FES helps building new alliances that can bring feminist visions into the mainstream.
“Feminist” is not a popular word in Asia, those trying to promote gender justice face nationalist and fundamentalist backlash. FES helps building new alliances that can bring feminist visions into the mainstream.
As part of the three-year project titled Political Feminism in Asia, 21 feminists from seven countries are participating at four events called Future Labs, forming a network of progressive male and female feminists with backgrounds as activists, scholars and economists.
The Future Lab events are a platform where participants split in four working groups are developing innovative projects that aim to introduce feminist perspectives and discourses into the mainstream, using tools such as animation videos, a mobile reporting documentary, a feminist curriculum for trade unionists and an app.
The groups have come a long way since their projects were developed using design thinking at the second event, Future Lab 2 in Nepal (link). In preparation for the upcoming third meeting at the Future Lab 3 (28- 30 September) the groups have met with graphic and animation designers, a film editor as well as app developers to make progress on their projects. All projects will be presented at the closing Future Lab in 2019.
With #HerStoryYourStory the first group is working on an animation film that brings feminist perspectives from Thailand, Philippines, India, Indonesia and Pakistan, dealing with reproductive rights, sex work and gender-based violence. At the meeting in Bangkok, the group finalized their storyboards and created drafts of characters, discussing details, considering culture, clothing and debating how to make women’s issues more accessible and relatable to a wider audience.
Only 28 per cent of employed women worldwide enjoy any paid maternity leave in practice. The second working group met in Kathmandu and explored maternity in patriarchy and how women’s lives are affected by neoliberal policies. The documentary is done by the group members themselves, using and experimenting with mobile reporting. They filmed women talking about the working conditions in factories or as health workers and how difficult it is to know about and to avail themselves of maternity rights. The group made progress with their documentary on maternity rights in Asia by discussing their material and learning how storytelling can connect different voices of working mothers.
How can the workers’ movement and feminists learn from each other and support each other in their struggles? This is the question dealt with by the group called Proletarization of Feminism is dealing with. The team is developing a feminist curriculum for the Global Labour University and the discussions at the meeting in Singapore led to a focus on care work and informal work. The curriculum aims to enable a feminist analysis of women’s work, which is often unpaid or underpaid.
The economy of care fits well into current debates on the future of work and is placed at the centre of feminist and workers’ movement's interests. Feminists have been demanding the recognition, redistribution and reduction of care work for decades. A recent study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) found that women do four times more unpaid care work than men in Asia. The group hopes to be able to contribute to the debate, bringing care work to the top of the workers and feminists agendas.
The fourth group in the Political Feminism Network met in Jakarta, to work on their app for intersectional feminist ratings of movies.By rating how sexist, racist, misogynist and classist the portrayals of women in popular culture are, they aim to raise awareness and gender sensitivity about the stereotyping and discriminatory content of cultural products.
The app is called Mango Meter – Feminist Film Reviews and intends to show how engrained the negative and traditional images of women are and how, in the absence of highlighting and criticism, they will be continued to be reinforced and reproduced. Inspired by the movie rating site Rotten Tomatoes, the app’s name of Mango Meter reflects its Asian origin. A rating of one mango means a movie is on the sexist end of the spectrum, while five mangoes attest to a movie being fully feminist. For the team behind the app, a feminist movie includes representation of marginalized and diverse voices, female lead characters who aim for more than marriage and motherhood, and a positive portrayal of female relationships.
The short animation film #HerStoryYourStory, the documentary about maternity rights, the feminist curriculum for trade unionists, and the movie rating app Mango Meter are to be launched at the fourth Future Lab, which concludes the three-year project Political Feminism in Asia in the beginning of 2019.
###
For more information on the regional project Feminism in Asia contact Lea Goelnitz, Programme Manager at the FES Office for Regional Cooperation in Asia.
Bringing the women’s and workers’ movements together is a challenging task that one of the working groups as part of a regional project on feminism in…
A movie-rating app developed by a group of feminists from across Asia aims to give space for feminist critique of the mainstream movie industry in the…
The feminist network Political Feminism in Asia, a regional project by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, met in Penang to deliberate direction for joint…
The FES office in Singapore is the hub for the organization’s operations across Asia, which cover 14 country offices and 15 programmes as of June…
Political Feminism in Asia, a regional project by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung brings together feminist groups for joint action across the region.
Bringing together the work of our offices in the region, we provide you with the latest news on current debates, insightful research and innovative visual outputs on geopolitics, climate and energy, gender justice, trade unions and social-ecological transformation.
Thought leaders from 20 countries explored how both larger and smaller powers navigate geopolitical contestations in three theatres: East Asia,... More
Who cleans our city? Do you spot them among the beautiful city landscape and lush green scenery? Do you know that the cleanliness of the city is their... More
Since reports emerged that South Korean troops massacred civilians during the Vietnam War, there has been a fitful but determined effort by Vietnamese... More
This site uses third-party website tracking technologies to provide and continually improve our services, and to display advertisements according to users' interests. I agree and may revoke or change my consent at any time with effect for the future.
These technologies are required to activate the core functionality of the website.
This is an self hosted web analytics platform.
Data Purposes
This list represents the purposes of the data collection and processing.
Technologies Used
Data Collected
This list represents all (personal) data that is collected by or through the use of this service.
Legal Basis
In the following the required legal basis for the processing of data is listed.
Retention Period
The retention period is the time span the collected data is saved for the processing purposes. The data needs to be deleted as soon as it is no longer needed for the stated processing purposes.
The data will be deleted as soon as they are no longer needed for the processing purposes.
These technologies enable us to analyse the use of the website in order to measure and improve performance.
This is a video player service.
Processing Company
Google Ireland Limited
Google Building Gordon House, 4 Barrow St, Dublin, D04 E5W5, Ireland
Location of Processing
European Union
Data Recipients
Data Protection Officer of Processing Company
Below you can find the email address of the data protection officer of the processing company.
https://support.google.com/policies/contact/general_privacy_form
Transfer to Third Countries
This service may forward the collected data to a different country. Please note that this service might transfer the data to a country without the required data protection standards. If the data is transferred to the USA, there is a risk that your data can be processed by US authorities, for control and surveillance measures, possibly without legal remedies. Below you can find a list of countries to which the data is being transferred. For more information regarding safeguards please refer to the website provider’s privacy policy or contact the website provider directly.
Worldwide
Click here to read the privacy policy of the data processor
https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en
Click here to opt out from this processor across all domains
https://safety.google/privacy/privacy-controls/
Click here to read the cookie policy of the data processor
https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies?hl=en
Storage Information
Below you can see the longest potential duration for storage on a device, as set when using the cookie method of storage and if there are any other methods used.
This service uses different means of storing information on a user’s device as listed below.
This cookie stores your preferences and other information, in particular preferred language, how many search results you wish to be shown on your page, and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on.
This cookie measures your bandwidth to determine whether you get the new player interface or the old.
This cookie increments the views counter on the YouTube video.
This is set on pages with embedded YouTube video.
This is a service for displaying video content.
Vimeo LLC
555 West 18th Street, New York, New York 10011, United States of America
United States of America
Privacy(at)vimeo.com
https://vimeo.com/privacy
https://vimeo.com/cookie_policy
This cookie is used in conjunction with a video player. If the visitor is interrupted while viewing video content, the cookie remembers where to start the video when the visitor reloads the video.
An indicator of if the visitor has ever logged in.
Registers a unique ID that is used by Vimeo.
Saves the user's preferences when playing embedded videos from Vimeo.
Set after a user's first upload.
This is an integrated map service.
Gordon House, 4 Barrow St, Dublin 4, Ireland
https://support.google.com/policies/troubleshooter/7575787?hl=en
United States of America,Singapore,Taiwan,Chile
http://www.google.com/intl/de/policies/privacy/
