Janine Moolman
South Africa
I call myself a feminist because I see unequal power relations that are supported and reinforced
by the system of patriarchy as the root of women’s oppression.
I live in Johannesburg, South Africa, while I work internationally in Africa, Asia
and Latin America. I coordinate a global project on violence against women
and information and communications technologies. This involves managing
research, policy advocacy, training and capacity building and providing
guidance and supervision to country coordinators. I also train women and
communities in the strategic use of ICTs for social justice with a focus on
digital storytelling.
I call myself a feminist because I see unequal power relations that are supported
and reinforced by the system of patriarchy as the root of women’s oppression. I
believe that the struggle for the actualisation of women’s rights is personal and
political and that it must be fought in private and public spaces. My politics and
practice is built on the values of inclusion, participation, acknowledgement of
privilege and embracing and celebrating difference of age, location, sexual
orientation, class and ability.
Some of the greatest challenges faced by feminists in Africa today include the
collusion between religious fundamentalisms, states and patriarchy that has
caused a backlash against feminism and a steady rolling back of the gains
that have been achieved. We are also in a moment when the critical spaces
for feminist reflection, collaboration and action also seem to be diminishing.
Added to this is the fact that a donor development agenda that supports a
particular kind of ‘gender work’ means that much of the social justice work
does not fundamentally challenge gender hierarchies, and sometimes reinforces
them. To shift this, we need to get better at sharing and distributing the rich
body of scholarly work that is being produced by African feminists. We also
need to support and initiate inter-generational feminist processes and ensure
that the stories and experiences of African feminists and our struggles are told
unscripted, in many languages, by many diverse feminists and shared and
popularised throughout the continent – not only in print form, but capitalising
on huge potential that ICTs hold. I love the individual ethics section of the
Feminist Charter because it really resonates with my personal values and
articulates them so clearly and strongly. It would be great to see the Charter
come to ‘life’ so to speak by seein rv