International women’s networks

The earlier section demonstrated how women’s movements and women activists in Muslim societies form their struggles to promote the status of women. Although women activists indicate that their struggles are based on Islam, women’s movements in the Muslim societies cannot be separated from global feminist movements.

Women’s rights issues have become part of the agenda of the international community, signified by the emergence of transnational movements for women’s human rights during the 1980s and 1990s (Hesford and Kozol 2005). Women from different regions in the world gathered at the International Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria, in 1993. There, they agreed that the human rights of women and girls are an absolute, essential and inseparable part of universal human rights. Following this, several international declarations have been issued in which women from different parts of the world have condemned human rights violations, including ethnic cleansing, forced pregnancies, systematic sexual violation of women in armed conflict and domestic violence. This statement was strengthened during the Fourth International Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995, which, again, emphasized that women’s rights are human rights. International lobbying on ‘women in development’ has put pressure on governments to recognize the role of women in combating literacy, poverty and high birth rates.

Global feminist movements have not been without obstacles. Debate has already appeared, for example, over the idea of ‘liberating’ other women based on international standards, as if all women are perceived to have similar experiences and hence need only one uniform solution to inequalities and justice. This debate found resonance for example in 2003, when Barbara Bush, former First Lady of the United States, declared that US military intervention in Afghanistan was an attempt to ‘liberate’ Afghan women.

Debate over women’s human rights has led to the debate regarding the universality of women’s rights. Mayer (1995, 176) discussed two positions on women’s human rights, the universalists and the cultural relativists.³⁵ The universalist believes that human rights is universal, so that all humans share the same rights. On this view, the universality of women’s human rights means that the international community has the right to judge by reference to international standards such as CEDAW. On the other hand, the cultural revivalists argue that there are no legitimate cross-cultural standards for evaluating the treatment of rights issues. The proponents of cultural revivalism argue that ‘Western condemnation of discrimination against women in particular regions reflects insensitivity, ethnocentricity and that it is produced by cultural imperialism’ (Mayer 1995, 176).

With this in mind, women’s human rights discourse within a transnational feminist framework has paid attention to the need to acknowledge the power differentials and inequalities that shape geopolitical alignments and the global movement of goods, people and capital (Hesford and Kozol 2005, 7). Ong and Peletz (1995, 1–2) also assert that attention needs to be given to the fact that women’s issues cannot be separated from ideologies of religion, ethnicity, nationhood and the process of development, which all shape women’s experience and identity.

Despite these debates within the global women’s movement, Basu (1995) demonstrates that women’s movements at the global level have affected the way local women activists formulate their political struggles. Kandiyoti (1995, 24) mentions that ‘the framework for policy interventions affecting women and local women’s movements has been set by both local measures and complex set of international influences’. Official feminist rhetoric has been dispensed to local movements through international bodies such as donors and international government agencies (Kandiyoti 1995, 25).

Women living under Islamic law created a transnational organization called Women Living under Muslim Laws (WLUML) in 1984. The creation of WLUML is a move to respond to events in which women, Islam and laws are involved. There are three basic understandings that underline the creation of WLUML (Shaheed 1994, 1995). First, Muslim women have similar experiences to women who live in non-Muslim societies, as both live in societies that have essentially patriarchal structures. Thus, Muslim women should not be seen as the only victims. Like non-Muslim women, Muslim women are also active social agents who are able to deal with both state and religion. Second, Muslim women are not homogeneous since women undergo different lived experiences. Third, the diversity of Muslim societies has created diverse feminist responses, ranging from the secular to the theological, to approaches that try to mix both. The creation and existence of WLUML is evidence of a serious attempt to form linkages which cut across diverse contexts, and that the alliance among Muslim women is not a singular path but ranges from secular feminism to Islamic feminism (Kandiyoti 1995, 26). WLUML has engaged in advocacy and lobbying work around questions of laws and their implementation, issuing alerts and circulating petitions on behalf of women suffering (Badran 2008).

Studies of transnational women’s movements reveal that the intersection of local and transnational movements has allowed the transmission of knowledge and awareness of women’s rights (Ferree 2006; Afkhami 1995). This has been facilitated by networks of various international institutions with local women’s organizations and women’s NGOs. Hopkins and Patel (2006, 426) analyse the challenges faced by international NGOs working on gender equality issues in Muslim contexts. These challenges include the need for international organizations to acknowledge that individuals in the Muslim communities have multiple, intersecting identities, some of which are owned and others which are perceived. Second, international institutions need to carefully understand aspects of religious fundamentalism, discrimination and stereotyping. This demonstrates that the struggle of local women’s NGOs in Muslim societies is also related to international movements seeking to advance women’s rights.