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Upstream in the Mainstream

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Upstream in the Mainstream Upstream in the Mainstream BY MEREDITH RALSTON Eliminer la pauvrete' et ka violence rightfully, fraught with conflict. It is also not likely that There is au 21e sikcle implique un bnorme many of us in the women's movement, or any political so et ng efort de coalition, un travail au- movement for that matter, will have relationships with m hi vev deki desfinti2res et des d@rences, colleagues or political allies based on the level of trust and sed UC~ive a bout un travail de li.ntbrieur comme L intimacy of real sisters. And is that a desirable basis for the old feminist l'extbrieur. L'auteure penre que coalition-building anyway? Perhaps it sets us up with quoique le terme "sororitk," rejete' unrealistic expectations for our interactions with groups slogan, par les thLoriciennes~ministesqui and allows us to feel betrayed when things get conflictual. "sister h0 0 d iS ont kritsur lespoLitiques idntitaires, 1'11 argue that we need a different model of women's reste toujours uiuantddm [esgroupes organizing, not based on sisterhood and intimacy, but on powerfu ,I' -rhe l actueh Lfemmes, elle les enjoint L "engagement" not transcendence, as argued by third word sisterhood repenser /a ciororitinpour leurs world feminist Chandra Mohanty (Philips 258-59), and suggests oiganismes et de &cider si c'est k by examining carefully the effects of internalized oppres- terme qui convientpour appekr les sion on groups as argued by Lakey et al. To do this, I will commonalties f.mmesdlatribunedelapolitique. examine a women's group formed in 1994 to prepare for between women. the United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women. Eradicating poverty and violence I will look at the history, context and activities of the in the 2Ist century will require an group, the problems within the group, and finally at- enormous amount of coalition-building, working to- tempt, using Dean, Mohanty, Lakey and others, to analyze gether across boundaries and differences, and working what was going on behind the sometimes hostile dynamics from within the system as well as from the outside. of the group. Feminist political strategies will have to be updated and we will have to work with very diverse groups of people in History and context of the group order to achieve our goal- of a just and equal society for all. In the past, women's organizations based themselves The name of our organization was the Nova Scotia- loosely on the concept ofsisterhood and this strategy made Beijing Women's Action Group and it was formed in sense years ago when we were trying to form bonds and 1994, prior to the Beijing Conference. The nine women change society on the basis ofour perceived similarities. It organizers, myself among them, were made up of four doesn't work so well today. I will argue in this paper that white, two black, two aboriginal and a Latin American although sisterhood has been rejected theoretically by immigrant. We wanted to talk to the women of Nova most feminists writing about identity politics, the concept Scotia from as broad a cross-section as possible about what lives on in actual women's groups- - and we need to rethink they thought about the proposed "Platform for Action" the concept of sisterhood for women's organizing. Is it and the ten critical areas of concern. We accomplished powerful? Is it global? Is it the appropriate term to use to what we set out to do: we organized 27 discussion groups call women to the political table? all across the province; we wrote a 196 page report that There is something very seductive about the old femi- outlined a summary of the group's discussions on vio- nist slogan, "sisterhood is powerful." The word sisterhood lence, health, education, economic self-reliance, poverty, suggests a deep, intimate bond and commonalties be- human rights, and decision-making; and we produced tween women. Sisters have fun together, enjoy spending two videos about the process. Two of us went to Beijing a lot of time with each other. They have differences of and contributed our findings to the discussions. This was opinion but hopefully nothing that will drive a wedge not done easily, happily or without struggle and the between them. There is little, if any, conflict. This ideal process profoundly affected everyone in the group. We does not reflect my experiences in any women's group I could not "transcend our differences, though at timeswe have been involved in-nor perhaps should it. Sisters certainly tried that as a strategy. We struggled at every don't usually work together, go to meetings together or meeting with different ideologies, different personalities, interact in any political groups, which are notoriously and different agendas, different race, class, and sexual identi- 176 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME ties, and a lot of suspicion between groups. That we Scotian woman and one white managed to accomplish anything was a victory. In hind- woman), and we set about trying to We struggled at sight, my basic question is: how could it have been any reach out to women who had never every meeting other way, at that point in time, given geography and been asked to participate in these historical context, and the fact that we weren't then and kindsofdiscussions before. Wewere with diff erenf aren't now sisters? originally looking for fifteen discus- id ogies, Nova Scotia has a sorry history of racism towards sion leaders: ten to hold regional indigenous blacks and natives. The Marshall Inquiry meetings covering the province geo- different - A confirmed what most people know: the judicial and police graphLally and five "equityn personalities, systems in Nova Scotia are racially biased. We are a "have- facilitators to hold discussion groups different not" province in a wealthy country and we have a large with~- First- Nations- ~ women. African- number of people on some sort ofgovernment assistance. Nova Scotian women, immigrant agendas, We have managed to maintain a rural population with women, lesbians, and disabled different race, only one main urban centre (though there have been calls women. We quickly discovered that this would not be adeauate. Because class, and sexual to make Cape Breton Island anational park). Our economy 1 is historically based on natural resources, such as fish, of the diversity of the province, we identities. lumber, and coal, and these industries are rapidly dying. needed more specific and targeted Our political system is patronage-driven and debt-ridden, groups: rural black women didn't and people distrust politicians. We tend to be conserva- want urban black women running- the meetings or speak- tive, and strongly community-oriented, and the commu- ing for them; off-reserve and non-status native women felt nities themselves tend to be isolated and insular. they had different interests and were being discriminated It was in this context that a diverse group of community against by status, on-reserve native women; rural Cape activists and academics based in Halifax got together in Breton women identified themselves as a special -group; - the summer of 1994 to plan for the Beijing conference. different immigrant women's groups didn't want to meet From the beginning, doubt was expressed about the together; and we realized we had neglected to think about meaning and significance of a world conference at all and francophone, Acadian women at all. what it would mean for women on the ground- in Nova We tried very hard to ensure diversity amongst both the Scotia. There was much discussion about the value of an management group and the facilitators and I think we international conference organized by an elite interna- were feeling quite self-satisfied that we had accomplished tional organization and held halfway around the world in this when we had our first facilitators meeting in February China. These discussions never ended and were never 1995. At the meeting, we found out that we had not resolvedentirely. In the end, thecore group ofwomen that satisfied anyone and there was a lot of overt conflict and was still meeting believed that even on asymbolic level, the hostility expressed. As one ofour coordinators said, "there conferences were important and that our contribution as were many different agendas and different ideas as to Nova Scotian women was particularly important. The where this bus was going!" (Rubin 3) suspicions about the motivations of the leaders of the group and the usefulness of the conference itself would Problems continue to affect the group later on. The group was in conflict as to whether we should be emphasizing "the The first inkling the organizers- had about problemswas social transformation" (alternative feminist) concepts or the overt suspicions that several members of the larger to concentrate on particulars: day care, pay equity, and the group had about the organizers themselves, even though United Nations.. We decided to try both, more or less" the management committee was as diverse as the groups (Rubin 3). we wanted to reach. Some community activists were We applied for money through the Women's Program suspicious ofthe involvement of academics; some women and received a grant to organize meetings around the didn't feel the project was explained in enough detail; province. We hired two coordinators (one African-Nova some didn't understand why they should get involved at VOLUME 20, NUMBER 3 177 all because they couldn't see what was in it for them and ing motivations for conversation: women's being for their communities; and there were suspicions about the affiliation and connection; men's for competition and money and who was going to Beijing.
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