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Explore strategies to politicize and reclaim the HIV/AIDS agenda with a feminist lens. Understand interconnected gender injustices and empower women through visible, hidden, and invisible power dynamics. Engage in advocacy, awareness, and mobilization to strengthen feminist movements. Address the impact of power over, power to, and power within in shaping the HIV/AIDS narrative. Learn how technology, money, and stigma influence the feminist response to HIV/AIDS. Unite for a global feminist movement that prioritizes hope, justice, power, and love.
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Two interconnected questions • How can women continue to politicize and reclaim the HIV/AIDS agenda? (African women were the pioneers) • How do we re-energize and strengthen feminist movements & agendas?
HIV/AIDS • Magnifying glass to understand interconnected ways gender injustice operates within, between and outside us (class, race, sexuality, location, etc) • Strategies & issues it brings together – from service to awareness to mobilization - hold all the elements of feminist movement-building process
Reclaiming HIV/AIDS: power • Power over Vs • Power to, within and with: movement-building
Power over Visible power: making & enforcing rules (laws, policies, budgets) Hidden power: setting the agenda (political forces that use resources to control visible power/ decisionmaking) Invisible power: shaping meaning, values & “what’s normal”; our internalized roles
Our political actions vs their tactics Visible power: lobbying, research theirs--- Cooptation, controlling policy spaces Hidden power: organizing, mobilizing, leadership, alliances; communications-media: name and shame theirs -- undermining our message / leaders & excluding Invisible power: questioning, awareness, reflection, confidence, political analysis, hope, love; understanding privilege-difference; Theirs -- controlling beliefs & information; fundamentalisms; consumerism; individuals
HIV/AIDS Technology Visible power: Condoms, ARVs, male circumcision ABCs Hidden: Big pharma, conservative religious groups Even potential allies Invisible: Reinforces women’s lack of control over sex & reproductive rights Responses: Microbicides, female condom New treatments Mobilize to name & shame: TAC; visibility Persuade-link with funders & strong gay men’s groups Raising our awareness of our bodies; confronting taboos about sex; educating the public
HIV/AIDS & Money Visible power: Global Fund, G-8, govts Healthcare privatization Home based care Hidden: pharma, conservative religious groups, international financials (aid & trade) Big NGOs Invisible: Reinforces women’s “lack of control over sexuality” & lack of voice; sense of powerlessness Responses: Funding for women’s rights-based programs for ARVs & technol, public health, livelihoods & land; anti-violence Mobilize to demand & influence donors, NGOs @ clinics, hosp Alliances with land, debt groups; with donors/ LGBT/ sex workers/ unions Research & action to track the money (budgets, etc.) Women’s rights education confidence-building, organizing; media; messages
HIV/AIDS, Sex & Stigma Where feminist perspectives make a big difference & voice of +women essential. VOICE, VISIBILITY&ORGANIZING POWER • Power within: questioning, educating, awareness-raising, communications on sexuality, sexual & repro rights – taking on taboos; privilege • Power to: Leadership, organizing around addressing needs • Creative media strategies using real life stories
HIV/AIDS: a global feminist-movement-building agenda • Addressing practical needs & rights • Multiple actors & strategies at all levels of decisionmaking (around clinics, etc) • Linked & GLOCAL • Integrated agenda: economic-political-social • Most affected at the heart of the movement • Vision: hope, justice, power & love
Lisa VeneKlasen, JUST ASSOCIATES www.justassociates.org AWID Forum, November 16th, 2008