned for the inclusion of sexual orientation as one of the enumerated grounds in the equality clause of the South African Constitution. She served on its Executive Board during the years 1994 to 1997 and is the former manager of the South African AIDS Law Project (1994 - 2000), the only organisation in Sub-Saharan Africa that works exclusively on litigating for the rights of people affected and infected with HIV/AIDS.
SARAH MUKASA: Mukasa is originally from Uganda, now based in the United Kingdom. She has a degree in Business and Management from the University of East London, and an MSc in NGO Management from the London School of Economics. She is currently the UK Programmes Manager for Akina Mama wa Afrika. Mukasa has worked in the local and health authorities in the UK for several years as a community development officer, developing services for ethnic minority communities in London, and in particular, for refugees. She is a feminist activist with a special interest in the areas of sexual and reproductive rights of African women, race and gender and the rights of refugee women, asylum seekers and Internally Displaced Persons. Over the years, Sarah has provided consultancy to a number of Health Authorities in the UK and in Italy on the development of specialist services for African women such as HIV/AIDS, family planning and mental health.
ANA IRMA RIVERA LASSÉN: Lawyer with a private practice, Ana is a feminist activist since the 70's and co-founder of various women's organisations in Puerto Rico. She teaches legislation and gender theory. Rivera has published articles, essays, short stories and poetry in magazines, anthologies and newspapers both in Puerto Rico and abroad. At present, she is about to publish a book on feminist movements in the 70's in the island. She has been actively involved in studying gender discrimination and human rights in general. She works on the issue of gender violence and its relationship with electronic media. She has also been a constant voice in the defence of black people's rights in Puerto Rico. At present, she holds the special professorship in racial justice at the University of Puerto Rico.
Ana is the spokesperson in Puerto Rico of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women's Rights (CLADEM) and is a member of the Puerto Rican Institute of Race and Identity Studies.
MONICA SANTANA was born in the Dominican Republic, where among other things she participated in organizing the first meeting of the Network of Afro Latin American and Afro Caribbean Women, in the early 90's. She now lives in the US where she is one of the coordinators of the National Coalition for Dignity and Amnesty of Undocumented Immigrants.
VICTORIA TAULI CORPUZ is an Igorot indigenous woman activist from the Philippines. Most of her life has been spent in organising and awareness-raising activities among women and indigenous peoples. She is based in Baguio City in the Philippines where she was born and raised. Presently, she is the Director of Tebtebba Foundation (Indigenous Peoples' International Centre for Policy Research and Education). She has written various articles on women and globalisation, biotechnology and biocolonialism, indigenous peoples' cosmologies and traditional knowledge and struggles, etc. Some of these were published by Zed Books, Harvard Press, Third World Resurgence, among others. She is a member of Third World Network and the International Forum on Globalization.
VIRGINIA VARGAS V., sociologist and feminist activist in Peru and Latin America, founded the Center for Peruvian Women "Flora Tristán" in 1978. She has published several books and articles both in Latin America and other regions of the world. She has been visiting professor in the Women and Development Program at the Social Studies Institute in The Hague, the Netherlands, as well as in several gender studies programmes in Peru and Latin America on the issues she has been studying in the past years: Feminism, Citizenship and Democracy. Vargas was the Latin American and Caribbean NGO Co-ordinator of the World NGO Forum, held parallel to the Fourth World Conference on Women convened by the UN in Beijing, China, in September, 1995. In Beijing, Vargas received a UNIFEM Award. At present, she works as a UNIFEM consultant, co-ordinating the Programme of Economic and Social Rights for Women in the Andean Region.
L. MUTHONI WANYEKI is a political scientist, Executive Director of the African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET). She was a founding member of the Coalition Against Violence Against Women (COVAW)-Kenya and is the African President for the World Association of Community Broadcasters (AMARC). She has worked extensively on gender, human rights and development communications and is currently editing a book on culture, religion and human rights focusing on African women's access to and control over land done in partnership with Emory University and Zed Publishers.