By Laila Malik
Mar 6 2020 (IPS)

In November 2019, thousands of Chileans took to the streets to perform an anti-rape, anti-femicide choreography organized by a small feminist collective called Las Tesis. The group created the choreographed chant in response to an upswing in violence against women and human rights violations in Chile, where 42 cases of sexual abuse are reportedto the police each day, with only around 25% resulting in judicial rulings.

It is a violence faced by women, trans and non-binary people all over the world. And it often results in complex, inconvenient, expensive and exhausting circumnavigations – or avoidance – of public space, even when the reality is that gender-based violence is just as likely to be committed in private as it is in public.

So when, months after the first Chilean feminist flash mobs, women from Nairobi to Karachi, Maputo to Istanbul and beyond, continue to creatively reclaim their own streets with local grievances and demands, they are collectively rewriting the global map. This rewriting is an example of a Feminist Reality – a way in which feminists take action to create, and re-create spaces and communities to be more equitable and just.

Roaring together in the face of police brutality and complicity 

“The patriarchal behaviour is deep in our society and no one is doing anything,” says Nzira De Deus from Mozambique’s Fórum Mulher, the network of women’s rights and gender equality organizations that organized Chilean-inspired feminist flashmobs in the cities of Maputo and Beira.

“What we are doing with that song is denouncing the impunity we see in our community. We know who the rapist is but the police is doing nothing, and is in complicity with that situation. We need to continue to spread this kind of campaign, adapting an African version, denouncing not just in words, but also with this kind of thing.”

Coming together to address police impunity was also a powerful experience for Hum Aurtein, a group of womxn and non-binary people who advocate for gender justice who performed the choreography in Karachi.

“It was electric as we yelled “Yeh police, Yeh nizam, Yeh jagirdar, Yeh sarkar [This police, this system, these feudal land-owners, this government]” as men in a police van watched on and we pointed at them. So there was a sense of collective reclamation,” recalls Atiya Abbas, Hum Aurtein organizer.

When women speak truly they speak subversively — they can’t help it: if you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you subvert. We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.

Ursula LeGuin

In Nairobi, members of Maisha Girls’ Safe House decided to take the choreography to three locations in Nairobi where rape and other sexual violations are rampant, in slum areas and around local administration offices. The performance allowed girls and young women survivors of sexual violence to directly confront perpetrators, including agents of law enforcement.

“We did it in our small way and the impact it left was amazing,” says Florence Keah from Maisha Girls’ Safe House. “I can walk in the community and l hear the young children (some of whom were conceived from rape) chanting “And the rapist is you!”’

“We hope the message to the police reached home.”

Meanwhile in Istanbul, several hundred women who gathered to perform the choreography were tear gassed, dispersed and arrested by riot police for insulting state institutions. But a week later, eight Turkish women MPs used their parliamentary immunity to perform the chant in Turkish parliament, while colleagues held up some 20 pictures of the faces of women said to be killed in domestic violence.

Creating and harnessing the power of new feminist words

If there is one thing the global Las Tesis-inspired tsunami has shown, it’s that feminists are infinitely collaborative, creative, and keenly aware of their specific contexts and needs.

In Karachi, Hum Aurtein added a stanza to their chant about class, religion and labour to speak to forced conversions, honour killings and labour-based discrimination and harassment faced by women in Pakistan.

In Mozambique, Fórum Mulher changed the line “It’s the judges!” to “It’s the MPs!” to reflect their discontent with the ongoing impunity of the MP accused of raping a child. Beirut organizers adapted the chant to Arabic, adding new content around media responsibility and sexual harassment, while maintaining the rhyme. One Beirut organizer described participants as “full of rage”, saying, “They will translate it in every way possible, and the flash mob came out as a beautiful means to do so.”

In other instances, feminists have had to adopt entirely new language to adequately express specific gender injustices.

“The word for rape in Urdu is “ismatdari,”” says Abbas, “which links rape to a woman’s honour. That is not what the violence of rape is. Rape happens because rapists commit these acts of dominance and terror – and not for any other reason.”

To shift this mis-association, Hum Aurtein organizers added new lines to their chant, saying, “Hear this, it is rape [adopting the English word]! Not “female honour”!”

“Language is power, and language is responsibility,” reflects Abbas. “One can hope the reproduction of knowledge through language continues to be feminist in its approach and that a generation from now, our efforts to do that will realize meaningful change.”

Indeed, future humans may reap benefit from the courage, creativity and collaboration of today’s global feminists, but the volcanoes have been simmering for generations. Feminists all over the planet are linking with one another, shedding fear and finding untold strength and collective intelligence in community. The new map is already here, and its seismic energy is palpable.

Aurat March (Women’s march) in Pakistan. Credit: Shehzil Malik.

Excerpt:

Hondurans protest outside a Tegucigalpa hotel where U.S. and Central American officials were negotiating a regional trade pact. Credit: Paul Jeffrey, Courtesy of Photoshare

By Laila Malik and Inna Michaeli
TORONTO/BERLIN, Mar 6 2018 (IPS)

Since its explosion onto the social media landscape at the end of 2017, the #metoo movement has continued to gain global traction. Initially centred on powerful Hollywood women breaking decades of silence about sexual abuse and harassment in the industry, the conversation soon spread across global regions and sectors, from #YoTambien in the Spanish-speaking world to #balancetonporc in French.  From China to أنا_كمان# in Arabic. From national governments to universities to international development, the stories are grim, and their pervasiveness has been jarring.

But for the majority of women and LGBTQI people, these stories are nothing new.

Individual instances of abuse and harassment are locked firmly in place by prevailing working conditions and an absence of labour rights protection. Across the planet, women’s disproportionately high rates of informal employment and complex production chains prevent them from organizing to protect their rights

Because global feminists and human rights advocates have been fighting for a more just world for decades, and have long noted that those individual instances of abuse and harassment are locked firmly in place by prevailing working conditions and an absence of labour rights protection. Across the planet, women’s disproportionately high rates of informal employment and complex production chains prevent them from organizing to protect their rights.

When they do, they are threatened with violence and union-busting attacks – often by the powerful, mostly North-based, transnational corporations who employ them. Data on the global workplace harassment and abuse of trans and non-binary people is less readily available, but many countries around the world continue not to even recognize trans and nonbinary identities and rights, and International Labour Organization (ILO) research reveals that LGBT people face discrimination in “access to employment and throughout the employment cycle, and can result in LGBT workers being bullied, mobbed, and sexually or physically assaulted”. People who do not conform to traditional gender norms face even more discrimination than those who can “pass”.

While talk in corporate and international development circles about the importance of women’s economic empowerment is on the rise, it often stops at individual income generation or improvement of self-esteem. Meanwhile, governments often refuse to take measures to protect precarious and informal workers – the majority of whom are women – out of fear of losing their competitive advantage to labour markets in other countries.

The situation of Cambodian women who work in the beer industry is case in point. In Cambodia, young women are hired by beer companies to sell as much of the brand as possible. They work long hours in bars, restaurants, and beer gardens late into the evenings, and are paid by commission or by a set salary per month. Some have contracts protected under the Cambodian Labour Code, and some are unprotected informal workers.

Cambodian beer promoters have been organizing since 2006 for a living wage, and to introduce protections against sexual harassment and violence, long working hours and toxic working conditions in bars and restaurants. During that time, more workers have gained formal status, allowing them to  benefit from the country’s labour code, and minimum wage standards.

But last year, Cambrew Ltd. – the largest brewery in Cambodia, 50% of whose shares are held by the Carlsberg Group – announced a change in working hours that would force women to leave work two hours later in the evening – despite travel safety and childcare concerns – without consultation with workers.

The company also began offering short-term contracts as a way to discourage beer promoters from joining the union, as well as giving union leaders morning shifts where they cannot make additional wages through overtime or larger sales. Ongoing fear of police brutality and dismissal continue to keep trade union activism and mobilization in check.

In other parts of the world, millions of women work under – and fight – similar conditions, upheld by the same logic. 85% of sweatshop workers are women between 15-25 years old, where stories abound of managers calling women workers into the back of workrooms, trying to touch or grope them and threatening to fire them if they refuse.

Around the world, 1 in every 13 female wage earners is a domestic worker, and only 10% of them are employed in countries that extend them equal protection under national labour laws. About 30% of them work in countries that exclude them from labour laws completely. Basically, the threat and exercise of sexual abuse and harassment of women is the cultural grease that keeps profits flowing efficiently across the globe.

Young Bangladeshi women raise their fists at a protest in Shahbagh. Credit: Kajal Hazra/IPS

Time for binding agreements

But feminists and human rights advocates have been, and continue to mobilize for gender and economic justice. In October 2017, 14 organizations came together to request the integration of a gender approach into a long-awaited international legally binding treaty to hold corporations accountable for human rights abuses.

It would include assessments of the impact of business activities on women’s lives, ensuring that women can get justice in courts and creating conditions that are safe, respectful, and enabling for women human rights defenders. It would challenge corporate impunity and legally oblige businesses to uphold international human rights standards all over the world.

At the same time, the International Trade Union Confederation and others have been mobilizing with a campaign for the International Labour Union (ILO) to adopt a comprehensive convention on violence and harassment against men and women in the world of work. This convention is a step in the right direction – towards transforming workplaces to become safer and dignified spaces for people of all gender identities.

On March 8, International Women’s Day,  the intergovernmental working group on the binding treaty will  present its report at the Human Rights Council in Geneva – more than 100 years since women garment workers came out to the streets to demand fair working conditions.

Today, working spaces are often still exclusionary, exploitative and unsafe, particularly for women, trans and non-binary people and global south communities, as well as for queer and racialised people, for differently able-bodied people, and for migrant communities. It is time we responded to that long-standing demand for the human rights of all workers to be respected.

No one international treaty will hold all the solution, but it is a reminder that in order to stop violence against women in the workplace, a structural change is needed in our economic and human rights systems, and the struggle is long underway.

Excerpt:

This article is part of a series of stories and op-eds launched by IPS on the occasion of this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8. ]]> https://www.ipsnews.net/2018/03/metoo-in-the-global-workplace-time-to-connect-the-dots/feed/ 0