Onderwerp : [Imc-vlaanderen] Proposal from imc-women for New-IMC Process

FYI

Stijn

Proposal from imc-women for New-IMC Process 
by IMC Women 8:33pm Tue Sep 30 '03 (Modified on 2:31am Thu Oct 2 '03)
article#1098 
imc-women op lists.indymedia.org  

The imc-women-list exists since summer 2001 and consists of women active
in indymedias in Latin America, North America, Europe, the Middle East
and Australia. Since two years, we have discussed in many facets the
depressing situation of patriarchal repression in society which
unfortunately doesn't stop at the doorstep of leftist groups. 

Many concrete situations came up, in which women felt discriminated
against in their local group. In most cases we were able to support the
women emotionally and to give advice. But we feel that this is not
enough. 

Women are a small minority within many indymedia groups, some groups
only consist of men. This may be due to the fact that people perceive
indymedia mainly as a website and don't realize how much work needs to
be done concerning building political relationships, outreach, editorial
work etc. Therefore indymedia attracts relatively more people who are
interested in computing than people who are not. Accordingly, the
underrepresention of women within indymedia reflects the
underrepresentation of women in Information Technology related fields. 

However, only some incidents in which women felt discriminated against
within their groups were tech related. Several complained about being
silenced in meetings, some had experienced open sexist behavior, many
stated that there was a general atmosphere that made it hard for women
to work within their indymedia group. 

This means that gender discrimination is not only due to the fact that
techies have an important role within indymedia and techies tend to be
male. It is apparent, that non-tech as well as tech males discriminate
against women. 

Many of our male co-activists have taken an active stance against gender
discrimination within indymedia. And we hope they will keep up this
stance as we don't perceive our struggle as females versus males but as
a general cause. 

However, the discrimination by individual men and the patriarchal
atmosphere in some groups has reached such a degree that we believe
action needs to be taken. 

Furthermore we believe that similar mechanisms that minimize women's
involvement also work against the participation of ethnic and sexual
minorities and maintain a homogeneous class structure. 

We talked about different measures to change this situation. As a result
of our discussions, we would like to propose that these issues be
addressed during the process which new imcs undertake. 


Proposal: 

We propose that the following questions be incorporated in the
application form: 

A. How does the makeup of your collective reflect the diversity of the
local community (e.g. in realtion to gender-, sexual-, spiritual-,
and/or cultural-identity)? 

B. If your group currently does not represent the diversity of the local
community, particularly in relation to groups who are underrepresented
in mainstream society and denied access to vehicles of expression, what
steps will be taken to address this on an ongoing basis? 

C. What steps will be taken to involve individuals in workfields new to
them? What measures will be taken to overcome a gendered work division? 
 


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