General

Source: Think Africa Press

This year saw the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day (IWD). First celebrated by Italy in 1911, it is now recognised as a public holiday in various countries around the world. In Africa, it is being used as an opportunity to strengthen cross-country bonds and rally support for gender issues. The significance of this year’s anniversary was felt worldwide, with the celebrations being mentioned on radio shows and discussed on Twitter and Facebook. Not only did Google have the International Women’s Day Logo displayed on its home page, it also had an interactive map showing where events, linked with the 'Join Me on the Bridge' campaign, were taking place around the world.

Approximately 464 separate events took place on bridges in 70 different countries on March 8, 2011 as women’s campaign groups unified globally. These events saw protests, speeches and celebrations take place and gave women the chance to speak out about their struggles, suffering and violence in countries where this had been difficult - if not impossible - before. The effective and powerful work of international women’s rights organisation Women for Women International (WfWI) was one of the key factors that led to the global success the event. Despite the organisation's primary focus on helping women in Afghanistan, they now collaborate extensively with African countries, particularly Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), helping women cope with the effects of warfare, disease and poverty.

Think Africa Press spoke with Kate Nustedt, the UK Executive Director of Women for Women International, about the 'Join Me on the Bridge' campaign. She explained how the campaign began at a small bridge which connects Rwanda and the DRC, where the two WfWI country directors were discussing the importance of women in the future of their two countries. This had been a place of mass exodus during the Rwandan genocide and was a meeting point for women from the surrounding area who decided to come together during the conflict “to stand up for peace and to end violence against women”.

Working with the local women, WfWI staff explored ways in which together they could bring peace and a positive future to an area that had been ravaged by violence and conflict. They present the meeting of women on the bridge between these two countries as symbolic of the strength of unified women and seek to replicate this action on bridges around the world to promote the statement that 'Stronger Women Build Bridges of Peace'. The global response to the campaign surprised the organisation. In its first year there were over 120 events worldwide (despite there being WfWI offices in only 10 countries), all of which brought attention to the widespread sexual violence and rape that women suffer as a tool of war in various regions.

This year the 'Join Me on the Bridge' campaign gained momentum in Africa and around the world. Events were hosted by women’s organisations in Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, the DRC, Somalia and Liberia, each highlighting the violence that women are suffering due to past and current conflicts. Women’s groups came together to stand in solidarity on bridges in Sydney, New York and London as well as many smaller cities such as Bristol and Inverness.

At the heart of this campaign is the drive to speak out about the ways in which women become collateral damage of politics and conflicts. It unifies women across diverse nations in Africa, the Middle Eastern, Asia, Europe and America, and is a campaign that represents the energy behind a spontaneous global feminist movement. But the beauty of 'Join Me on the Bridge' is how it connects the local with the global, making important campaign steps at grassroots level and having these recognised internationally, particularly with the use of Google’s web technology.

The global nature of this campaign is vital to the future of the movement. As Kate Nustedt reminds us, international solidarity with the African National Congress was fundamental to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and comparisons can be made with this global feminist movement today. However, perhaps the success of the anti-apartheid movement was partly due to its focus on one region, while gender issues are not region-specific and vary widely depending on the locale. This poses a particularly difficult political challenge for the global feminist movement.

In the past, there has been tension between Western ideas of feminism and women’s movements in Africa. Perhaps this is due to differing notions of freedom, empowerment and equality or even diverging end goals. Whatever the tensions have been, they have produced new forms of feminist thought, such as third-world feminism and postcolonial feminism that began in the 1960s with writers like Chandra Mohanty. Considering this, to what extent can feminism really be a unified global movement? Can the ambitions of feminism and women in the West really be unanimous with the objectives of women’s movements in Africa?

Perhaps for this international campaign it does not really matter. 'Join Me on the Bridge' does not claim that all women are in the same boat, or all women are set against the world. It is a symbolic platform for women’s voices to be heard both locally and globally and a means of showing disadvantaged, socially excluded women that they are not alone in their suffering. It has also provided a physical platform on which women of different backgrounds can safely meet each other and have their voices heard, despite wider violent conflicts. Nustedt uses the example of northern Nigeria where, despite religious conflicts, 'Join Me on the Bridge' and WfWI have seen co-oporation between Muslim and Christian women. This global women’s movement is all-embracing, engaging women of all nations, backgrounds and histories in the campaign for peace and equality.

But the significance of these events extends beyond issues of gender equality. The women’s movement offers solutions and hope for many social and economic problems. Campaigns like this are incredibly important for promoting positive steps towards better healthcare, education and racial equality. For those standing on bridges in Sydney, New York or London this should not just be seen as a symbolic act of sympathy for women in Africa or the Middle East. The global women’s movement does more than recognise women in Sudan, Rwanda, the DRC (or Afghanistan and Bosnia) as victims of war. The global women's movement is valuing women in Africa - and elsewhere - as being the most important tool for global equality and progress.