Advocacy on gender, race and ethnicity in
the management of public policies
Advocacy on gender, race and ethnicity in
the management of public policies
International seminars UK
Watch the recordings, read about our guests and find out about future seminars.
Wed 8th Feb:
Gender, Care and Livelihoods in Times of Crisis
Thur 23rd Mar:
Discussing Gender and Intersectional Approaches to Resilience
Tue 2nd May:
Gender, care and livelihoods in times of crisis
Guests from women-led unions, grassroots organisations and NGOs defending the rights of women informal workers, care givers, and Afro-descendant communities provided insights into how they resist against everyday risks and disasters, and the strategies they have implemented to produce social change.
How do crises and disasters disrupt reproductive work? And how do communities organise and resist in the face of those extreme events to sustain their livelihoods?
"Care is the first act of productivity in any society. We need to value this kind of work – not least because we will all be caregivers and we will all be looked after at some point in our lives."
This interactive panel brought together 6 of our GRRIPP commissioned projects from Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, India and Zimbabwe to discuss “Gender, care and livelihoods in times of crisis”, chaired by Dr Louisa Acciari.
The panellists:
(Pictured above, left to right)
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Gloria Sepúlveda from Ciudades y territorios que cuidan (Cities and territories that care), Chile
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Olga Segovia from Ciudades y territorios que cuidan (Cities and territories that care), Chile
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Maria Silvanete Benedito de Sousa Lermen from Cosmonucleação, Brazil
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Ruth Diaz from FENAMUTRA (National Federation of Working Women), Dominican Republic
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Charity Chenga from Echoes of Humanity, Zimbabwe
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Paromita Sen from Sewa Bharat (Bharat Self-Employed Women), India
Credit: GRRIPP UK
The panellists shared their perspectives on care and livelihoods, the work of their projects, and how their communities managed (or didn't) through Covid-19. Three key messages were shared collectively:
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Care is the first act of productivity in any society. We need to value this kind of work – not least because we will all be caregivers and we will all be looked after at some point in our lives.
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We must start from the principle that it is necessary to value indigenous knowledge and territorial practices around care.
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The ultimate challenge is in visibilising care work and understanding that it’s integral to how we as a society interact with each other.
"it is necessary to value indigenous knowledge and territorial practices around care"
Credit: GRRIPP UK
"The ultimate challenge is in visibilising care work and understanding that it is integral to how we as a society interact with each other."
Watch the seminar
The event was livestreamed, recorded and had simultaneous live translation in English, Portuguese and Spanish. Below you can watch the recording in English.
(From left to right):
GRRIPP global co-ordinator Dr Louisa Acciari, Gloria Sepúlveda of GRRIPP Project Ciudadanas Cuidando, Susana Herrera Quezada, Chilean Ambassador to the UK, Verónica Contreras of GRRIPP Project Ciudadanas Cuidando, Olga Segovia from GRRIPP Project SUR
Credit: GRRIPP UK
Gender, care and livelihoods in times of crisis
Time stamps:
0:00 - Preliminary address by Dr Louisa Acciari
4:06 - Panellist introductions
10:30 - "How do you understand and define 'care' and what does it mean for you and the group you work with?'
27:46 - 'Explain the work your organisation has been doing during COVID-19 and your strategies of resisting and surviving'
1:12:06 - Questions
About our panellists:
Gloria Sepúlveda, Chile
A sociologist by trade and the project coordinator of the project "Plan to explore the infrastructure of neighbourhood care" in Chile. She is a caregiver, care activist of the Ciudadanas Cuidando Collective, and works for several urban and territorial development organisations.
Maria Silvanete Benedito de Sousa Lermen, Brazil
A popular educator, advisor in community health, healer, advisor of ancestral portals, agroforest-maker, practitioner, and researcher of the experiences of peoples. She works to foster the revaluation and exchange of local knowledge produced by traditional communities.
Charity Chenga, Zimbabwe
A founding member of Echoes of Humanity in the Machitenda village in Zimbabwe, she has worked to improve local transportation infrastructure to promote women's economic development without compromising their health. Her work focuses on establishing community engagement and trust, with a background as both a practitioner and researcher in community development.
Olga Segovia, Chile
An architect, coordinator of the Women and Habitat Network of Latin America and the Caribbean (2013-2019); she is the author of several research and consulting projects on urban and local development, public spaces, care from a gender perspective. She has worked for multiple national Chilean organisations, as well as the European Union, and several UN organisations.
Ruth Diaz, Dominican Republic
President of FENAMUTRA (the National Federation of Working Women), she also founded unions for women in the healthcare and domestic sectors. Her work focuses on targeting gendered inequality, violations of working rights and injustice. With FENAMUTRA she runs seminars and courses providing training for home workers and has campaigned widely for worker's rights.
Paromita Sen, India
Research manager at SEWA Bharat, she has spent the last decade conducting research on gender and marginalisation across the Global South, with the goal of enabling access to voice and power for marginalised communities. She is currently working with informal women workers, and supporting their empowerment through evidence generation, collectivisim and upskilling, and advocating with them.
Discussing Gender and Intersectional Approaches to Resilience
Coinciding with the occasion of the UCL Centre for Gender and Disaster's 5th anniversary, we brought to the spotlight international speakers from our GRRIPP commissioned projects in Latin America, Africa and South Asia.
Guests addressed the challenges of integrating gender, intersectional and decolonial approaches to multiple violences against women, disaster management and resilience. We engaged in particular with issues around curriculum design, intersectional policies for women, LGBTQI+ communities and people with disabilities, as well as multiple forms of violence in disaster contexts.
"Our differences are a resource, not a failure."
Credit: GRRIPP
Panel 1: focused on “resisting multiple forms of violence in times of crises”.
Speakers included: (pictured above, from right to left)
Lavanya Shanbhogue from Jamsetji Tata School of Disaster Studies (pictured at the podium), Lillian Adriko from FIDA Uganda, UCL's Dr Virginie Le Masson (chair), Graças Xavier from União de Moradia, Shamim Kabr from Integrated Environment Development Society with translation by Awfa Islam from the University of Dhaka.
"Crises are an opportunity to understand."
Credit: GRRIPP
This panel focussed on violence in heterogenous forms and situations, from worker exploitation to sexual violence, recognising that violence can be both overt and covert.
Panellists discussed carving the path to sustainable resilience through spreading and sharing knowledge, awareness, capacity-building, advocacy at all levels, and particularly through survivor-led advocacy. Since one form of covert violence can be epistemic violence, knowledge production must be in solidarity and collaboration with all parties involved. Women aren't homogenous and these differences are a resource to understand our plural and diverse realities.
"There is power in collaboration."
Credit: GRRIPP
Credit: GRRIPP
Panel 2: focused on “Intersecting disasters: inclusive approaches to resilience”.
Bringing 'gender' into 'resilience', panellists discussed the necessity of understanding the causes that make risks into disasters to promote intersectional resilience.
This included a focus on gender, disability and location as all impacting vulnerability. Panellists also discussed the power of connection, collaboration, networks and ancestral religious practice as integral to resilience.
Speakers included: (pictured above right, from left to right)
UCL's Olivia Walmsley (chair), Moabia Ferreira dos Anjos from Quilombo do Catucá, Muna Sharma from Tribhuvan University, Claudia Cardenas from Corporación Gestión de Riesgos y Desastres, Chile (speaking at podium), and Awfa Islam from the University of Dhaka.
Key takeaways from the panels:
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Violence is both overt and covert
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Our differences are a resource
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Women are not homogenous
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There is power in collaboration
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Crisis = an opportunity to understand
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Importance of survivor-led advocacy
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Inter-disciplinary approaches are essential
Gender, Climate Change and Sustainable Development
This third and final GRRIPP session brought together guests from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Tanzania, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, to discuss achievements and challenges around “Gender, Climate Change and Sustainable Development”.
Our guests came from a variety of working levels, from grassroots women’s empowerment to collaboration with municipalities and national level policy impact. These different organisations discussed the challenges of promoting gender and intersectional perspectives into climate adaptation plans and development programmes, and shared with us learnings from their indigenous and ancestral knowledge about nature, the environment and sustainability.
"We are the resistance."
- Jeannette Calvet
Credit: GRRIPP
"To defend in a sustainable way is a question of survival for the planet."
Left to right: Olivia Walmsley, Louisa Acciari, Concita Maia, Ramona Miranda, Rabiul Haque. Credit: GRRIPP
What are the challenges in promoting a gender and intersectional perspective into climate adaptation plans and development programmes?
Pictured above left to right:
Jeannette Calvet, Agape hidrícos (Chile)
Rabiul Haque, Dhaka University (Bangladesh)
Lorena Donaire, Agape hidrícos (Chile)
Concita Maia, Instituto Mulheres da Amazônia (Brazil)
Valentina Marco, Argentine Network of Municipalities facing Climate Change (Argentina)
Maria Matui, Gender and climate change coalition (Tanzania)
Ramona Miranda, Duryog Nivaran (Sri Lanka)
Discussions focussed on the intersection between climate risks and vulnerabilities of the population, considering how access to services or resources, such as water, is a gender and intersectional issue. Participants spoke of the 'cascading and compounded effects' on rural or racialised women, people with disabilities and other minority groups.
Our guests addressed the need to promote inclusion of all stakeholders, whereby affected communities and underrepresented groups are present in the spaces where planning decisions, monitoring and evaluation are made at the national level. Transparency and involvement emerged as key themes for inclusive policy and research: addressing the 'information-gap'; involving citizens and youth; working with artists, using paintings, songs, poems in traditional styles; translating documents and using appropriate language.
Response and resilience was addressed at both grassroots level in community organising and indigenous knowledges, as well as national and institutional levels. 'Transformative action needs to happen in ordinary times, so that it can be implemented during disaster and emergency contexts.'
The GRRIPP project "helped me to see my privileges, and helped me to see what I can’t see because of my privileges."
Credit: GRRIPP
Watch the seminar
The event was livestreamed, recorded and had simultaneous live translation in English, Portuguese and Spanish. Below you can watch the recording in English.
Time stamps:
0:00 - Preliminary address by Dr Louisa Acciari
4:49 - Panellist questions
1:17:56 - Audience Q&A