Post by by Oloo on Oct 11, 2006 21:05:26 GMT 3
Confronting the Rape and Female Harassment Problem in WSF 2007
First things first:
In talking about Femininizing the World Social Forum process, it is crucial for my readers to grasp what I am NOT talking about.
I am NOT talking about “women’s issues” nor am I trying to “solve” or “resolve” “The Woman Question”.
Rather, I am trying to explore the problematics thrown up by the age-old power dynamics between men and women and contextualizing this within the history of planning and organizing for successive WSF events.
And I have embarked on this task for reasons that are far from “academic”; I am not driven solely by theoretical and intellectual preoccupations about the subject of gender.
I happen to be right in the middle of the logistical, programmatic and other aspects of social mobilization, fund- raising, outreach and publicity for the next edition of the World Social Forum taking place in Nairobi, Kenya from January 20th to January 25th 2007.
My name is Onyango Oloo and I am the National Coordinator of the Kenya Social Forum and the WSF-Kenya Secretary of the WSF 2007 Secretariat based here in Nairobi.
As a man, I am keenly aware of the baggage of male privilege that I was born with growing up in a world defined by patriarchy, misogyny and other forms of oppression against and domination over women. As a Kenyan, I am also cognizant of the inescapable fact of the world capitalist economy buttressing these age-old oppressions by punctuating every thing with class and confining historically determined societies within an overall imperialist vortex which in the Kenyan and African context manifests itself as neo-colonialism.
Over the last quarter century or so, neo-liberal policies downloaded to Kenya and other African and Southern countries via multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO etc have worsened the already lopsided power dynamics between men and women in the spheres of the economy, political representation, social and cultural relations, not forgetting the ideological imperatives of the day.
Being part of the WSF 2007 Secretariat I am confronted with the practical task of practicing what I preach.
In other words, what concretely can Eastern African men involved in the WSF process do in re-gendering the planning process in order to engender more equal and equitable relations between women and men?
One place to begin taking action is in devising strategies, policies, instruments and structures that will help reduce the level of violence against women attending the WSF event in Nairobi next year. I am zeroing in on the incidents of rape at past WSF events and how we can all work together to turn around this situation. We must go beyond treating Rape as a Law and Order problem that can be ameliorated by deploying more cops to the WSF site. To do so is to betray an insufficient understanding about the complexity of rape and other instances of violence against women because it reduces the issue to a one –dimensional phenomena of women being accosted and ambushed by “strange men” prowling the Kenyatta International Conference Centre and Uhuru Park for foreign and local female victims. If we were to adopt this blinkered approach for next year’s WSF event, we would be letting off the hook other potential and actual assailants of WSF attending women. I am talking about the scientifically proven and documented reality that more often than not, women are raped and assaulted by men they know, men they work with, men they are familiar with. How do women guard against fellow WSF male participants or even fellow delegates from the same organization and the same country. Rape is the extreme, but how about under-reported cases of sexual harassment, unwarranted touching and groping, offensive sexist jokes and exposure to pornography?
It is clear that Eastern African women are right in the thick of things when it comes to planning, organizing and mobilizing for WSF Nairobi 2007. Simultaneously the process to the 2007 Nairobi event remains male driven and centred. One can safely assume that the testimonies and perspectives shared in the preceding section will find their equivalents within our regional context. Most of the population in the Eastern African region remains rural-based. Over half of that population is female. Yet the organizing and planning for Nairobi 2007 is centred in the major urban centres like Nairobi, Kampala, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar town, Mogadishu and Addis Ababa. This has direct implications when it comes to ensuring effective participation of ordinary Eastern African working class and peasant women in the planning and execution for WSF Nairobi 2007. Young adult women (not just in Eastern Africa) have been complaining that there is an assumption that “Youth” = “Young Male” thus marginalizing female youth who in our local context outnumber their male counterparts. One could cite other examples, but suffice it to say that the issue of women remaining at the margins of the WSF process is a reality within Eastern Africa as well.
At the end of the day, this reality of women’s marginalization should not be an earth-shattering shock to anyone. The WSF process is a microcosm of concrete conditions in the world today. The gender dynamics within the World Social Forum are a reflection of the actually existing power relations between women and men all over the world.
Just confining ourselves to the Kenyan situation for a few minutes, it is not contested that the prevailing grinding poverty in this country has a greater impact on Kenyan women- even though women are the primary producers of food, the main engines in the unpaid household economy, the chief child care providers, the ones who bear the brunt of taking care of the elderly, the HIV infected and AIDS orphans. There are only a handful of female cabinet ministers and their assistants in the bloated Kenya government. Every single day there are literally dozens of stories in the local print and electronic media of women being killed, raped, defiled, battered, brutalized and otherwise assaulted by their spouses, fathers, uncles, brothers, sons and other men in their immediate lives as well as total strangers who see females (from babies under a year old to grandmothers pushing a century in existence) as vulnerable, “weaker” targets for their violence prone male power trips. Recently there was a huge national furor when a Kenyan woman MP introduced a bill to legislate against a huge array of sexual offences including marital rape. Male Kenyan MPs led the charge in ridiculing and rubbishing the Bill with one notorious MP quipping that African women mean “Yes” when they say “No” to uninvited sexual advances. The newspaper columns were full of commentaries and letters to editors from battalions and garrisons of Kenyan men feeling threatened in their bastions of male privilege and therefore unwilling and/or unable to appreciate the terror of rising rape incidents and manifestations of violence against Kenyan women; radio stations were bombarded with phone- calls and mobile text messages from across the country as the male backlash against the Njoki Ndung’u Sexual Offences Bill intensified with gusto. Notwithstanding the fact that sections of the bill were poorly drafted (as in the startling shifting of the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused) Kenyan male MPs managed to weed out many of the path-breaking recommendations of the bill- for instance these male MPs and their non- parliamentary brothers in arms across the country considered it a huge “triumph” when the clause criminalizing marital rape was excised from the final, hugely diluted Act of Parliament. A couple months ago this writer was horrified at the way the crowd at a certain Mombasa night club approvingly cheered when a stand up comic gleefully made fun of a Kenyan woman who had been viciously gang-raped just the previous week. Listening to the sports commentaries on the radio or browsing through certain weekly columns by male writers, it is evident that sexism and misogyny in Kenya cuts across age, class, tribe, race, religion, creed, urban/rural divides and other cleavages in society.
I suggest that in combating rape and other manifestations of violence against women during the next edition of the WSF scheduled for Nairobi in January 2007, men and women can work together, in first sensitizing ALL delegates about rape and violence against women as a manifestation of sexism, misogyny and patriarchy- concepts that are totally alien to the WSF Charter. Beyond the sensitization should be put in place ENFORCEABLE sanctions for people who are caught in perpetrating these outrages. In addition to this, the Program, Methodology and Content Commission can send out a specific call for workshops, panels, seminars and teach-ins that address questions of rape, sexual harassment and violence against women. The Logistics Commission could set up banners, stickers, brochures, leaflets and banners campaigning against rape and sexual harassment WITHIN and AMONG the WSF delegates.
What else can Eastern African men do in terms of changing the gender dynamics of the WSF process for the better?
By acting in SOLIDARITY with their sisters in struggle in pushing through the agendas that will foster gender equilibrium as one of the sine qua nons for establishing that other world which we all believe is possible and necessary.
Perhaps I will pause here.
Onyango Oloo
Secreatry, WSF-Kenya
National Coordinator,
Kenya Social Forum
Masandukuni Lane, Off Gitanga Road
Lavington.
P. O. Box 63125, 00619
Nairobi Kenya.
Tel. 254-020-3860745 or 254-020-3860746
First things first:
In talking about Femininizing the World Social Forum process, it is crucial for my readers to grasp what I am NOT talking about.
I am NOT talking about “women’s issues” nor am I trying to “solve” or “resolve” “The Woman Question”.
Rather, I am trying to explore the problematics thrown up by the age-old power dynamics between men and women and contextualizing this within the history of planning and organizing for successive WSF events.
And I have embarked on this task for reasons that are far from “academic”; I am not driven solely by theoretical and intellectual preoccupations about the subject of gender.
I happen to be right in the middle of the logistical, programmatic and other aspects of social mobilization, fund- raising, outreach and publicity for the next edition of the World Social Forum taking place in Nairobi, Kenya from January 20th to January 25th 2007.
My name is Onyango Oloo and I am the National Coordinator of the Kenya Social Forum and the WSF-Kenya Secretary of the WSF 2007 Secretariat based here in Nairobi.
As a man, I am keenly aware of the baggage of male privilege that I was born with growing up in a world defined by patriarchy, misogyny and other forms of oppression against and domination over women. As a Kenyan, I am also cognizant of the inescapable fact of the world capitalist economy buttressing these age-old oppressions by punctuating every thing with class and confining historically determined societies within an overall imperialist vortex which in the Kenyan and African context manifests itself as neo-colonialism.
Over the last quarter century or so, neo-liberal policies downloaded to Kenya and other African and Southern countries via multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO etc have worsened the already lopsided power dynamics between men and women in the spheres of the economy, political representation, social and cultural relations, not forgetting the ideological imperatives of the day.
Being part of the WSF 2007 Secretariat I am confronted with the practical task of practicing what I preach.
In other words, what concretely can Eastern African men involved in the WSF process do in re-gendering the planning process in order to engender more equal and equitable relations between women and men?
One place to begin taking action is in devising strategies, policies, instruments and structures that will help reduce the level of violence against women attending the WSF event in Nairobi next year. I am zeroing in on the incidents of rape at past WSF events and how we can all work together to turn around this situation. We must go beyond treating Rape as a Law and Order problem that can be ameliorated by deploying more cops to the WSF site. To do so is to betray an insufficient understanding about the complexity of rape and other instances of violence against women because it reduces the issue to a one –dimensional phenomena of women being accosted and ambushed by “strange men” prowling the Kenyatta International Conference Centre and Uhuru Park for foreign and local female victims. If we were to adopt this blinkered approach for next year’s WSF event, we would be letting off the hook other potential and actual assailants of WSF attending women. I am talking about the scientifically proven and documented reality that more often than not, women are raped and assaulted by men they know, men they work with, men they are familiar with. How do women guard against fellow WSF male participants or even fellow delegates from the same organization and the same country. Rape is the extreme, but how about under-reported cases of sexual harassment, unwarranted touching and groping, offensive sexist jokes and exposure to pornography?
It is clear that Eastern African women are right in the thick of things when it comes to planning, organizing and mobilizing for WSF Nairobi 2007. Simultaneously the process to the 2007 Nairobi event remains male driven and centred. One can safely assume that the testimonies and perspectives shared in the preceding section will find their equivalents within our regional context. Most of the population in the Eastern African region remains rural-based. Over half of that population is female. Yet the organizing and planning for Nairobi 2007 is centred in the major urban centres like Nairobi, Kampala, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar town, Mogadishu and Addis Ababa. This has direct implications when it comes to ensuring effective participation of ordinary Eastern African working class and peasant women in the planning and execution for WSF Nairobi 2007. Young adult women (not just in Eastern Africa) have been complaining that there is an assumption that “Youth” = “Young Male” thus marginalizing female youth who in our local context outnumber their male counterparts. One could cite other examples, but suffice it to say that the issue of women remaining at the margins of the WSF process is a reality within Eastern Africa as well.
At the end of the day, this reality of women’s marginalization should not be an earth-shattering shock to anyone. The WSF process is a microcosm of concrete conditions in the world today. The gender dynamics within the World Social Forum are a reflection of the actually existing power relations between women and men all over the world.
Just confining ourselves to the Kenyan situation for a few minutes, it is not contested that the prevailing grinding poverty in this country has a greater impact on Kenyan women- even though women are the primary producers of food, the main engines in the unpaid household economy, the chief child care providers, the ones who bear the brunt of taking care of the elderly, the HIV infected and AIDS orphans. There are only a handful of female cabinet ministers and their assistants in the bloated Kenya government. Every single day there are literally dozens of stories in the local print and electronic media of women being killed, raped, defiled, battered, brutalized and otherwise assaulted by their spouses, fathers, uncles, brothers, sons and other men in their immediate lives as well as total strangers who see females (from babies under a year old to grandmothers pushing a century in existence) as vulnerable, “weaker” targets for their violence prone male power trips. Recently there was a huge national furor when a Kenyan woman MP introduced a bill to legislate against a huge array of sexual offences including marital rape. Male Kenyan MPs led the charge in ridiculing and rubbishing the Bill with one notorious MP quipping that African women mean “Yes” when they say “No” to uninvited sexual advances. The newspaper columns were full of commentaries and letters to editors from battalions and garrisons of Kenyan men feeling threatened in their bastions of male privilege and therefore unwilling and/or unable to appreciate the terror of rising rape incidents and manifestations of violence against Kenyan women; radio stations were bombarded with phone- calls and mobile text messages from across the country as the male backlash against the Njoki Ndung’u Sexual Offences Bill intensified with gusto. Notwithstanding the fact that sections of the bill were poorly drafted (as in the startling shifting of the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused) Kenyan male MPs managed to weed out many of the path-breaking recommendations of the bill- for instance these male MPs and their non- parliamentary brothers in arms across the country considered it a huge “triumph” when the clause criminalizing marital rape was excised from the final, hugely diluted Act of Parliament. A couple months ago this writer was horrified at the way the crowd at a certain Mombasa night club approvingly cheered when a stand up comic gleefully made fun of a Kenyan woman who had been viciously gang-raped just the previous week. Listening to the sports commentaries on the radio or browsing through certain weekly columns by male writers, it is evident that sexism and misogyny in Kenya cuts across age, class, tribe, race, religion, creed, urban/rural divides and other cleavages in society.
I suggest that in combating rape and other manifestations of violence against women during the next edition of the WSF scheduled for Nairobi in January 2007, men and women can work together, in first sensitizing ALL delegates about rape and violence against women as a manifestation of sexism, misogyny and patriarchy- concepts that are totally alien to the WSF Charter. Beyond the sensitization should be put in place ENFORCEABLE sanctions for people who are caught in perpetrating these outrages. In addition to this, the Program, Methodology and Content Commission can send out a specific call for workshops, panels, seminars and teach-ins that address questions of rape, sexual harassment and violence against women. The Logistics Commission could set up banners, stickers, brochures, leaflets and banners campaigning against rape and sexual harassment WITHIN and AMONG the WSF delegates.
What else can Eastern African men do in terms of changing the gender dynamics of the WSF process for the better?
By acting in SOLIDARITY with their sisters in struggle in pushing through the agendas that will foster gender equilibrium as one of the sine qua nons for establishing that other world which we all believe is possible and necessary.
Perhaps I will pause here.
Onyango Oloo
Secreatry, WSF-Kenya
National Coordinator,
Kenya Social Forum
Masandukuni Lane, Off Gitanga Road
Lavington.
P. O. Box 63125, 00619
Nairobi Kenya.
Tel. 254-020-3860745 or 254-020-3860746