Professionals discuss “gender peace-making”

Dimapur, May 4 (EMN): The North East Institute of Social Sciences and Research (NEISSR) and a local resource group, the Peace Channel, organised a workshop on what they called ‘gender peacemaking.’ The programme was conducted in collaboration with the OP Jindal Global University at Delhi, on May 4 at the institution. The institution issued a press release to the media informing about the programme. A group of men and women from various fields of work and professions participated in the “reflective learning processes” of the programme, the press release stated. According to the updates, the discussions encouraged the women in the group to share their perspectives and identify gaps in the “existing feminist history and historiography," and the need for “reimaging the notion of feminist resistance” through “everyday acts of survival” by “ordinary women.” The discussions “led to thinking in context specific ways about feminist struggles and histories” and exploring “possibilities of inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration towards mapping the genealogy of women’s resistance in the region and Naga society in particular.” The participants expressed their views based of traumatic experiences in their lives and how they were being victimized in their families, workplace, and communities being women, the press release stated. “As expressed by the participants, women should be self-empowered rather than living lives as victims. Participants, both women and men, alike came to the understanding it was time that women started supporting one another in the families, within and across communities in solidarity,” the updates stated. According to the press release, the portent of the discussions was that it was time for women to “unite and face the challenges together as one with men.” Women should be independent and know their rights so as to empower one-self and others, the updates stated. “Gender issue is not a women issue rather it is equally of the men in society who are aware of the underlying structural and cultural violence that continue to justify violence targeted against the weaker sections of society including women and girls.” The discussions also related what it explained was recent experiences of women who fought in the urban local body elections. The participants highlighted how a section of women “resisted against women’s participation” in the democratic political process. On the other hand, the discussions noted how a “section of educated and aware citizenries of men actively supported women’s electioneering campaigns.”