Gender Day

The idea of the gender day is to deepen discussions of how patriarchal traditions
influence not only nearly every aspect of women's and men's lives, but also
pacifist and antimilitarist work. The women's movement of the last 30 years
developed a comprehensive critique of the existing society, and showed that
even progressive movements don't take into account the different experiences of
women and men.

Especially nonviolent movements learned a lot from the feminist movement;
affinity groups and consensus decision making try to break out of the masculine
tradition of a concept of politics, where the strongest or loudest speaker gets
his (seldom her) position through, and try to take personal feelings and the
activists' personal needs as seriuos as rational arguments.

But do we really understand in depth the differences of female and male
experiences? Do we really acknowledge how women and men experience their daily
life in different ways, do we really take into account the gender aspect of
conflict and war?

The gender day is aimed to highlight this gender aspect in nearly every aspect
of our political work - from social empowerment to resistance to militarism and
democratisation and reconstruction...

Morning Plenary

The morning plenary will start with a
dramatic presentation which highlights different aspects of gender relations.
After this, the concept of reflectors (see box) will be presented and the
reflectors will present themselves to the Triennial.

The theme groups will focus their discussion on the gender aspects of
their theme. What are these gender aspects? How can different experiences of
women and men be identified? What does this mean for strategies to overcome
patriarchial traditions in connection to the specific issue of the group?

The reflectors will be present in some of the theme groups to observe the
discussions.

On this afternoon all workshops are focused on gender aspects (see
workshop descriptions below).