The international Feminist Network
by Marilee Karl
In Portugal a women journalist was accused of moral offenses and of encouraging crime because she was responsible for a film shown on television in 1976 which talked about abortion. Because of international publicity and pressure through telegrams, letters and articles in the press, she was acquitted. In South Korea women, who make up the majority of workers in the Dong-ll Textile Factory in Inchon, organized themselves and elected women to the leadership of their branch union. When they were faced with the combined opposition of management and male workers in the form of interference, harassment and brutal physical attacks, they appealed for international support. Their story was widely publicized throughout the world and protests were raised to the South Korean government.
In Chile women were arrested for participating in a peaceful demonstration in observance of March 8, International Women's Day. Letters and telegrams of support and in protest of their arrests poured in from all over the world.
The International Feminist Network (IFN) sent out appeals for support in each of these cases throughout its network and helped generate the enormous response from all over the world. These are only three of the more than fifty cases of women and women's groups from every region of the world which have been taken up by the IFN in the first three years of its existence. Women all over the world are more and more developing international solidarity and supporting each other across national and continental boundaries. The IFN is one of the means which have grown up in recent years to facilitate this.
The purpose of the IFN is to mobilize support and solidarity quickly for women, whenever and wherever they are victims of injustice or crimes because they are women or because they are working for the rights of women. There are many well-established organizations to promote campaigns of international solidarity for the rights of workers, for political prisoners, for human rights,against racism and so forth. Until recently there has been no such organization for women. Over the past decade, however, we have come to realize the extent of the countless injustices against women throughout the world, of the numerous crimes and violence perpetrated against women because they are women and of the enormous violations of women's rights. If we are to combat these injustices, we need to build up international solidarity and action. The IFN is an attempt to do this.
The idea for the International Feminist Network was born at the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Brussels, Belgium in March 1976. More than a thousand women from every part of the world gathered there to testify. They spoke of the physical violence they experienced as women, of rape, battering, genital mutilation, of being imprisoned for defending themselves against physical attacks. They told of the suffering imposed on them by governments and institutions which refused to let them freely choose whether or not to bear children and of many more violations of their rights. For many women this was the first opportunity to break their isolation and to speak out openly of these crimes. It was proposed at the Tribunal that there be continuing support and publicity for crimes against women and that the IFN be formed with the purpose of facilitating solidarity campaigns.
ISIS - Women's International Information and Communication ISIS - Women's International Information and Communication Service, with its offices in Rome and Geneva, was asked to coordinate the IFN. ISIS acts as a central point from which appeals for international support and solidarity for women are sent to national contact women who disseminate this information in their own countries - through women's networks,organizations and the media. Usually the action to betaken consists of sending telegrams and letters of protest or support, of organizing demonstrations, and of getting national and international publicity for the case. Any woman or group of women can send in information to ISIS through the IFN
Since the Brussels Tribunal on Crimes Against Women, the Since the Brussels Tribunal on Crimes Against Women, the IFN has helped to promote campaigns of international solidarity for over fifty different cases from every region of the world,mobilizing support for women who have defended themselves against rape and battering; victims of rape; women workers' struggles; women who have been tried, imprisoned or persecuted for having abortions; campaigns against restrictive laws on contraception and abortion; victims of sterilization abuse;women who have been persecuted for trying to create their own organizations or parties, or for demonstrating for their rights; women political prisoners; and women protesting sexist treatment in the media.
The money needed to set up and run the IFN has come from The money needed to set up and run the IFN has come from the royalties of the book Crimes Against Women which have been donated by the editors and compilers of the book, Diana E.H. Russell and Nicole Van de Ven. This book contains the testimonies presented at the Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Brussels, as well as the story of how the Tribunal came into being, the dynamics of the event and the resolutions which came out of it. A very instructive and impressive story,the book is published by Les Femmes, 231 Adrian Road, Millbrae, California 94030, USA. Thus, not only did the idea for the IFN come out of the Tribunal, but the financial basis to make it possible as well. Putting money earned from royalties or sales of materials back into the women's movement is also a way in which women have shown support and solidarity with each other. This is important in order to keep the IFN strong and independent. More such initiatives are needed
There are national contact women in some thirty countries of There are national contact women in some thirty countries of the world at present who have been disseminating the appeals for support in their countries. The Mid-Decade Forum held in for support in their countries. The Mid-Decade Forum held in Copenhagen in July 1980 provided the opportunity for some of these national contact women to get together with the international IFN coordinators and many other women from all over to discuss the IFN.
In the IFN workshops at the Forum, we discussed the practical ways in which the IFN was being organized in the various countries, the most effective ways to disseminate the information and to get women and groups to take action; the kinds of responses and action taken on the appeals; the effectiveness of these actions; how to expand the IFN and to make it more effective
The need for international solidarity and support campaigns came through clearly at the Copenhagen Forum and was strongly felt by the participants in the IFN workshops. Many women came to Copenhagen to ask for support in their campaigns and struggles. Women spoke of the difficulties of working in isolation and of how important it is for them to know that there are other women and groups in the world working for the same ends and supporting their work. Many women, however, felt that this need was not always felt back home on the local level. Some IFN contact women felt that their biggest problem was to convince women in their countries of the importance of supporting the efforts of women elsewhere in the world, especially when there is so much work to be done at home. It was suggested that the IFN could help to educate about international solidarity, by publicizing more widely information about international solidarity campaigns and how they have helped women and women's groups.
Many of the nearly two hundred women at the IFN workshops, however, felt that the main problem is that many women simply do not know that the IFN exists. Copenhagen was the first time that many of them had heard about it. It was strongly recommended at Copenhagen that the existence of the IFN be widely publicized in feminist publications
The workshops discussed the ways in which the IFN has been organized in different countries and ways in which to build up the network and make it more effective. Several of the women present volunteered to work on the IFN in their countries.
The tasks of the national contact women are basically two. The first is to distribute the information and appeals for support in their countries. Whenever ISIS receives an appeal for support, we duplicate it and send a copy to all the IFN contact women. They in turn duplicate the same information -- translating it if necessary -- and distribute it to as many women's groups and individuals as possible. It is up to the women and groups in each country to decide if and how they will respond to appeals for support
The second task of the IFN contact women is to pass on to ISIS their own appeals for support and solidarity which ISIS will then distribute to the other members of the network.
IFN appeals have been spread through articles in feminist magazines and newsletters, notices put up in women's houses or meeting places of women, notices in the mass media and the alternative press, by mail to women and groups, or by word of mouth or through a telephone tree (e.g., a women phones three women who in turn each phone three others and so forth). In most countries the contact women are trying to reach as many other women as possible to generate a large response and in some places the network is quite large - reaching hundreds of women and groups. In other countries, the network is very tiny, consisting of only three or four small groups who receive and take action on the appeals
The IFN is most well-established in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. It is also being built up in Hong Kong, India and Japan. At the Copenhagen Forum several Latin American women spoke of the importance of setting up the IFN there and volunteered to be contact women in Brazil, Colombia and Peru. The hope was expressed that the IFN could become truly international and extend to many more countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. There is a need to build up the IFN in other areas of the world too. In the USA, for instance, there is no national network for spreading IFN appeals, perhaps because of the vastness of the country and the diversity of women's groups. Several women from the USA met in a smaller group after the IFN workshops in Copenhagen to discuss the possibility of organizing the IFN in the USA, working through existing networks such as women's studies, health, and others working to combat violence against women, sexism and discrimination. Women in other countries also felt that the IFN could become more effective by working together with existing women's networks and organizations
Some of the problems that have been encountered in organizing the IFN are: the difficulty of spreading information rapidly over a wide area, especially when an appeal calls for urgent action; the large number of appeals received and the difficulty in responding to all of them; the expenses involved in both disseminating the appeals and responding to them .
Perhaps the biggest frustration for the women working on the IFN is the difficulty in receiving feedback - of finding out whether their efforts are having some effect. When appeals are sent out, do women and groups really respond to them? Do they take action, send letters or telegrams of support and protest as the case may be? Even more important, does this action have any effect? Is it really helping women who are victims of injustice and crimes?
The IFN workshops discussed practical ways to solve these problems and to insure reporting back on actions taken.
A most encouraging response came from the women present in Copenhagen who had direct experience of the effectiveness of the IFN. From Brazil, Chile, Denmark, Spain, Israel and Japan, women told of how their appeals for support had brought in response from women all over the world. More, they spoke of how important this support had been, both in terms of the strength they received from international solidarity and in terms of the effect it had on the actual outcome of the case. International support does make a difference. Even two or three letters of support or protest from women in several different countries can make a tremendous impact - giving other women moral support and putting those who are committing the injustices against women on notice that women are not alone, that international attention and publicity is focused on what is happening. It can, and has, had an effect on legislators, governments and courts.
Most of all, what came out of Copenhagen in regard to the International Feminist Network, is the sense that there is an ever greater need and desire for international support and solidarity among women, and that support actions do indeed have an effect; that our efforts must be directed to strengthening and expanding the IFN and to informing women of its existence.
Appeals and requests for information should be directed to the IFN, care of ISIS, P.O. Box 301, 1227 Carouge/Geneva, Switzerland.