Let women groups make own decisions

Let women exercise their professional interests, thereby deciding whom to invite for inclusion and whom to exclude for a purpose.

I write in response to Susan Labwot’s opinion in the Daily Monitor of March 7, ‘Women’s movements should be open to members from all walks of life’. Asking women movements to have their clubs open to “members from all walks of life” is a sure way of creating challenges for them.

According to Interface, a journal for and about social movements, the biggest challenges for feminist movements is the socio-political double-standards in most countries.

The notion of women movements across the globe has political ends as well as socio-cultural ones, behind which ruling elites may have some ulterior motives.

But telling women organisations what to do with their lifestyles may daringly mean that we are using them as a tool to further our social and political interests in the name of reducing inequalities among society members.

Let women exercise their professional interests, thereby deciding whom to invite for inclusion and whom to exclude for a purpose. In this way, Ray and Korteweg argued, we maximise the choice of women right from our courtyards.

Bashir Ashkir,

ashkireau@gmail.com