“At every women’s gathering the divisions of race, class, nationality and ethnicity erupt, tearing the unity that brings women together. . . . We can pretend that differences do not exist, or we can explore them, and in the process reformulate feminism itself. The latter is more difficult and painful, but indispensable, if sisterhood is to become more than a slogan.”

Asoka Bandarage, “Toward International Feminism,” 1994

“[A] vision of global feminism should be one which engages women at all levels of society in all aspects of their lives, encouraging productive diversity rather than homogeneity, while proposing a pro-active redistribution of power, rather than reactive critique of its current allotment.”

Renee Martyna, “Whiter Global Feminism?,” E-merge 2000

This issue of Briarpatch is about opening our activism to new voices and new perspectives. As Naomi Wolf recently observed, “our (Western) moment of feminist leadership is over now, for good reasons. . . . [T]he leadership role is shifting to women in the developing world.”

To be clear, Wolf is not suggesting that Western feminists have won their battles and so are free to retire to Guatemala or Thailand to help those poor other women win the same battles. Rather, her point is that feminism in the West/Global North (I use these equally inadequate terms interchangeably) cannot be universalized, and that feminism has so far failed to address the economic inequalities, local and global, that have seen some women prosper while the majority have only suffered increased economic insecurity. The antidote – global feminism – could equally be described as majority feminism.

Like the labour movement, the feminist movement in the Global North has grown gradually more conservative over the past two decades, fighting (and often losing) rearguard actions to hold onto the rights and privileges previous generations had won, rather than seeking to broaden those victories across lines of race, class and nation. Western feminism has largely bought into the unequal rewards of global capitalism and become complicit in the imperial project: we occupy Afghanistan as supposed liberators-of-women while those same women slide deeper into poverty and insecurity. We import Filipino women to care for our children and Mexican men to grow our vegetables while women in Chinese and Haitian sweatshops sew our clothes. We rail against the misogyny of Islamic fundamentalism but have too little to say about the Western militarism and IMF-imposed Structural Adjustment Programs that fuel it.

We must remember that our struggles for gender equity, work with dignity, personal security and ecological integrity are interconnected, that one form of oppression feeds another, and that capitalism thrives on and deepens all these various oppressions. As Johanna Brenner saw clearly back in 1993, “[t]he solution to the political impasse facing feminism cannot come from feminists alone,” but requires “a serious and disruptive challenge to capital” (New Left Review, July/August 1993).

The feminist political impasse Brenner identified 17 years ago has persisted, and meanwhile capital has gone increasingly global – a challenge that requires feminism and trade unionism alike to go global, too. Effective challenges to gender and class oppression must come from and respond to those who bear the brunt of such oppression; they can’t originate with those who have benefitted from it. Acting on this realization requires looking both outside our borders and inside ourselves.

As Arundhati Roy has said, “The battle lines are not drawn between women and men. They are drawn between particular world views.” We must recognize that the next wave of feminism, if there is to be a next wave, must come from the South, and orient our activism accordingly.

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features

the gender of enlightenment
Female Buddhists face a glass ceiling in Thailand
By Gita Tewari

’words are powerful weapons’
The story of the speech that drove Malalai Joya underground
By Malalai Joya with Derrick O’Keefe

blanket condemnations
Contested feminisms and the politics of the burqa
By Erum Hasan

‘memsahib’ & ‘bourgeoisification of the brown nation’
Poems by Farah Shroff

no one answer
An interview with Marilyn Waring
By Brittany Shoot

cupcakes, gender, nostalgia
The commodification & consumption of girlhoods past
By Ondine Park & Tonya Davidson

profiles of feminism

The blind leading: Gender & eye care in the Global South
By Heather Wardle

The Honduran Committee for Peace Action: Women’s community organizing under pressure
By Angela Day

Forging ahead: The Ñaña knitters collective
By Teresa Krug

departments

letter from the editor
The next wave will come from the South

contributors’ bios

letters to the editor

review

J. R. Miller’s Compact, Contract, Covenant: Aboriginal Treaty-Making in Canada
Reviewed by Tyler McCreary

comic: luz
“Riot Girl” by Claudia Dávila

quotes from the underground
Sojourner Truth, Eve Ensler, John Berger, Vandana Shiva, Minke-An Ligeon, Anasuya Sengupta, Robin Morgan

parting shots
Naming the violence that has taken our sisters
By Joyce Green

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]]> http://briarpatchmagazine.com/global-feminism/feed/ http://briarpatchmagazine.com/naming-the-violence-that-has-taken-our-sisters/ http://briarpatchmagazine.com/naming-the-violence-that-has-taken-our-sisters/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:40:20 +0000 briarpatch http://briarpatchmagazine.com/?p=1489

By Joyce Green
Briarpatch Magazine
March/April 2010

This essay is adapted from remarks delivered at the Sisters in Spirit vigil in Regina, SK, October 6, 2009.

Some things defy articulation. How can a community conceptualize the vicious, racist misogyny that leaves scores of Aboriginal women missing and murdered? We try, because silence really is complicity – because we are all affected, we are all related and we do not accept the loss of these women. I say to the families of missing and murdered women: we are humbled by your courage in the face of such pain.

The women’s movement has a saying: the personal is political. We share our personal experiences, and in that way, we make them political. This is what Sisters in Spirit is doing. This is what the Native Women’s Association of Canada is doing. This is what the families of the missing and murdered women are doing.

Our personal conditions are not just private – they are the result of structures, processes, policies, laws, misogyny and racism. Once we understand that, we find solidarity, begin to analyze our situation and then take political action. In our solidarity and action we have power; we are not only victims.

There are so many names, too many for me to recite. But I remember in particular the girl whose name was the first branded into the national consciousness – Helen Betty Osborne, a 16-year-old high school student who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by four white boys, protected by their community for decades. She would be my age had she lived. Closer to home, I remember Pamela George, a young mother, kidnapped, raped and murdered by two young white men in Regina. I remember Amber, and Daleen, and Tara-Lyn, and all the sisters who are no longer with us. I am enraged that the loss of these women is a regular occurrence.

Generations apart, they have all been taken from us by an evil that has not gone away. And while racism and sexism come together in the lives of Aboriginal women, we know that not only white men have preyed on these women.

Aboriginal women and men have suffered from the violence of colonialism, but they have not suffered in the same way. Many women are victimized by assault, rape and murder. But indigenous women are especially vulnerable to male violence because of the convergence of sexism and racism. According to Amnesty International and the Native Women’s Association of Canada, Aboriginal women are five times more likely to be murdered than other women in Canada.

“It’s a good place to raise a family,” people said when I moved to Regina in 1998. But not for my girl, who is visibly Aboriginal. I raised my daughter in fear – always fearing she would become a victim, would go missing, would be killed. She came close to it. I am lucky. She is alive. It could so easily have been otherwise.

Racism is an ideology that justifies the oppression and thefts of colonialism. Racism allows the settler population to see themselves as deserving, while the Other, the indigenous, is seen as deviant and deficient. Racism gives rise to white privilege, enjoyed by those who can choose not to know about colonialism or indigenous peoples, but who nonetheless benefit from being white in a racist settler society. Those with privilege receive quality education and good jobs, and are genuinely distressed at the suffering of indigenous peoples, while being blind to the ways in which their privilege arises from the historical and ongoing oppression of indigenous peoples.

The racism that I’m describing leads predominantly white politicians, police and media to pay less attention to missing Aboriginal women, and to ignore the factors that make them so vulnerable. They prefer to talk about “cultural differences” instead of oppression, about “risk factors” instead of colonialism. By focusing only on individuals and ignoring history, they can be blind to the fact that this awful problem of missing and murdered Aboriginal women is a consequence of our social, economic and political relationships.

Together, we remember these women and commit to working to build a society where women are not under such threats; where we will not always have to be afraid; where we need not meet to name the missing and share our pain; where such atrocities do not happen; where colonialism will be a thing of the past and we can finally work together for justice for all.

Blessed be, all my relations.

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Reviewed By Tyler McCreary
Briarpatch Magazine
March/April 2010

In Compact, Contract, Covenant (University of Toronto Press, 2009), J. R. Miller provides the first comprehensive history of treaty-making in Canada. From the earliest days of trading partnerships and military alliances to modern comprehensive land claims, Miller explores the complex and shifting relations that guided the formation of treaties. Although he is primarily an archival historian, Miller draws upon substantial research on oral histories to capably address not only Crown motivations but also Aboriginal intentions in forging covenants with the newcomers.

While treaties are typically viewed simply as a means of dispossessing Aboriginal peoples of their lands, Miller offers a much more nuanced look at the complex history of convergent and competing interests that the treaties embody. Dispossessing Aboriginal peoples of their lands certainly represents a core objective of Crown negotiators for the last couple of centuries, but Miller reminds readers that there was a long and rich history of treaty-making with Aboriginal nations that preceded land transfers. For more than a century and a half, Aboriginal peoples integrated Europeans into their existing kinship system through trade compacts and military alliances. This history of relations between peoples, too often forgotten in settler society, forms the basis of how many Aboriginal peoples understand treaties.

Miller traces the centuries-long transformation of treaty-making from these early systems of Aboriginal alliance towards the formalized terms of British law. This transformation produced ever-increasing discord between Crown and Aboriginal understandings of treaty; Miller’s history provides an excellent framework for understanding this conflicted legacy. Miller argues that treaties were vital to the construction of Canada, and frames his history of treaty-making as a Canadian one. This is a frame that we may want to question for its nationalist presumptions. First, however, it is worth reviewing the compelling historical trajectory that Miller traces.

In the early period, Europeans adapted to existing Aboriginal systems, following Aboriginal norms of ceremony in establishing trading relationships and forging agreements. Trade encounters were marked by formal welcomes, oratory, gift exchange and feasting, ritually renewing the bonds between peoples. Participants sacralized relationships through smoking a calumet and thus invoking the Great Spirit to spiritually bind them together. While Europeans desired furs and First Nations wanted European goods, these were not simply economic exchanges.

These commercial compacts formed the basis of peace and friendship treaties. In fact, for First Nations the two were integrally connected. The French, working through Aboriginal systems without formal written agreements, were first among the colonial powers to seriously delve into the realm of military alliances. The British, in contrast, began in 1707 to use a more formal system of peace and friendship treaties. The introduction of British modes of textually encoding agreements began to transform the processes of forging cultural connections among allies.

Following France’s abandonment of New France in the Treaty of Paris, the British King issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 to quell dissent among France’s former Aboriginal allies. Seeking to address some of the chief Aboriginal grievances regarding settlement and unscrupulous land deals, the Royal Proclamation recognized Aboriginal title and created a protocol for acquiring Native lands.

It was only after the Proclamation that territorial treaty-making emerged as the governing paradigm. However, if the intent of the Proclamation found warm reception among Aboriginal leaders, its implementation was much less popular. Crown representatives often failed to uphold the particular requirements of the Proclamation in negotiations. Nonetheless, the negotiations continued to respect Aboriginal customary protocols of treaty-making, including sharing the pipe and practices of gift-giving.

Thereafter, there was an increasing rift between British and Aboriginal understandings of the relationship established through treaties. For the British, treaties were documents of land cession. The 12 treaties signed prior to the War of 1812 provided access to Mississauga-controlled lands along the Great Lakes while recognizing Aboriginal peoples’ continuing rights to land use. First Nations’ increasing insistence on having particular lands set aside for traditional practices, as well as assistance fighting settler encroachments, highlighted their increasing problems with settler disrespect of Aboriginal lands and traditional practices.

As the costs and responsibilities associated with treaty-making increasingly shifted from Britain to the colony, this disrespect increasingly came to characterize the colonial administration’s dealings with Aboriginal peoples. Subsequent to the War of 1812, policy shifted to bring about not only the dispossession of Aboriginal peoples but also an erasure of their sense of distinct identity. There was an increased focus on “civilizing” (assimilating) the Indians. By the mid-19th century, the government of Upper Canada was consistently acting in violation of the terms of the Proclamation, issuing access to resources over which it had not yet treatied. In the Maritimes, Quebec, and British Columbia the government failed almost entirely to treaty for land.

In the northern Great Lakes area and the Western Prairies, strong Prairie and Woodlands First Nations insisted on treaties before settlement or development, interfering with surveyors and prospectors on their lands. These nations looked to treaties as a way to protect their peoples through the economic transition to a new way of life. Their defence of their title led to the creation of the Robinson Treaties, and the first seven numbered treaties.

Crown Treaty Commissioners again treatied in accordance with First Nations protocols, entering kin relations with the pipe ceremony that sacralized all the words spoken in their discussion under the Creator. However, Miller makes it clear that the Commissioners likely possessed little understanding of the significance of ceremony, contributing to substantial differences in the encoding of the spirit and intent of treaties in First Nations oral histories and the Crown’s written documents. While the texts of these treaties typically cede vast swaths of land, establish reserves, initiate annuities and recognize hunting and fishing rights, the oral history of nations such as the Blackfoot indicate that treaties were understood as agreements to share, not surrender, the land.

The numbered northern treaties (8 through 11, plus the northern adhesions to Treaty Five) were signed between 1899 and 1921 and covered the present-day northern portions of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and northeastern B.C., as well as western Northwest Territories and eastern Yukon. This was the final stage of historic treaty-making. While northern First Nations had been demanding treaties for a substantial period of time, it was only with the recognition of hydro, mining, and oil potential in the north that the government sought to treaty. These treaty expeditions were hurried and poorly executed, resulting in the exclusion of some bands, most notably the Lubicon Lake Cree. The crude economic calculus guiding the process further excluded prime sites for economic development, such as potential hydro sites, from reserve selection.

Nonetheless, the treaties continued to be conducted with gestures to the elaborate ceremonies established during the fur trade, although in the harried context of these agreements it was largely reduced to a feast following the conclusion of the agreement. Knowledgeable about past problems with treaty implementation, northern First Nations sought greater assurance of the protection of their rights under treaty, soliciting extensive oral promises that went unrecorded in the text. Thus, the northern treaties often demonstrate the greatest discord between the written text and oral record.

From 1923 until the James Bay Agreement in the 1970s, the government abstained from treaty activities. During the 1970s, as the government sought to further extend resource exploitation onto untreatied lands, First Nations again pressed their rights, forcing the initiation of modern treaty-making. Bolstered by a spate of Supreme Court decisions recognizing the validity of Aboriginal historic claims and necessity of addressing them, Aboriginal peoples forced the government to develop a new federal comprehensive claims process.

Miller notes that modern treaties represent a significant departure from the model of historic treaty negotiations. Backed by advances in legal recognition, and the constitutionalization of Aboriginal rights, the negotiations are complex and require years to complete. The final agreements are hundreds of pages long and marked by dense legal jargon, and Aboriginal protocol is absent as a shared ceremony.

While Miller acknowledges how modern claims legal proceduralism is effacing traditional Aboriginal forms of treaty-making, he adopts an ambiguous position with regard to these modern treaties. Miller recognizes the criticisms of extinguishment policy, of how modern treaties entail Aboriginal peoples abandoning their broad but undefined traditional rights in favour of a limited, clearly defined subset of those rights, plus cash compensation. But he simply states “[w]hether or not this formula will prove satisfying and effective remains to be seen” (266-267).

Politically, Miller presents a treaty federalist position. He argues that Canadians need to recognize the validity of Aboriginal rights and claims to land, while he castigates some contemporary Aboriginal claims to distinct nationhood and sovereignty as based on what he perceives as specious arguments about the nature of historical agreements. The idea of “Canada” itself is not up for negotiation.

The way in which Miller frames his history within the assumptions of Canadian nationalism, as “a history of treaty-making in Canada,” serves to naturalize the idea of Canada historically, even as it disrupts the conventional terms of Canadian history in its insistence on the centrality of treaty federation in constituting a European claim to share this land mass.

Nonetheless, Miller’s history effectively highlights the oft forgotten or obscured histories of mutuality between Aboriginal and European peoples. It is an important book, as it documents the necessity of understanding treaties as two-party agreements with ongoing political implications. To understand treaties simply as tools of dispossession silences Aboriginal histories and traditions of treaty-making, and discounts any political strategy that would see adherence to treaty claims as an effective means of addressing historical grievances and unmet responsibilities. Where Miller is most powerful and most provocative is in his reminder of the ways in which early treaties were forged through Aboriginal traditions, inviting newcomers into kinship relations with First Nations.

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By Teresa Krug
Briarpatch Magazine
March/April 2010

Even after the doctors had left, the Peruvian alpaca sweaters lay neatly folded in the large suitcase near the entrance. The clothing had been carefully selected, packed and transported to the edge of town the previous day in the hope that a group of foreign doctors who were passing through the area might take an interest. After perusing the collection, however, the foreigners purchased the inexpensive finger puppets in lieu of the pricier sweaters, hats and mittens. Pressured to compete with the market prices in downtown Arequipa, the knitters had even offered a discount.

The knitters, who call themselves Ñaña (meaning “sisters” in the local indigenous language, Quechua), are constantly mindful of their struggle to earn a living wage. Located in the dusty, depressed community of Alto Cayma on the outskirts of beautiful Arequipa, Peru, Ñaña’s three-room workshop offers its members a refuge from past hardships and current struggles. Inside, the women are welcomed and supported by one another.

Though their genuine alpaca clothing is far superior to the products sold in the city centre, foreign tourists don’t know – or care – about the difference and are often unwilling to pay the premium. Accustomed to paying essentially pennies for souvenirs in Southern countries, buyers bargain the city vendors down from their already too-low prices to prices that oftentimes do not even cover the original costs.

Because of this, the members of Ñaña have refused to sell their products in the local markets for the last few years. The members are instead focusing on a much wider, global clientele. As the women regularly remind themselves, they must “salir adelante.” Roughly translated, this means to “pull through” or “forge ahead.”

“I want it to be a big business, to be able to export,” explains Andrea Gutierrez, one of the founding members of Ñaña. “That’s my dream.”

The story of Gutierrez’s life resembles that of many of her compañeras. As a child she experienced the crushing effects of losing five of her 13 siblings to poverty-related deaths; as a teenager she worked long hours tending to animals and working for a street vendor before becoming a single mother at the age of 20. Forced to relocate to Arequipa, she began grueling fieldwork to support her son.

Around the time of her second son’s birth two years later, she connected with a friend and began spending afternoons knitting. The hobby had never gone beyond generating a small side income, but now it seemed more lucrative.

Until 2004 the women would meet and knit every Wednesday; it was still necessary to hold other jobs to support themselves. At first they spent the entirety of the day and well into the night knitting in someone’s home. They would then walk an hour from Alto Cayma to Arequipa’s city centre because they could not afford a taxi or bus. For all their efforts, they would be rewarded with roughly $3 for a pair of mittens.

“I was fine, but the prices just didn’t go up,” Gutierrez said.

Eventually a place to knit and market their products was arranged by a local priest in Alto Cayma. Other resources began trickling in and more women began to join. Today there are a handful of regulars with another 15 or so who cycle through. Some of the women have been knitting their entire lives; others have only just begun. Some still hold other part-time jobs. The vast majority of the women have children. All want to improve their knitting and expand their business.

Yeny Narcy Panta Coripua, who began knitting when she joined the group, credits a lot of her success to Gutierrez, who always pushed her to learn.

“Yes, you can. You have to come, you have to come,” Coripua said Gutierrez told her when she doubted herself.

Coripua began working as an empleada, or domestic worker, at the age of eight to support her four siblings when her father passed away and her mother abandoned them. At the age of 20, pregnant and alone, she too came to the Arequipa area. She worked as a money changer for the local buses and later owned a food stand before meeting her now-husband. She eventually found Ñaña because her second-born child attended daycare in the same complex. Knitting through Ñaña has now provided her with a sense of independence and self-worth that former jobs could not.

Whatever their backgrounds, the women share one common goal: expand Ñaña for the benefit of everyone involved. When speaking about their objectives, they use “we” and “us” rather than “I” or “me.” Their struggle continues to be an uphill battle as they resist the urge to sell their products for less than they are worth. Their name is also still relatively unknown and the current recession has not helped their business. Fortunately, they have established connections with a few fair trade stores and high schools in North America. Despite the odds, they are determined to continue forging ahead in search of financial independence for themselves and their families.

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Illustration by Kim Sokol

By Erum Hasan
Briarpatch Magazine
March/April 2010

I was 14 years old, riding a Parisian metro on a Friday evening, no doubt bound for some teenage mischief. The peace of my journey was interrupted when a woman wearing a burqa entered the compartment, accompanied by her husband and young son. The three of them, visibly tourists, looked at the metro maps in clear view of everyone else in the car.

This is a scene that occurs many times a day in Paris: tourist families mapping out their routes in the web of the metro underworld. But this family was different; the protagonists were atypical. I remember my horror at the whisperings, the looks, the nudges, and even some finger pointing at the woman in the burqa. A woman sitting across from me sighed exasperatedly and mumbled something about “these Arabs” and how they treat their women.

I was embarrassed and angry at this family for having entered this very public realm of which I was a part. I didn’t want my co-commuters to be judging all Muslim women relative to this one with her covered face. It was challenging enough to be a Muslim teen in Paris without having to take on this iconic image of the burqa-clad woman that had disturbed the cultural uniformity on that metro car. Feeling resentment for her and the response she was eliciting, I looked away, hoping she would disappear quickly.

The Muslim woman is often portrayed as lacking agency, subjugated and controlled by the men in her life. Trapped behind a veil, vulnerable to honour killings, her body is seen as a dominated space, one over which she apparently has no control. This is a common stereotype. It crops up frequently in Western media, especially when military offensives in Muslim countries are in the offing, and the oppressed Muslim woman is paraded about as justification for military intervention.

The burqa, chador or niqab (henceforth used interchangeably), a loose-fitting robe worn by some Muslim women that covers the body from head to toe, is one of the most powerful symbols of women’s subjugation under Islam. This garb is often presented as an existential threat to the West, capable of destabilizing the very foundations of our liberal democracies.

This message was reinforced in October 2009 when a Canadian organization called for a ban on the burqa. Surprisingly, this demand came from the Muslim Canadian Congress, a self-proclaimed progressive organization that stated: “The Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) is asking Ottawa to introduce legislation to ban the wearing of masks, niqabs and the burka in all public dealings. . . . [N]ot only is the wearing of a face-mask a security hazard and has led to a number of bank heists in Canada and overseas, the burka or niqab are political symbols of Saudi inspired Islamic extremism.”

Such a demand seemed odd when other issues of concern to Muslims were burning up the headlines, including government resistance to Omar Khadr’s repatriation, the war in Afghanistan, Muslim Canadians imprisoned abroad, and human rights concerns around security certificates. One has to question: is the MCC’s request really about protecting the Canadian public? (After all, how many bank heists have been undertaken by burqa-clad bandits?) Is it made in the name of emancipating Muslim women? Is liberation from the burqa really a pressing issue for them? Or is the MCC’s statement symptomatic of another tendency: some Muslims reproducing the same othering they have experienced in the Western world within Islamic groups, so as to render themselves acceptable to the general (Western) public at the cost of further isolating a disenfranchised group of women?

In non-Muslim circles, the opposition to the burqa has been open and vocal. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has stated the burqa is “not welcome” in France and that it reflects “women’s subservience.” In Switzerland, the image of the burqa was used in propaganda materials to support a constitutional ban on building minarets. In Belgium, many cities have prohibited face coverings, fining women who offend. In the United States, a rule adopted by the Michigan Supreme Court may allow judges to demand that witnesses remove their religious hair coverings while testifying. And in Quebec, the question of banning the head scarf in public service jobs was raised in provincial legislature by l’action démocratique du Québec and the Parti Québécois. However, this subject is not only taken up by politicians eager to weigh in on what the ideal citizen’s aesthetic should be. It is also a bête noire of some Western feminists who see the burqa as a threat to women’s autonomy and to the political gains made by feminists in the last few decades.

Indeed, the debate over Muslim women’s attire in the West has been shockingly one-sided. Few questions have been posed about why we equate visible hair and short skirts with women’s liberation or with greater access to power. The voices of women in burqa are seldom included in the dialogue – rather, these women merely become mere objects in our subjective narrative. Their bodies – their covered bodies – become fodder for our assumptions about their repression. “They” are made into one big category, an amorphous symbol of generalized oppression. What is rarely noted is that “they” as a category are not permitted to participate in this discussion. Just like the unseen patriarchs who are assumed to be cloaking women in repressive garb, many of us feminists make Muslim women’s bodies a screen upon which we project our politics and fears. Instead of opening a dialogue about the desires, aspirations and power struggles of this group of women, we substitute the burqa as a totem of all that we oppose. No one really asks those who wear it: hey, would you feel more emancipated if that thing was off your head?

The marginalization of burqa-wearing women in Canada and other Western nations is no real surprise. After all, the attire stands out in stark contrast to our mosaic of polar fleece. More surprising is how this narrative of the repressed woman is picked up, repackaged and reproduced within immigrant communities from the Global South. The crusade against the burqa is presented in Muslim circles as a progressive discourse reflecting modernity and Western know-how. A new dichotomy is thus created: the modern, free, Western Muslim woman who repudiates the traditional, shrouded Muslim woman. This dichotomy is not unlike the division between the stereotype of the free, modern Western woman and Muslim women in general – it just allows some Muslim women into the privileged space.

The Muslim Canadian Congress, which has often mirrored the language of the Conservative government on issues such as the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2008, and which lauded the cutting of funding for the Canadian Arab Federation after Minister Jason Kenney got into a name-calling match with its president, is not alone in calling for a burqa ban. Feminist reporter Mona Eltahawy began her op-ed in the International Herald Tribune with the words: “I am a Muslim, I am a feminist and I detest the full-body veil, known as a niqab or burqa. It erases women from society and has nothing to do with Islam but everything to do with the hatred for women at the heart of the extremist ideology that preaches it.” This perspective is further echoed by Quebec feminist Djemila Benhabib, who has described the burqa as a tool for extremists. When the Fédération des Femmes du Québec did not support a ban on the hijab in the Quebec public service, Benhabib condemned them for “sacrificing millions of women who are fighting for their lives.”

Though valid as personal opinions, these statements rely on broad and sweeping assumptions about the experiences and stories of Muslim women who wear the burqa. In Eltahawy’s description, women are “erased” by the burqa, while Benhabib portrays all burqa-wearing women as being controlled by fundamentalists. Such blanket judgments leave no space for the diverse needs and wants of traditional Muslim women to be articulated, and the packaging of their bodies becomes the only topic of discussion. Single stories are presented as universal truths, rendering the affected women more invisible and less entitled to express their own wants and needs.

Contrary to Eltahawy’s point, women who have independently chosen to don the burqa in the West are anything but invisible. It is, in fact, their very visibility and their obvious rejection of mainstream dress codes that creates a sense of discomfort for many. The burqa is unfamiliar, stark, mysterious and unknown, and does not blend in neutrally. Portraying the wearing of the burqa as a symbol of male, religious militarism, as Benhabib does, discounts any other reason that a woman might want to wear it: for identity, cultural values, political symbolism, anti-consumerism, protection, countering the hyper-sexualization of women or religious belief. Both Benhabib’s and Eltahawy’s objections do exactly what they accuse the burqa of doing: they silence burqa-wearing women and deny them agency by imposing one narrative on their behaviour.

There is no doubt that many women are coerced or pressured to don the burqa or are required by law to wear it – Afghanistan under Taliban rule being a prime example. Such coercion should of course be resisted. However, in other places, women have been forced to remove their coverings, making some feel as exposed as if they had publicly bared their breasts. In 1936, the Shah of Iran banned the burqa, giving rights to police officers to tear off burqas with scissors and knives in order to “modernize” women. In Turkey today, women wearing the burqa are not allowed to attend public universities. Strict decrees one way or the other are equally corrosive of women’s autonomy.

Key to this story of the wrapped-up and controlled Muslim female body is the marginalization that many Muslim women have experienced in mainstream Western circles – a marginalization that is now being replicated by some privileged Muslims. After years of struggle in which women of colour, low-income and lesbian women have challenged their ”othering” by white, middle-class feminism in Canada, we now see parallel inequities being reproduced within Muslim feminism.

The most alarming thing about the new othering of (some) Muslim women is not that there is a public difference of opinion. Indeed, we should welcome dissent and dialogue – for all women are not the same, nor should they have the same opinions. Rather, it is that white, middle-class feminism, which has excluded many who come from other social, ethnic and religious groups, has come to represent the model of feminism being espoused by immigrant communities in the Global North. Instead of carving out an authentic feminist path, where the focus lies on autonomy, agency and anti-oppression, some Muslim feminists have allowed cosmetic issues like the burqa to take precedence over more bread-and-butter issues.

And reproducing this divisive discourse pays off in the West. Although challenging the burqa in other parts of the world can involve serious risks for women, burqa bashers in the West are widely celebrated. When the Muslim Canadian Congress issued its statement, the story made headlines in all three national newspapers. When women such as Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam Today, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel, pen their books, they remain on bestseller lists for a handsome period of time, basking in media attention. It is popular for Muslim women to denounce other women within the Muslim community as backwards and proclaim oneself a progressive; it is far more difficult to speak out against broader marginalizations and one’s role in reproducing them.

Progressive women in Muslim communities must question whether they are simply mirroring broader societal inequalities and further isolating already-marginalized women when they request bans on women’s attire. There will always be differences of opinion around the burqa. Some will find it vile and imposing, others will find it liberating not to share their cosmetic selves in the public realm; some will find it incompatible with Islam, others integral to their faith. The point is to foster a safe space where these differences of opinion lead to a conversation with, and empowerment of, those most affected rather than to exclusionary demands. The focus has to be on the agency of women rather than on their objectification. Single stories should not be used to deny or dismiss the multiplicity of women’s experiences. The politics of the burqa, whether through its imposition or through a ban, should not be a weapon for alienating women and limiting their choices.

Being from the Global South does not insulate one from reproducing oppressive discourses. As feminists from the Global South become more influential, armed with degrees from prestigious British, American and Canadian universities and well-versed in polished English, they must remain open to the opportunities to break from the historical trajectory of previous Western feminist movements, to carve out novel feminisms. A Muslim woman wearing a full-length “burqini” in a Parisian pool may have been called “archaic” by the mayor of Paris in August 2009, but feminists must be willing to listen to that burqini wearer’s voice to avoid being guilty of the same oppressions.

Perhaps we can take a cue from the Council of American-Islamic Relations-Canada (CAIR-CAN), which lobbied against the burqa ban, emphasizing the need to focus on rights rather than limitations:

“… [I]f a segment of Canadian Muslim women believe that wearing the niqab is part of their religious practice, then they must be allowed to freely do so. The principle must be extended to all religious practices, provided the practice does not infringe upon the fundamental rights of others. The marginalization of Muslim women must be countered with public education and anti-discrimination efforts, not with the state’s dictation on how one may dress, which only serves to further marginalization instead.”

Riding the metro in Paris, my sensitive 14-year-old self reflected and amplified the discomfort of those around me. The object of my angry embarrassment became that burqa – and the woman wearing it. Today, though, I would be frustrated not by that woman’s clothing choices, but by the assumptions fuelling the contempt of my co-commuters: their intolerance and their fear of difference.

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By Angela Day
Briarpatch Magazine
March/April 2010

Hondurans’ resistance to the June 2009 coup has shown spirit and determination, with thousands of people resisting the theft of their democracy despite curfews, cops and targeted killings. The roots of this resistance run deep, anchored in organizations like COHAPAZ, the Honduran Committee for Peace Action.

COHAPAZ, a grassroots social justice organization, is comprised of an intricate network of militant women in the communities surrounding the capital, Tegucigalpa, where they have been organizing for over 30 years. Their mandate is to “fight poverty and create justice” in Honduras. What that immense task looks like on the ground is a multi-generational network of mostly women activists, a vibrant urban agriculture movement and frequent popular education workshops. They regularly organize popular assemblies, demonstrations and ad hoc workshops in these materially poor communities where even access to clean water is a political struggle.

In 2006, when I was living in Tegucigalpa, the women of COHAPAZ were facilitating weekly workshops on water conservation, small-space gardening, composting, and the perils of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which was about to be signed between Honduras and the U.S. I was struck by the distinct, steady feminism of the group’s four main coordinators – Doña Blanca, Doña Candida, Doña Hilda and Doña Marigsa. They are all between 65 and 80 years of age and have been politically active for most of their lives.

The coordinators of COHAPAZ see community organizing as a means of taking control over their own lives and challenging systemic inequality. “Community organizing is crucial to resistance,” they wrote in a collective statement in January of this year. “It helps communities recognize their rights, and especially the rights of women and children.” The Doñas explain that by building solidarity within marginalized communities around Tegucigalpa, they are better able to identify and denounce human rights violations. Their movement becomes what they call a “mechanism of protection.”

The COHAPAZ meeting spot is attached to a free medical clinic off a curved street, only notable because there are frequently people lined up outside with kids and babies in tow. The clinic is run by Dr. Juan Almendares, a long-time human rights activist, who works tirelessly to offer medical consultations and keep the clinic running. He is a long-time supporter of COHAPAZ and sister organization Movimiento Madre Tierra (MMT). MMT is supported by Friends of the Earth International, and while their mandate overlaps with that of COHAPAZ, with a focus on social and environmental justice in Honduras, MMT is active nation-wide, working with rural communities affected by the mining industry and large-scale agricultural development.

When I asked Dr. Almendares about the legacy of COHAPAZ, he explained how instrumental these grassroots women’s organizations have been in Honduran human rights movements. “The women have learned a lot about natural medicines, first aid, and birthing through their community organizing.” Pursuing health may not necessarily seem revolutionary, but he says, “health is directly linked with the ability of these women to participate in political action that benefits their communities.”

Honduras is considered one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere, second only to Haiti. Over 70 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, and the country relies heavily on remittances from Hondurans abroad; these remittances comprise the bulk of the country’s GDP. Accurate measures of how many people participate in Honduras’ informal economy are hard to come by, but on the denuded hillsides where the women live and work, stable jobs are rare.

One day, as I walked with Doña Blanca along the dusty streets of her colonia (suburb) of Bella Vista, she filled me in on the neighbours’ gossip. When I asked her why there were so many women around, but so few men, I came to understand the phrase “se fue a los estados,” a phrase I would often hear repeated. Someone in almost every household had “left for the States,” increasing the need for the women to establish strong networks of mutual aid and economic self-sufficiency.

This was before the 2009 coup.

The military removal of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was a flashback to the Latin America of the Cold War era. On the morning of June 28, when Hondurans were preparing to vote on the formation of a constituent assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution that had been instated in 1982 with heavy U.S. influence, over 100 military men swept into Zelaya’s home and put him on a plane to Costa Rica.

Immediately, nation-wide mobilizations and a general strike ensued, precipitating what became known as la Resistencia. In the face of foreign interference and a new administration backed by the Honduran military, the persistence of community-based resistance is even more remarkable. Dr. Almendares says this is in part due to groups like COHAPAZ: after years of organizing, they know how to be savvy and resourceful in volatile contexts.

However, state repression in Honduras has increased dramatically since last summer, adding a new dimension to COHAPAZ’s work. A January 2010 declaration from the Washington-based Center of Economic and Policy Research states that “the dictatorship has committed an array of human rights abuses including killings, beatings of demonstrators, detentions of hundreds of people, and attacks on media outlets.”

According to COHAPAZ, the terror created by the coup regime permeates society – everyone knows of someone who has been assaulted, detained or assassinated. “Still,” the elderly women tell me, “despite the repression, our popular education workshops have continued and the majority of women in our communities are voluntarily participating in the resistance.” Since last June, they have focused on making sure their fellow compañeras are well-equipped with the knowledge and health needed to ensure a vigorous presence in the resistance.

Furthermore, they say, “We are more united than ever before.”

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Blind women line up at a hospital in Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh, India

By Heather Wardle
Briarpatch Magazine
March/April 2010

Over the past decade, much has been written about female literacy and how access to even a basic education can reduce poverty and improve the lives of women and girls. But for millions of women in the Global South, it is access to eye care that they need most.

Thirty million women and girls are blind and many millions more have debilitating low vision. Even though two-thirds of the world’s blind are women or girls, in many countries men’s access to eye care is double that of women. This means that millions of mothers can’t see their children’s faces or protect them from harm, that girls cannot go to school or reach their full potential, and that even those with mild vision loss can’t pick the stones from their daily rice. The cost in human suffering and lost productivity is immense. Yet, 80 per cent of global blindness is either preventable or treatable. The leading cause of blindness is cataract; sight can be restored with a 15-minute cataract surgery that costs $50 or less.

Rose Mollel was just a baby when her vision began failing. By age three, she was blind from bilateral cataracts and could no longer see her family’s cattle or the world beyond her Masai hut in Tanzania.

Her mother was desperate to get care for her daughter, but the family was poor and Rose’s father did not see his daughter’s eyesight as a priority. “My husband and I argued so much about getting Rose to hospital that I had to leave my two kids and return to my parents. For three months, I dared not go back to my husband because I was scared of him, but the desire to restore my daughter’s sight still burned in my heart,” said Rose’s mother.

Eventually Rose’s grandfather intervened and insisted that Rose receive care. Rose had surgery on both eyes and had her sight restored.

Rose’s story illustrates some of the many barriers that women in the South face. Lack of decision-making power, no economic freedom, the inability to travel freely, and a lack of education and understanding about their own health are some of the obstacles women and girls face. The result is that millions suffer needlessly.

One woman who is leading both her country and region in redressing gender inequality in health care is Herieth Mganga, the gender and blindness coordinator for the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology in Tanzania. Unique in Africa, Mganga’s job is to train teams of “sentinels” – village women who have been taught to look for and recognize eye problems in children and women and to assist them in seeking care.

Sadly, this important gender and health work is not funded by the Tanzanian government, which was required to reduce public funding for health and education in 1986 under a Structural Adjustment Program imposed by the International Monetary Fund. Instead, the program relies on support by international development groups like Seva Canada, an eye care charity based in Vancouver.

Would it be better if governments recognized and funded women’s health initiatives rather than relying on donor agencies from the North? Absolutely. But in the meantime, programs like Seva’s that build local capacity must step in to relieve unnecessary suffering.

The good news is that with a relatively small amount of funding, programs that address the eye health needs of women and girls can be established and replicated. Part of Mganga’s role is to train other gender and blindness coordinators throughout eastern Africa.

There is a very clear correlation between sight restoration and poverty reduction. It is estimated that the global cost of blindness is $42 billion annually and the productivity generated by a single cataract surgery is fifteen times greater than the cost of the surgery.

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The sugary crazy with the gendered glaze: The Ottawa Cupcakery's Fairy Princess Pink cupcake

By Ondine Park and Tonya Davidson
Briarpatch Magazine
March/April 2010

In the summer of 2009, on a humdrum Edmonton afternoon, three of us went out for cupcakes. Fellow sociologists, knitting buddies and feminist reading group pals, we found ourselves at Fuss, a cupcake, gelato and coffee shop all rolled into one. It was there that we began to ponder the phenomenon of cupcake shops that seem to be popping up everywhere.

Cupcake shops are proliferating wildly, marketed to adults but with a frosting of childhood nostalgia. Sweet, pretty desserts adorned with opulent icing, cupcakes are the pinnacle of childhood treats, and embody the “sugar and spice and everything nice” notion of girliness. But rather than just representing a sweet indulgence for a sugar-addicted culture, does the nostalgia fuelling the cupcakes craze signal a broad cultural yearning for another time and another way of being – the seemingly glamorous Mad Men life when women hand-crafted little cakes for every single one of their bambinos? As we licked the ganache off our lips and the sugar crash hit, the question sent a twinge through our feminist political sensibilities. We asked ourselves: was this trend sexist and infantilizing? Or is it a case of third wave feminist entrepreneurs reclaiming and celebrating kitchen craftiness?

Nostalgicakes

According to Heather Holbrook of Isobel’s Cookies and Cupcakes and Claudia McGuinness of the Cupcake Lounge, both in Ottawa, cupcakes are all the rage for three key reasons: nostalgia for home-baked goods, the Sex and the City-inspired hip factor, and the near guilt-free indulgence they represent for North America’s chronically dieting population (cupcakes are small, after all). Pre-feminist nostalgia, pop-feminist glitz and post-prandial guilt seem to be the perfect ingredients for the female-focused micro-economy behind the cupcake fad.

And indeed, in the last few years, cupcakes and cupcake shops – especially ones oriented towards women – have proliferated across Canada, North America and beyond. (Check out www.cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com for a list of international cupcakeries, which can now be found on every continent except Antarctica.)

Edmonton’s The Cupcake Shoppe invokes nostalgia explicitly with its slogan: “Nostalgia has never tasted so good!” Since cupcakeries are a new phenomenon, clearly the shops themselves are not the source of nostalgia. Rather, they rely on a nostalgia evoked by cupcakes themselves. It seems to us that this nostalgia revolves around two things: the association of cupcakes with an idealized childhood, and the consumption of cupcakes as an expression of a particular, infantilized and domesticated femininity.

The taste of childhood past

Cupcakes are diminutive, delectable, and individually made and decorated. They evoke the nostalgia both of an earlier era and of childhood itself. Take a peek at the many e-cupcakeries on the web or walk into your favourite local shop and a theme of cozy 1950s domesticity, elegant Victorian charm or rustic quaintness pervades. The ornamented, dainty morsels simultaneously call to mind the luxury and the simplicity of a storybook past in which the everyday world was beautiful and manageable, with enough time to pay attention to small details, no matter how fussy or frivolous.

McGuinness agreed that cupcakes remind us of another era: “I think it’s from the 1960s . . . when moms stayed home and made their children’s birthday cakes.” She continued to reminisce: “I grew up in the 1960s, when mom stayed home. My mom didn’t go to work until I was 13.” Cupcakes also inspire nostalgia of a happy childhood, then. They remind us of caring relationships, special occasions or treasured memories of a childhood home, which were all marked by cupcakes – or, more precisely, which could have been marked by cupcakes.

For some, cupcakes call to mind specific childhood memories. Cupcakepreneurs often declare that their idea of making a business of cupcakes is rooted in their own childhood memories. Both Holbrook and McGuinness fondly remember baking cupcakes with their mothers. “I think it just brings back – anything that’s baked right brings back – what your mom used to do,” Holbrook says.

But for most people, this cupcake nostalgia is premised on an ideal, if not always a lived reality, of stay-at-home moms indulging their children in home-baked goods. Whether or not the average cupcake consumer has such memories, there seems to be a sort of collective memory or wish attached to cupcakes, revolving around effortless fun and celebration, being cared for, comforted, and indulged: the perfect childhood that could have been.

”For my princess”

Perhaps cupcakes are a reminder of being a kid, or an excuse to be childlike, but in their contemporary guise as a pop culture phenomenon, cupcakes predominantly seem to be made to elicit a very particular kind of childhood nostalgia, namely a yearning for an indulged, pampered girlhood spent baking small things in light-bulb ovens, presiding over tea parties and lemonade stands, and playing dress-up. And this nostalgia is targeted at women.

Though cupcakepreneurs will point out that men make up a significant part of their clientele, cupcakes are girly. High-end girly, gourmet girly, whichever way you bite into it, they are girly: sweet swirls of pink on pink in a pleated, wax-paper apron.

When we asked Elizabeth Routly, co-owner (with Julie Thompson) of the Ottawa Cupcakery, which cupcake she would describe as the most masculine, she suggested, “the Rock my Road – it’s our variation on the Rocky Road. It’s a chocolate cupcake filled with caramel and toasted pecans and topped with a marshmallow buttercream.” Nuts, the intense flavour of caramel, and a smoky whiff of marshmallow makes for a manly cake.

Meanwhile, the most popular cupcake the Cupcakery sells is the “Fairy Princess Pink cupcake,” which is described as “perfect for your little fairy princess.” But it’s not just for little girls. Routly says she receives many orders for this cupcake from men buying them for their wives or girlfriends, accompanied by gift tags declaring “for my princess.”

In contemporary urban cupcakeries, cupcakes are caught in the in-between world of girls dreaming about future womanhood and women playing the fantasy in reverse, revelling in nostalgic girlhood as an escape from their everyday lives. While men, to a limited extent, also indulge in the delicious trend, it is primarily women who make a business of cupcakes and other women and children who consume the cupcakes they sell.

Your mama’s cupcakes

As the tag line for the Ottawa Cupcakery suggests, the new wave of cupcakes are “not your mama’s cupcakes.” They may hearken back to your mama’s (or someone’s mama’s) cupcakes. This is largely their appeal: they’re kitschy, nostalgic, sweet and carefree, like childhood birthday parties. However, these cupcakes weren’t squeezed through the strictures of 1960s gender norms – they are the fruits of third-wave, do-it-yourself feminist practice.

Contemporary cupcake bakers see their enterprise as participating in a feminist appropriation of traditionally feminine (domestic) skills and crafts in order to honour and respect women’s heritage while simultaneously carving out new modes of self-expression and self-sufficiency for women. Auntie Loo’s Treats, a vegan bakery in Ottawa, epitomizes a feminist spirit of DIY production. For Amanda Lunan (aka Auntie Loo), owning and operating a bakery is a perfect moment of feminist reclamation:

I think [it’s] almost empowering to be taking ‘women’s work’ and turning it into a business. For me it’s one of the ultimate feminist things you can do. Baking’s something special that my mom showed me how to do; and I’m proud, and she’s proud. She was running the register on the opening day; everyone was asking, ‘Where’d she learn how to cook?’ And my mom was saying, ‘that was us! We were at home in the kitchen.’

Auntie Loo’s cupcakes reflect feminist politics both in the woman-owned-and-operated grassroots model of the business and in her choice to use high-quality, vegan ingredients – practices shared by many other cupcakepreneurs with whom we spoke.

In spite of the patriarchal femininity, frothy girliness and fantasy play inherent in much of the imagery that surrounds the contemporary cupcake phenomenon, many cupcakepreneurs take very seriously the politics of cupcakes. Cupcakes are made of food staples that are among the least equitably traded commodities in the world (sugar, milk, flour, chocolate, spices). As such, they participate in a global system of trade that makes many people’s everyday world much less joyful and beautiful. The cupcakepreneurs we spoke with insist upon fairly traded products for their ingredients.

The wrapper

At Fuss, where we initially pondered the relationship between cupcakes and gender, we wondered whether cupcakes were just the latest consumer trend fuelled by nostalgia for a kitschy, idealized mid-century past – a past that was quite stifling for women in North America – and whether the trend might draw a little too heavily on an ideal of infantilized femininity. Maybe cupcakes are to baked goods what Everybody Loves Raymond was to sitcoms: familiar and briefly satisfying, but leaving a bitter aftertaste.

What we found in talking with impassioned and politically aware cupcakepreneurs, however, is a more nuanced picture. McGuinness tells of a time when she made a dozen dark chocolate cupcakes for the 50th birthday of a client’s husband. Each cupcake was topped with a fondant-sculpted Guinness can of beer the size of a child’s thumb: little tiny fondant beers, diminutive and sweet, yet dark, frothy and suggestive of that most masculine of ales. In the great, endless menu of cupcake flavours and combinations being developed by cupcakepreneurs, it seems that while some sell cupcakes like so many other commodities of prepackaged nostalgia, new room is also being created for umpteen new relationships between our gendered selves and the food we eat.

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Over 2,000 statues fill the walls of Vientiane’s Wat Si Saket, the Laos capital’s oldest temple (built in 1818). (Photo: Nikko Snyder)

By Gita Tewari
Briarpatch Magazine
March/April 2010

It’s the last day of the week-long Living Buddhism class I’ve been attending at Wat Songdhamma Kalayani, an all-female temple in Nakhon Pathom, Thailand. After our morning chants and prayers, we have set off on an alms round with nuns and novitiates from the temple. We make our way from the temple grounds into the surrounding community, where groups of people are waiting along the street and in front of their homes to donate food and other supplies to the nuns.

We walk quietly, in single file. It is still early in the morning and the air doesn’t have the oppressive humidity to which I have grown accustomed. We see male monks in their saffron robes down the street from us, also making their daily alms rounds.

When a man kneels reverentially in front of the young female nun leading the prayers, I finally understand the religious clergy’s resistance to ordination of Bhikkhunis (the highest order of Buddhist nuns) in Thailand. In a country where even the King defers to monks, the implications of allowing women to inhabit the same spiritual plane as men would have a profound effect on a country that is still bound by ancient traditions.

There is a glass ceiling for women seeking spiritual advancement in the Buddhist temples, or “wats” that dot the Thai landscape. Women who seek to be ordained as Bhikkhunis, the highest order of Buddhist nuns, possessing equal status to monks, continue to experience significant resistance from the religious clergy and more conservative elements of Thai society.

In this country of over 300,000 monastics, Dr. Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, whose ordained name is Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, is a trailblazer in the movement to create a Bhikkhuni order in Thailand. She is the Abbess of Wat Songdhamma Kalayani, about a half-hour’s drive from the outskirts of Bangkok, in the ancient city of Nakhon Pathom.

Woman seeking sangha

I became familiar with Dhammananda and the barriers facing female monastics in Thailand in an accidental, tourist kind of way. In the midst of what might be termed an existential crisis, triggered by the worst economic crisis in decades, a year-long dry spell in freelance work and some personal setbacks, I found myself increasingly drawn to learn more about Buddhism, with its focus on the self as a starting point for all change – not unlike the famous quote by Mahatma Gandhi, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

I had read a few books on Buddhism, but found myself wanting to find a sangha, or spiritual community, where I could deepen my understanding of the theory and practice of Buddhism through formal practice. I had naively assumed that finding a Buddhist monastery to stay at for a few weeks or a month would be a somewhat simple proposition – according to the articles and online posts I had read, western men who sought to learn more about Buddhism seemed to have no trouble finding a monastery where they could receive daily teachings from monks or lamas. But to my dismay, I discovered that temples with female abbesses and novitiates (nuns in training) are practically non-existent in Southeast Asia.

After some searching, I learned of Wat Songdhamma Kalayani. They were holding a “living Buddhism” class starting in a few weeks that was described on their website as a “program designed for non-Buddhist, English-speaking international visitors who would like to learn about the basic concept of Buddhism, living in a monastic setting at the only Thai female monastery.” Participants were asked to wear white and observe the eight precepts: no killing, stealing, sex, lying, intoxicants, eating after noon (they relaxed this for westerners), entertainment or high beds.

Our daily schedule included an hour and a half of chanting and meditation each morning and evening, four hours of lectures, handicrafts hour (in which we learned origami, the ancient Japanese art of paper folding and other crafts to promote mindfulness), and “community time” in the evening, which often involved weeding in the garden.

I arrived at the monastery during Sunday prayers. The temple is located off a busy, six-lane highway. Visitors are greeted by a large, gold, laughing Buddha statue that is visible from the highway. I was taken up to the second floor of the temple to meet the Venerable Dhammananda, a tall woman in her early 60s with a shaved head, wearing orange robes. Novitiates and locals (men and women) were sitting on the floor while Dhammananda led the prayers and chanting in Thai. The other three individuals who had registered for the Living Buddhism class – a woman from New Zealand who lives in Bangkok with her husband, a Belgian woman who had been attending the monastery for a few years now and a Thai doctor from Chiang Mai who led our nightly meditation sessions, wouldn’t arrive until the following day.

Culture clash

Most Buddhists in Thailand practice Theravada Buddhism. This is the most conservative form of Buddhism, dedicated to preserving the teachings and practice of the Buddha in their original form. Thais believe they are accumulating merit – which will allow them to be reborn in better circumstances – by giving donations to support the monasteries and build new temples. Nearly all Thai men spend a few months in temporary ordination at a Thai temple at some point in their lives.

The social prestige of the monastic life has begun to fade, however. Many of the seminarians I met encountered the disapproval of their families when they expressed an interest in ordination. For instance, the mother of a nun I met who had recently graduated with a BA degree had not wanted her to become a nun; she wanted her to use her degree to get a well-paying job. Another nun I met had been married; both husband and wife decided to join a temple after they retired and their children were grown. Some seminarians are trying to escape abusive situations. Many of the younger seminarians will return to lay life after a few months. One said she had a life-threatening medical condition that the doctors were unable to treat. She said it was only after meditating for hours every day that she started to recover. This led to her desire to join the monastery.

Living Buddhism

While Thai attitudes toward sexuality and female autonomy are quite relaxed compared to many places, cultural attitudes towards women among the country’s Buddhist clergy remain quite rigid. The traditional stance against the ordination of women has been described by one writer as an example of how “the egalitarian ideals of Buddhism appear to have been impotent in the universal ideology of masculine superiority.”

As Rochelle Jones wrote in a 2005 report for AWID, the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, “Women in Thailand are supportive of Dhammananda’s quest [for female ordination], asserting that monks do not know how to listen to women’s needs and problems in the community and are educated to avoid women. The temple of women in Nakhon Pathom gives them confidence and support from the Buddhist community they have never had before. In Thai culture, monks are not allowed to touch women, and Buddhist nuns in Thailand are given a lower rank than even the youngest monk, and are relegated to the more menial tasks in the temple, such as cleaning and cooking.”

In Thai culture, it is believed that, if you were born a man, it means you accumulated more merit in a past life than if you were born a woman. One of my classmates, who is the president and a long-time member of the Soroptimist International Club in Thailand, an international humanitarian organization that works to advance the status of women worldwide, explained to me that this is why poverty-stricken families will allow their daughters to become sex workers if it means that the sons can continue on with their education.

Dhammananda is concerned about the disparity between the core teachings of Buddhism and how it is practiced by the lay population. There is more public emphasis on the rituals of Buddhism, such as accumulating merit by giving money and alms to the temples, and less on understanding the more complicated notion of dukkha (suffering) and how to achieve Nibbana or Nirvana (enlightenment).

She took us to another temple in Nakhon Pathom to see for ourselves. The scene was a buzz of activity with families milling around. There were many opportunities to give offerings with incense and perform other merit-bearing activities, but it didn’t feel particularly spiritual to me. This was a real-life example of the intersection of Buddhism as a spiritual ideal and Buddhism as practiced in a living, breathing society.

My Belgian classmate has been going to the monastery for a number of years now. She is a physical therapist who, in her spare time, is researching the role of women in Buddhism. She first met Dhammananda in 2003 after the Abbess was fully ordained in Sri Lanka, and travelled with her throughout Thailand. During that time the Abbess encountered much hostility and received death threats. Dhammananda was the first Thai woman to be ordained in the Theravada monastic lineage, but her title is not recognized by Thailand’s religious authorities. She continues to experience open hostility from lay men and monks who believe that female monastics are illegal and corrupt.

Dhammananda’s mother and grandmother were both strong advocates for female ordination. Her grandmother was instrumental in the creation of a female order of monks in the 1920s, though King Rama V banned the practice in 1928, and her mother became the first Thai Bhikkhuni since ancient times when she was ordained in Taiwan in 1974 in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, an ordination that was not recognized by the Thai religious establishment.

In 2005, the initiative 1,000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005 included Dhammananda among their list of nominees for the prestigious prize. She has two grown sons and is also a grandmother. She received her PhD in Buddhist studies from Maghda University in India and taught Buddhist philosophy at Maha Chula Sangha University and Thammasat University in Bangkok for many years prior to becoming the Abbess of the temple that her mother founded. She has also authored a number of books on Buddhism. In Dhammananda’s past life, she hosted a popular television talk show for many years called Life is Not Without Hope. After she decided to ordain, she filed for divorce from her husband. In a 2003 interview with Buddhadharma magazine she recalled, “I told my husband that I wanted to follow my path, that I wanted to do something much more meaningful than sit at home being an old lady.”

Reality check

Sri Lanka is the only Theravada Buddhist country with a history of female ordination. The country re-established a Bhikkhuni Sangha in 1996 with assistance from Korean and Taiwanese Bhikkhunis from the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. Meanwhile, the male Supreme Sangha in Thailand continues to resist the ordination of Bhikkhunis. In 2002, a Senate Subcommittee submitted to the Supreme Sangha Council that women should be given permission to be ordained, but thus far, the appeal has been denied. In November of 2009, the Wat Nong Pah Pong monastery in Thailand expelled an Australian abbot for ordaining Bhikkhunis in Australia, and issued a statement to its affiliated monasteries throughout the world affirming, “the Sangha does not accept the act of ordaining Bhikkhunis on this occasion and holds it as void.”

Dhammananda continues to write and speak about issues that centre around “socially engaged” Buddhism, including Buddhism and ecology, Buddhism and poverty, feminism and Buddhism, Buddhism and prostitution and Buddhism and education. As she told the Bangkok Post in a 2001 interview, “I know there is some resistance out there. It is not my intention to stick out and provoke anybody. I will try to honour everyone. I will try to be a supatipanno, to be a female monk with good conduct. Time will tell. If society believes this is a worthy role, then people will support it and consider it another alternative for women.”

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