Strategies for women's advancement must be firmly grounded, firstly in the logic of effective intervention to address the underlying causes of gender issues, and secondly as a contribution to women's own process of taking collective action to recognize and address gender issues.
Such collective action needs leadership. Firstly, this needs leadership at the local level, for women to find the organizational space to meet, to find their collective dissatisfaction, and to take action against gender discrimination and oppression. Secondly, addressing gender issues needs leadership at the global level, where action at the local level can be supported by the larger sisterhood, especially for inter-related effort around gender issues of regional importance.
In both types of leadership, good information dissemination and communication can make the critical difference, if well designed and properly focused on mobilization for women's empowerment.
Such leadership depends crucially on adequate understanding and conceptualization of the problem area, as a means towards strategizing in an environment of patriarchal opposition. This paper has tried to contribute towards such improved conceptualization.
Sara Hlupekile Longwe
Gender Consultant and Feminist Activist.
29 September 2002
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