WUNRN

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Regrettably, this will be the last WEMC e-bulletin. For reasons beyond the control of those of us directly involved in the project, the WEMC RPC officially closed on 30 June 2010. Since the project no longer exists, in a sense this e-bulletin reaches you as the voice of the project's spirit. And perhaps that is apt.

Officially, WEMC commenced on 1 July 2006, but it started as musings by a few in late 2004 that were conjured into a proposed dream in July 2005 in the most oppressive pre-monsoon heat of Lahore (complete with electricity outages and office flooding when torrential rains finally burst asunder the skies). All of us involved in the project were infused with such deep-rooted commitment and astonishing energy, with such inspired creativity and dogged perseverance that, in a mere four years instead of five, the RPC shattered the goalposts we thought we had ambitiously set in terms of expected outputs. Tangible measureable results (OVIs for those in the know) were not merely overtaken but made irrelevant as the achievements doubled (or very nearly doubled) all expected results:

18 concrete recommendations accepted and acted upon by authorities have changed laws, policies and practices impacting more than 150,000 women - and that's not counting their families and friends. It's also not counting the amazing 27 new women's rights groups (formal and non-formal, overt or less visible, religious, secular or combining both), directly catalysed through research processes in Indonesia, Pakistan Iran, China and elsewhere, that are happily forging new innovative and indigenous strategies, multiplying manifold the voices for women's empowerment - largely women's own voices. Nor does it include countless other civil society groups, networks and alliances that have re-oriented activities to support women's empowerment strategies, or the allies and champions mobilised in diverse decision-making forums in high governmental institutions as well as at the life-determining meso-level where women daily confront the most immediate obstacles to empowerment. Numbers do not take into account the impact of changing discourses and changing everyday practices that are challenging and overturning the existing power dynamics that keep women disempowered. Nor does it account for the surprisingly impactful 15 documentary films produced by mixing a 10-day training by a professional + one follow up session + pooling expertise for self-improvement across teams, with women's creativity when they are determined to convert a dream into reality or have finally decided to air in public a grievance - when the silence is broken and women's voices can be heard.

Films have reduced audiences to tears, inspired actions for change...and are even used by authorities in their programmes.

WEMC set out to promote 'democratisation from the inside out'. Its approach of a participatory, reflexive and transformative research process is tangible evidence that when an eggshell is broken from outside, a life dies; but when the shell is broken from within, a life is indeed born...

The spirit of the WEMC project lives on through the seeds both scattered and planted and definitely nurtured with loving care in the last few years...enough energies to release and celebrate new life.

So in anticipation of new life...renewed energies...and a life beyond WEMC in the same spirit (or one quite like it) that buoyed us up and kept us together…

Farida Shaheed

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Extracts of the Final Report for DFID, July 2010

A. WEMC PURPOSE ACHIEVED

Proving that research when, instead of being extractive, is designed to be supportive and is attentive to women’s voices, can help lever empowerment, WEMC’s legacy is its self-defined purpose catalysing:

“a sustained, growing critical mass of civil society expertise engaged in policy debates for long-term changes in policies and practices that promote women’s empowerment in Muslim contexts”.

Achievements have been built on a very effective Communication Strategy, tailored to specific audience and socio-political contexts at micro, meso and macro levels, using highly diverse modalities which effectuated local change (catalysing and supporting women’s empowerment initiatives); reoriented local environments to be more supportive (communicating with meso-level policy implementers, opinion-makers, and civil society associations); helped to bring about policy revisions. Success is visible in accepted recommendations, authorities’ usage of outputs, the amplification of voices for women’s empowerment through new groups/initiatives; requests and usage of WEMC products (over 60 websites excerpt/are linked to WEMC materials).

A new development paradigm is supported by research findings that a rights-based development approach resonates deeply with the new paradigm of ‘development with culture’ proposed by the UN Indigenous Peoples Forum. Research suggests there is merit in developing such an approach for women’s empowerment - especially when women suffer from severe exclusion. Similar concerns arise: not merely making services more accessible but strengthening women’s own institutions, not development on behalf of but with, women, and an understanding that success can “depend critically on how one goes about development rather than simply on the choice of the subject matter of a specific intervention.” This last applies to research processes and interventions equally.

B. LESSONS AND CONCLUSIONS

Policy Planning lessons
Policies must help overcome the ‘cost of empowerment’ which women identify; understand that empowerment initiatives do not emerge from individual women accessing better services but from collectivised actions for which women prioritise public discursive spaces; that empowerment cannot be achieved without addressing meso-level dynamics where access to information, resources and decision-making forums is most obstructed and justified through misogynistic interpretations of culture and religion; that in negotiating rights collectively, women position themselves variously - making it vital to assess the impact of the contested changing constructions of Muslimness and other other social identities and the interplay amongst these to draw lessons for citizenship and governance/ development planning.

Research Lessons : A unifying framework & diversifying realities
With a consistent focus on power as central to discourses on women’s empowerment, a main feature of the WEMC RPC was the dialogic relationship between a coherent and explicitly conceptualised research framework (RF) as a unifying factor on the one hand, and grounded, context-specific field research to bring forth contextualised understandings and actions on the other. The core research questions, addressing four thematic areas of the WEMC RF stimulated enquiries and analyses about women’s understandings of the power relations in which they are embedded; adapting the RF to contextual specificities engendered new understandings rooted in women’s situational realities. These seemingly oppositional drivers presented significant management challenges, but the dialogic relationship also generated a creative tension that spurred innovative transformations among researchers and community women alike. This propelled new synergies at the grassroots, especially opening public discursive spaces for women to share experiences, views, and analyses of power, and, based on these, to devise indigenous strategies appropriate in their contexts.

C. SUSTAINABILITY

The integration of WEMC’s work into existing programmes of partners and collaborating groups through capacity-building in research as well as advocacy helps to ensure the continued sharing of WEMC concepts, findings and analysis thus far. The fact that WEMC research findings and outputs are being used by a diverse set of government authorities in every component ensures sustained policy impact. Perhaps most importantly, the 27 new groups catalysed by WEMC and the reorientation of numerous other civil society groups and initiatives ensures a widening impact into the future.

WEMC Key Partners and their local associated partners will continue to promote diverse products in various languages. The WEMC website will be maintained and managed by Shirkat Gah –Women’s Resource Centre through other funding to enable continued access to WEMC products: papers, policy briefs, video documentaries and webcasts as well as draft papers The WLUML Farsi website will publish selected WEMC products, including articles in the newly launched on-line Farsi journal “WLUML Journal of Feminist Studies”.