Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Young Asian Women's Leadership Forum (YWLF) Bali, Indonesia Nov 2-5, 2008

The Young Asian Women’s Leadership Forum 2008 is a collective, integrative and necessary regional initiative that aims to address, deconstruct and provide viable solutions and alternatives to the challenges facing young women leaders of the Asian women’s movements. As elsewhere, the Asian women’s movements are led by women who emerged as leaders in the 1970s and 1980s.

Their themes, their methods of organizing, their conceptual tools have so far dominated the movements. Similarly Women’s Studies in Asian universities are faced with a generation gap. There is an urgent need for the continuation, expansion and creation of rich Asian feminisms incorporating the needs, methods and concepts of young women. In the face of the highly patriarchal and hegemonic forces of neoliberalism and fundamentalisms, young women have to find their voices.The forum will provide a safe, nurturing and mutually supportive peer based environment that will enable young women from Asia to develop a nuanced understanding of feminisms within a regionally contextual and topically relevant framework.

The forum will be held in Bali, Indonesia from 2-5 November 2008. It will be an integral component of the Kartini conference’s focus on the future of Asian feminisms.

Major Objectives of the YYF:

• Identifying, organizing and orienting young feminist leaders from all over Asia for a sustained and active network for working on women’s issues.

• Alignment of the young talent, research, innovation and initiative in line with the ongoing women’s movement, to make it stronger, more visible, larger and inclusive with the fresh influx of young blood.

• Establishing the much required link between the three major generations of feminisms, the ‘been there done that’, ‘the movers and shakers of the present’ and the ‘exploring, opening and kindling fires’.

Thematic Focus:

1. Identity Politics: Gender, Embodiment and Hetero-normativity

2. Break the Silence: Express yourself, don’t repress yourself: Re-examining women’s sexuality, sexual rights and gendered language/ silence in women’s movements and academia

3. Another World is Possible: De- Gendering Poverty, Livelihoods and Neoliberal Development Discourse

4. The Art of Peace

5. Standing on the shoulders of giants: bridging the genertion gap

6. Circles of Affinity

7. The Future of Asian Feminisms

For more information email: yff@kartiniasia@gmail.com

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