Africa: CODESRIA 2008 Gender Symposium

CODESRIA Programme Announcement: 2008 Gender Symposium Theme: Gender and Citizenship in the Age of Globalisation Date: 08 - 10 October, 2008 Venue: Cairo, Egypt.

In the period since the beginning of the 1990s, CODESRIA has been at the forefront of the quest to harness the efforts of African scholars in both extending the frontiers of knowledge production around issues of gender, and doing so in a manner that ensures that for as many scholars as are active in its networks and at other African sites of scholarly work, gender is integrated into their frames of analyses and modes of intervention. This has been done in line with the Council’s institutional commitment, integral to its Charter mandate, to produce knowledge that is not only anchored in the realities of the African continent, but which also contributes to the progressive transformation of livelihoods; the conscious pursuit of gender equality and inter-generational dialogues; and the harnessing of multidisciplinary perspectives. The results which have been accumulated from the experience of the Council and other like-minded institutions have, at one level, culminated in an efflorescence of studies on various aspects of the gender dynamics of development, an expansion in the community of African scholars with an active interest in gender research, the networking of that community on a sub-regional and pan-African scale, and the projection of the voices of its members on a global scale. At another level, however, few will doubt that for all the progress which has been made in promoting the idea of the centrality of gender to the robustness of any social research and the completeness of any project of social transformation, a considerable amount of work still remains to be done. The challenges that are posed are many but, in summary, could be said to centre around the need to consolidate the many critiques of development that have been made from various gender - and feminist - perspectives into a comprehensive, internally coherent and consistent set of alternatives on the basis of which further advances in theory, method and praxis could be achieved. Engendering African development requires close attention not only to the analytical tools of the researcher but also to the production of a gendered critique of development that questions the very foundations on which socio-economic and political processes in Africa rest. Such a critique is a pre-requisite for the advancement of new theoretical approaches and policy instruments. In sum, what is called for today is a complete paradigm shift for which new scholarship will be necessary.

Different authors have identified different entry points for the developmental project they have in mind for Africa but these differences need not detain us here for now. What is really important to note is that it is inconceivable that the project of democratic development, however defined, can ever be successfully built without a full integration of gender into the equation. And it is precisely here that the deficits have been most in evidence in spite of all official declarations committing governments to the promotion of the rights of women and the equality of men and women. The dawn of the contemporary processes of globalisation initially fuelled widespread optimism that promised new opportunities for the expansion of the frontiers of women’s rights; several years after, this optimism has been tempered and mitigated as much by the disempowering elements thrown up by the global age as by the uneven distribution of the opportunities that have been associated with it. Particularly worthy of note in this regard are the severe limits imposed on the expansion of social citizenship by the neo-liberal ideological and policy moorings of contemporary globalisation. Concerns with issues of citizenship are as old as the history of political formations. As a research theme, citizenship has engaged the attention of scholars from the earliest beginnings of political community; as a subject for political and policy concerns, it has involved a constant preoccupation with definitions of who a citizen is, what the rights and responsibilities of citizens are, and the nature of the prevailing social contract. Theories of citizenship have proliferated over the years and are as numerous in their particular preoccupations as are the various practices of citizenship that have been developed. But for all the long and rich history behind the concept and practice of citizenship, the task of engendering it has remained both an arduous and unfinished business, characterised by unceasing struggles to lift restrictions against women - and men - that range from the patently patriarchal to the outrightly discriminatory. Thus, while it is true that humanity has come a long way from the time when the idea of the citizen was conceived and operationalised only in exclusive male/masculine terms, progress such as it has occurred has been generally slow, fragmented and uneven as to make the task of engendering citizenship a live one with relevance that is as historical as it is contemporary. Both yesterday and today, therefore, from a gender perspective, the central issues in the engendering of citizenship have included struggles for the expansion of the rights of women; the promotion of male-female equality; the reconfiguration of femininities and masculinities; the reconstitution of the public sphere to enhance the presence and participation of women; the politicisation of the personal; the reform of family law; and the redefinition of the legal requirements for citizenship.

In its historical usages, the theory of citizenship and the practices that developed around it have been predominantly confined to the rights, entitlements, duties and responsibilities of individual members of a given political community. The attributes of citizenship have, however, neither been static nor uniform, or even limited in application exclusively to individuals as opposed to communities; rather, their content and contours have shifted over time in tandem with broad changes occurring in society. As they have developed, global influences have also always been refracted into national-territorial spaces to feed into local struggles over citizenship, propelling its negotiation and renegotiation as part of on-going quests for a redefinition of state-society relations. Similarly, local struggles have resonated in the global arena as to stimulate world-wide movements for the engendering of citizenship. But of all the phases of globalisation which humanity has experienced, perhaps none has excited as much interest in the possibilities it seems to offer for the simultaneous deepening and expansion of the spaces for the exercise of citizenship in general and genderised citizenship in particular than the contemporary one. Underpinned by an information and communications revolution, it appears to promise a more mobile, integrated, and cosmopolitan world with the distinct prospects for the emergence of global citizenship.

Within the context of the opportunities offered by the structures and processes of contemporary globalisation through the creation of borderless spaces that transcend existing national-territorial boundaries, new windows for the exercise of voice, the negotiation of belonging and the expansion of recognition have been opened which have carried direct and beneficial consequences for efforts at redefining citizenship from a gender perspective. In offering new openings for both a redefinition of citizenship and a simultaneous infusion of new gendered contents into it, globalisation has had important empowering benefits both locally and internationally that deserve to be explored further. But contemporary globalisation has also had adverse consequences for struggles at engendering globalisation, these adverse consequences also manifesting themselves as much in local as in global arenas in a variety of forms. Attention has been drawn, for example, to the world-wide deficits in social citizenship that have been in evidence over the last two decades and their manifestation in increasingly feminised forms of poverty. Participants in the 2008 CODESRIA Gender symposium would be invited to consider the mixed landscape of gender and citizenship that has been forged out of contemporary globalisation with a view to reflecting on ways of overcoming the new barriers that have emerged alongside the old obstacles that have persisted in the search for a better engendered citizenship.

The symposium will, among other things, assess the:
i) Theories of local and global citizenships – and the interfaces between them - as viewed from a gendered perspective;
ii) Practices of local and global citizenship – and the interfaces between them – as viewed from a gendered perspective;
iii) Modes and patterns of the refraction of local-level concerns into global processes and struggles around gender and citizenship;
iv) Impact of global processes on local struggles for engendering citizenship;
v) Roles of local and/or global civil society in the mobilisation of gendered citizenship in the context of contemporary globalisation;
vi) Gender ramifications and consequences of the deficits in social citizenship associated with contemporary globalisation; vii) Dialectics of multiple identities and citizenship in a global age;
viii) Tensions between national-territorial administration and multiple citizenships and their consequences for the quest for an engendered citizenship;
ix) Articulation of gender and citizenship in borderless spaces;
x) Masculinities, femininities, and citizen identities in a global era;
xi) New forms of international commodification of citizenship and their gender Implications;
xii) New forms of trans-national commerce in girl and women citizens;
xiii) Gendered patterns of citizen mobility in the era of globalisation;
xiv) Cultures of Globalisation and their implications for the citizenship of women;
xv) Re-thinking citizenship in a global age: Alternatives open to women and men in the quest for gender equality.

The Symposium will be held in Cairo, Egypt, from 08 – 10 October, 2008. Participation will be both by expression of interest by those interested in being considered for invitation and direct invitation to CODESRIA scholars working in the field. All those interested in proactively expressing their interest in the symposium are invited to send an abstract of the paper they intend to present not later than 30 May, 2008; if accepted, the full papers developed out of the abstracts must be received by 15 August, 2008 for further review prior to final confirmation of selection from CODESRIA.

More information on the 2008 CODESRIA Gender Symposium can be obtained from:
The 2008 CODESRIA Gender Symposium, CODESRIA, BP 3304, Dakar, Senegal.
Tel: +221 – 33 825 98.22/23 Fax:+221- 33 824 12.89 E-mail: [email][email protected] Web Site: http://www.codesria.org