Reorganizing the Women’s Movement for the Next Steps Forward
By Saphira Rameshfar
Governance at the international level will require new systems and structures that are more suited to the challenges facing humanity today. But advances in the operation of those systems—the way we human beings function within them—will be equally important. This was central to the vision of systematic progress laid out in the Baha’i International Community’s statement, A Governance Befitting. “Deliberative processes will need to be more magnanimous, reasoned, and cordial,” it suggested, “motivated not by attachment to entrenched positions and narrow interests but by a collective search for deeper understanding of complex issues.”
This is as true in the international women’s movement as anywhere else. While ideals of solidarity and universal sisterhood were central to its emergence and, indeed, its power and many accomplishments, the path to social change has increasingly come to be defined in terms of opposition, conflict, and a readiness to fight. Such methods have indeed played a role in bringing attention to structures of oppression, and countering specific acts of injustice. Yet time and again, those who are agreed in opposition to something—a policy, a law, a leader—have found that they have little consensus about what should replace it, nor about the root causes that gave rise to it. To build a more gender-equal world—and not just dismantle a gender-oppressive one—it becomes clear that modes of functioning will need to develop the capacity to channel far more robustly the generative power of cooperation, reciprocity, shared endeavor, and unified aspiration.
The need for change can be seen with particular clarity in the experience of those laboring within the women’s movement. A simple fact confronts every fair-minded observer: the inherent nobility of working to advance the cause of gender equality does not, in itself, protect the women’s movement from the pitfalls of division and adversarialism. This may be painful to admit. Yet too many of us have seen the bitter fruit that such disunity inevitably yields: feminists bullying and criticizing one another; activists competing against one another for funding, recognition, power, and access; actors of all kinds advancing their own interests at the expense of others.
This is not the world we aspire to. Thankfully, alternatives based on justice and generosity, respect and reciprocity are readily available. The work ahead lies in instilling the necessary values into the architecture, machinery, and day-to-day mechanics of the women’s movement. The ways we come together to discuss our issues, make our decisions, and carry out our plans must reflect and engender a growing sense that we are one in purpose, action, and aspiration—this in full celebration of the vibrancy and importance of our diversity.
What does this look like in practice? This is a question that will need to be explored on a case-by-case basis, in light of the circumstances unique to any given arena of activity. Processes of deliberation, for example, often suffer from a model of representation in which advocates operate at the international level but are obliged to report back to their headquarters on advances made for their specific organization. This breeds, in collective spaces, an atmosphere of activists talking past one another, each focused on advancing her own agenda and priorities, or worse yet, actively working to undermine or outdo one another.
Needed instead, if the complex challenges before the women’s movement and humanity as a whole are to be addressed, is a process of principled consultation that focuses on building consensus about the truth of any given situation and determining the wisest course of action among available options. In such a consultative process, individual participants strive to transcend their respective points of view, and function instead as members of a shared endeavor with its own interests and goals. In an atmosphere characterized by both candor and courtesy, ideas belong not to the individual to whom they occur, but to the group as a whole. Truth is not treated as a compromise between opposing interest groups, nor are participants animated by the desire to control one another. The aim is to harness the power of unified thought and action.
How might the women’s movement organize itself according to principles such as these?
Taking steps in this direction will require changes at the level of personal conscience and conduct. It will require thousands of us to, for example, enter collaborative spaces with the primary goal of solving a problem or taking a next step forward, rather than gaining attention or building a reputation. This is a different aim altogether, and it engenders an entirely different style of engagement and demeanor.
Yet equally important will be making the structural changes necessary to foster more effective patterns of personal and institutional interaction. The way democratic processes are carried out, for example, often mirror some of the worst aspects of partisanship and adversarialism evident in political systems around the world. Notwithstanding the commendable qualities and characteristics that individuals naturally bring to a role of leadership, the structural incentives in systems for choosing leaders tend to amplify and reinforce other traits, such as desire for leadership, focus on personal ambition, and size of ego.
The women’s movement needs to offer to the world a model that is strikingly stark in contrast—an example of what equality looks like at its highest and best, and what it can accomplish. Everything about the way we organize ourselves needs to be designed to reduce the odds and severity of conflict. Our systems need to prioritize collaboration, the flow of learning, and the agility needed to address the urgent needs of women around the world. And ours needs to be a culture that is open and welcoming for others to join.
If this vision seems idealistic to some, the Governance Befitting statement suggests that the very opposite is true: what is farfetched today is the hope that global ills of inequality, oppression, and violence could be solved through the patterns of difference and division that gave rise to them. “What was once viewed as an idealistic vision of international cooperation,” the statement declares, “has, in light of the obvious and serious challenges facing humanity, become a pragmatic necessity.” Let the women’s movement take its rightful place in pioneering the institutional tools necessary to bring about a better and more equal world.
Saphira Rameshfar is a Representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations. She serves on the Executive Committee of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women and as Co-Chair of its Youth Leaders and Young Professionals program.