Womanhood is a historic fabrication whose direct consequence leads to the
subordination of women in the private sphere and their exclusion from the
public sphere. What is male is still universally considered as a norm, and
the male, as being taken as a norm, is defined as more important and of
higher worth. Patriarchal domination still persists in all societies and the
question of gender power is present in all spheres of life. The presence of
women in decision-making arenas and the co-decision making procedures in
those arenas are high democratic stakes. Democracy will remain an empty
concept if women and men continue to have unequal share in the
decision-making process in the productive sphere - a process that is neither
indirect nor covert- and unequal share of responsibility in the reproductive
sphere. Our feminist approach to analyzing democracy includes putting lights
on the interplay between the private and public that justifies the exclusion
and the subordination of women.
IFE-EFI believes that human kind needs urgently a new social contract, with transformed
power relations between men and women, and new rules of democracy, where
power is no longer synonymous with domination. Democracy that means equal
share of power in order to build together, women and men as opposed to use it
as a tool to exercise authority or as a means of oppression. The fight
against gender domination is part of a global project which challenges all
forms of exploitation and oppression.
In Europe there is no opposition as such stopping women from accessing power,
but there are many obstacles and pernicious means of resistance that stand in
their way: the weight of tradition and the force of stereotypes, the unequal
distribution of house chores and of social times, gender segregation in jobs
and training possibilities and unequal access to knowledge, to name some.
Therefore even if the economic, political and social structures have as an
objective to change society, their engendered democratization is the
precondition for a full transformation of the societies to real democracy based
on respect and implementation of women's rights as universal human rights.
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