Alternative Imaginaries: Feminist Politics in the Global South

This conference is organised to trace and manifest the feminist political imagination and the complex tension among gender norms, legal systems, political movements, and development trajectories in the Global South. On the one hand, the existing normative attitudes around gender are protected by advocating misogynist tradition and law, thus leading to feminist critique of constitutionalism, especially in Malaysia, India, Iran, and Afghanistan. On the other hand, feminists in the Global South, including Africa, Asia, and South America, encounter the challenges of colonial feminism.

We are keen on understanding feminists’ response to this situation: What are the prospects that feminists in the Global South offer for addressing democratic, social, epistemological, cultural, and political relations? How do feminists in the Global South imagine a more egalitarian future for themselves and the younger generations, and how do they build solidarity networks and future collaboration? What are the backlashes and responses to gender equality demands? How do feminists deal with them?

The participants of this conference aim to understand these tensions: First, the existing norms being appropriated to the new politics and thus deepening normative attitudes, including gender inequality, misogyny, gender-based violence, and pro-natalist policies; second, the invisibility of feminists of the Global South and the forms of resistance towards changing their society and politics, and third, the masculinist backlash against them exemplified in right-wing populism, religious fundamentalism, and conservative politics.

Based on 1) several years of collaborative work with scholars across Balkan-to-Bengal-Complex working in TAKHAYYUL Project, norms and challenges to legislations in the Muslim contexts, and 2) a number of scholarly conversations drawing parallels across Islamic and non-Islamic contexts of the Global South, this conference is to understand the tensions between the gender norms and the new politics.

Location:

Lecture Theatre G22, North-West Wing Building, UCL

Host or Publisher UCL Institute for Global Prosperity