Women of the world 2017

Nu på väg hem efter en fantastiskt WOWfestival med kvinnor och intersektionalitet i fokus.

Här är mitt tal jag höll på WOW Bites go Nordic.

Rubriken var: 

Today we have three women from the academy sitting in our government, and the last two periods two of them have been our government chief. 
I must say that our strategy to network, strengthen each other and taking back the word feminist has been rather successful.

My special field is youth work and during this period I have worked with developing and marketing a method called girlgroups, today we use the same method for boygroups, mixed groups and rainbow groups. I will tell you shortly about the girlgroups because it has proved to be such a fantastic method. The Girlgroup method enforces each girl’s strength. It empowers girls to have a more positive outlook on life and think as creative people, not victims. The network built up by the Girlgroups can also function as safety nets and be a support base when hardships might arise later in life. 

It has gender inequality as a base for the understanding of problems in people’s life. It is a small group, 6-8 participants, who meets regularly with their leaders. Within the group the participants are given the possibility to talk about things that interest them, what they find important and things they wonder about. The main activity is discussions, and the base is to “value clarification”. It means providing young with skills necessary to analyze their own attitudes and actions. All opportunities are allowed and the leaders are not there to moralize or point the participants in “the right direction”. But the leader’s have to be gender conscious main duty is to support the participants in their discussions and analysis of topics, to handle conflicts and listen to the participants’ ideas and wishes.
This has been a big activity on Åland for around 20 years and we have exported the activity to different countries and we also got it as a ”Best practice" 2004 at United Nation’s 49 session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York. And around 100 Ålandic women has been educated in the method and in gender equality. It has for rather many of them been a way to understand themselves and the unequal structure in society and has shown them not to blame themselves for shortcomings, and at the same time support many hundreds of young girls.

Democracy needs commitment from the third sector, it requires that people organize themselves not only free in network but also in organizations. September 2014 we were a group that decided that we need a structured organization for action. We decided to start Åland’s feminist umbrella. It is a politically independent umbrella organization made for the Åland gender equality movement. I was elected to be the chairperson. We arrange a lot of activities through cooperation and commitment
It is a challenge to work including, both being including according to different discrimination grounds and to be open for people who are angry, well-educated feminists and those who just have woken up and only want to do something good.
But we must be including, loving, forgiving and wide thinking, and even if it sometimes can be hard.
We now work with and start different groups for different subjects and ways to be active.

Conclusions:

• Don't sit and wait for being invited, act.
• Built network for exchange of experiences and discussions.
• Educate and support young people in gender questions, and create places for diskussions about life.
• Organize yourselves, and don’t put energy to exclude because of knowledge or anything else, be including and accept different opinions if you have the same goal.

Thanks very much for listening.