Column: Concoction of ideas

By Karoline Kemp

Let me begin by introducing myself. I am a Canadian student who has been studying in The Hague for the past year. Having spent the majority of my undergraduate degree skipping classes in favour of volunteering with women’s collectives and other social justice groups, it has been an interesting experience to live in this city, where institutions, professional organisations and governments are ever present. To add to that, I chose a programme in Public Policy and Management for my MA degree at the Institute of Social Studies. So to be at this WIDE Annual Conference has been an interesting mix for me.
As we saw in the Opening Panel of day one, the people that we share this space with define themselves as activists and professionals alike. One of the things that struck me most about that activity was the interconnectedness and overlap in all of our beliefs and practices. Not once did any woman have to stand up alone, and many of us spent quite a bit of time standing up!

Attending this WIDE Conference has thus been interesting in many ways. To me it has raised questions about my own feminism – and even about whether or not I would even consider myself a feminist, given the interconnectedness I see between gender issues and other structural inequalities. In thinking about the kind of feminisms I have experienced in my previous studies and work in Canada, I’ve been struck with how little the word is used in talking about development – it seems to be a preference to refer to gender. In Canada, whenever talking with people outside of my community of friends or like-minded colleagues, the word 'feminist' was considered almost taboo. In Europe it seems to be slightly more accepted, perhaps owing to a longer and deeper history of feminist thinkers here.

Participants in this WIDE Conference have included Government officials, civil society members, activists and a myriad of other women. These experts bring together issues as diverse as trade, migration, religion, peace, and thinking about ways of not only strengthening the way they interact with their governments and the European Union and Commission but also their own, internal interactions. This bringing together of such diversity is a testament to the potential of WIDE and all of those who are here. So while this is in many ways sombre work, I have been struck by how celebratory it seems, and impressed with the strength that everyone here seems to gather from each other.


This article was publised in Daily Visions 11-10-2008