Individual perspectives, regional realities: LACWHN.

Several new members were welcomed at the August 2006 meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network's board of directors.

LACWHN's board now includes: Maria Eugenia Romero Contreras, General Director of Equidad de Genero, Ciudadania, Trabajo y Familia, A.C., Mexico; Telia Negrao Tonhozi, a journalist with a master's degree in political science, Executive Secretary of Brazil's Rede Nacional Feminista de Saude, Direitos Sexuais e Direitos Reprodutivos; Zaida Betancourt Aragon, an Ecuadorian physician with a master's degree in social science; Jeanne Dionise Henriquez, Ph.D. in history, head of a project to create a museum on the African Diaspora in her country, Curacao; Josefina Hurtado Neira, anthropologist and member of the feminist collective Con-spirando, Chile; and Ada Alfonso Rodriguez, psychiatrist with a master's degree in sexual education and human sexuality, from Cuba. At the next LACWHN board meeting to be held in March 2007, a representative for Guatemala will be selected from three candidates presented by the LACWHN member groups in that country.

In addition, this new board confirmed Nirvana Gonzalez from Puerto Rico as LACWHN General Coordinator until 2008.

The board currently is updating LACWHN's Strategic Plan, which will be implemented for the 2007-2009 period in accordance with the programmatic objectives identified therein. One of the most relevant aspects of the process is the establishment of the National Focal Points that will be responsible for facilitating closer ties among LACWHN's Coordinating Office and the national membership and for ensuring the member groups' representation in the political and programmatic processes of the network.

We are pleased to share the following brief interviews with the recently elected board members.

MARIA EUGENIA ROMERO, MEXICO LACWHN's Experience in Networking and Advocacy Is Key

What does the organizational format of the Network mean for the promotion of the demands of the women's health movement?

The participation by the member groups and their integration in different aspects of the Network are fundamental for promoting our demands at a regional level since this set of actions, reflections and perspectives enrich the debate and the public presence of the women's health movement. We must recognize that LACWHN has a very significant presence in the region that must be strengthened by increasing and promoting member groups' participation in the Network. The members also benefit by receiving information about LACWHN's participation in different official fora, campaigns and regional initiatives, as well as information on current issues and debates that will allow them to strengthen their work at the local and national level.

Each group that belongs to the Network should be strengthened and promoted, and closer integration and improved communication among all of the groups should be encouraged to stimulate a closer relationship with the Network and a greater sense of belonging, all of which keeps the Network at the forefront. The National Focal Points will play a very important role in promoting the integration of the LACWHN member groups and individuals in each country and their links with members in other countries as well as other initiatives of the Network.

We are very likely to witness serious setbacks regionally thanks to the onslaught of fundamentalisms. It is essential that the Network capitalize on all the experience of networking and advocacy that has been accumulated over the years to have an impact on regional and national levels of decision-making--in a creative and flexible fashion--to counteract the trends in all the countries that seek to turn back any gains in the right to health. The Network should be supporting the proposals of the national movements and reinforcing progressive actions at a country level that will encourage favorable changes that can be reproduced in other scenarios.

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LACWHN and other regional networks are essential for the promotion of women's rights. Nonetheless, what distinguishes LACWHN is that the Network presents demands or contributes proposals that directly affect women's bodies. We have focused public attention on the way in which the patriarchal State appropriates women's bodies and violates our right and freedom to make private, personal decisions of tremendous import for our lives. Women's bodies have been used by economic and political powers, and helping women to become aware of this appropriation contributes to their liberation. Our body is our first territory, our first realm of power, from which we generate our notion of liberty.

Health sector reforms have made women's access to health-care services increasingly difficult, which directly affects their quality of life. In light of this reality, we must forge a united front to draw attention to the needs of half the population and to the violation of our rights. We must continue to strengthen leadership in the movement so that increasing numbers of women hold decision-making positions and other positions of power and that the feminist movement accompanies them in their work.

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ZAIDA BETANCOURT, ECUADOR Networks Allow Us to Preserve Horizontal Working Relationships

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What is the significance of networks as organizations of civil society, especially in the promotion of women's human rights?

I visualize networking as fundamental from two perspectives: all people--women as well as men--are incomplete and imperfect, and we need one another to create humanity; each individual has something to contribute and learn. This implies appropriating a language and an approach with which to experience these processes creatively and positively.

The other element that we must consider is that patriarchal organization has been incorporated into our bodies and our hearts, making us believe that the only way of governing and functioning is by obeying an authoritarian president and authoritarian bosses. We have created patriarchal, vertical, pyramid-shaped institutions, in which decrepit Truths are held to be as real in life as they are on paper. Networks allow us to discover our relationships with one another; they grant us the possibility of strengthening our abilities and allow us to accompany one another in our failures and needs.

Networks allow us to build trust and to renounce territories that we once thought ours exclusively and at the same time to fight together on those matters related to the rights for which we have worked for years.

Is the women's movement in Ecuador active today? What are the priority issues in your country?

I am part of the feminist women's health movement, which started with CEPAM Quito, CEPAM Guayaquil and SENDAS. Today, many more women have joined us, women involved in political parties, young women, indigenous women and others.

I think that movements develop and grow in a series of peaks and valleys, and the women's movement in Ecuador has experienced a dynamic of boom and bust. In general, the movement has been fairly successful with regards to the incorporation of the issue of violence as a violation of human rights and as a matter of public health. A network against violence was created as a result, and the idea of violence as a threat to women's health helps us to put other issues on the public agenda, like reproductive rights and sexual rights.

Another example is the Law of Free Maternity, which not only created a basic infrastructure for users throughout the country, but also established a Central Management, which set in motion processes and mechanisms that invigorate a public agenda for improving the quality of women's health.

Sexual rights also are taking pride of place in the national debate. The Front for the Defense of Emergency Contraception is not only important for the legal defense of Postinor 2, but also for reaching out to broader public opinion beyond the women's health movement. Access to EC is now seen as a basic right (for more information, see this issue's Focus section, pp. 27-54). Also access to abortion, HIV prevention, freedom of sexual orientation, sex work and other issues now are considered highly important matters in our societies, which should be addressed in a more plural fashion. We are gaining strength not only in Quito but throughout Ecuador from different sectors, including young people, indigenous women, African-descendant women, lesbians and others.

The women's movement also played an important role in drawing attention to sexual and reproductive health in the discussions at the Second Conference for Health and Life. We now have a Policy on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, one of the first that was defined in a participatory fashion and that enjoys the support of the President of the Republic. There are other initiatives that demonstrate the participation of the women's movement, and organizations like CLADEM have been essential for the recognition of these rights by drafting shadow reports and carrying out pertinent research.

Nonetheless, even though Ecuador has advanced in the constitutional recognition of sexual and reproductive rights, a conservative force is influential. It enjoys financing from abroad and certainly responds to a strategy of U.S. president George Bush to overturn these gains. So we must continue to strive for greater unity and on-going dialogue in an effort to reach civil consensus on our decisions.

JEANNE HENRIQUEZ, CURACAO The Caribbean Must Be Taken into Account and Emphasized

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How do you see your role as a board member, as it relates to your identity as a Caribbean woman?

In my role as a board member, I would stress the following key points:

* It is important that LACWHN always take into account the ideas and interests of the women of the Caribbean. In other words, that the Network's actions integrate the region as a whole.

* At the same time, the Network should support those processes that will respond to the demands of Latin American and Caribbean women as they strive for the full enjoyment of comprehensive health as well as their freedom and autonomy. In this regard, the Network should defend participatory democracy, those democracies in which women play a clear and well-defined part.

* Finally, as a member of LACWHN's board of directors, I want to learn to listen actively and to use my ideas in support of the management of the Network from my identity and perspective as a black feminist woman.

ADA ALFONSO, CUBA LACWHN Must Be a Platform for Women's Demands

What does the organizational format of the Network mean for the promotion of the demands of the women's health movement in the current regional context?

I would use the terms: opportunity, horizontality, advocacy, rights, empowerment, monitoring and citizenship to characterize the Network today. LACWHN facilitates the sharing and exchange of women's knowledge regarding our health, which strengthens our empowerment for exercising citizenship and the defense of human rights.

Health, the free exercise of sexuality, the appropriation of our bodies, freedom of reproductive choice and freedom of sexual orientation, advocacy in and monitoring of local, national and regional public policies are all part of these efforts through the Network's participation. Horizontality is crucial in our decision-making processes as a guarantee of participation. Thus, the Network becomes a relevant point of reference for the women's health movement as it manages to become a platform for the demands of all the women who live in this diverse, multicultural and polychromatic region.

I think that over the years of the Network's existence LACWHN has demonstrated a high degree of professionalism and visibility. The region has experienced political and economic changes in recent years that have had a profound impact on living conditions and thus women's health. The Network has faced this challenge by producing the Itinerant University as a project that strengthens women's capacity for advocating for their own health and in defense of their rights from a gender perspective and a rights-based perspective, simultaneously integrating multiculturalism and diversity, as well as through LACWHN's diverse publications and communications products. All this makes the Network a reference point for the region.

TELIA NEGRAO, BRAZIL Our Struggle Must Champion Universal Access to Health

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Are networks a relevant form of organization for the defense of rights?

The issue of networks has been of special importance to me for at least ten years. I first coordinated a project in the city of Porto Alegre for a network that was named after Daniella Perez, an actress who was murdered by her actor boyfriend. My work was to redesign a support network for women in situations of violence in Porto Alegre. Afterwards, as part of my studies on participatory public management, I analyzed the data collected in this project from a perspective of sociology and social psychology. Later, during my work towards my master's in political science with an emphasis on gender empowerment and training of social capital in cyberspace, I also analyzed this information from a perspective of social capital. I also have studied information on women who use public hot-lines, and I'm interested in understanding the values that promote the connections and breakdowns in these networks.

Currently, I coordinate a leading network on the issue of health, sexual rights and reproductive rights, the Rede Feminista in Brazil. These experiences have shown me how globalization has had a profound impact on women's lives, imposing a greater burden of work and a higher degree of exploitation while simultaneously connecting them with the rest of the world through the mass media and formal and informal networks. This means that women have discovered new scenarios and realities that influence their lives and in which they endure unequal opportunities. Thus, feminism with a view towards social and political emancipation continues to be needed. Sonia Alvarez's work on Latin American feminisms in the late 1990s describes the methodology of the social and political project of feminism as a synthesis of practices such as horizontality, consensus and solidarity, but not delegation.

Nonetheless, even though service-based networks do not share our history of feminism, it is impressive how they are inspired in the same principles of horizontality, mutual respect, recognition, solidarity, as well as similar issues and topics. So it is impossible to imagine social networks like ours that do not have these characteristics.

You are speaking of all networks, not only women's networks ...

Of course. I very much appreciate the perspective of Tomas Villasante on network models that demonstrates how society reacts to the current models of globalization. He cites the international networks of thought/action whose mobilizing element is the confrontation of the economic system that dominates the world and the predominant values of the networks, which have led to events like the World Social Forum or the regional networks of sustainable grassroots economies that plant the seeds for a new economic system or at least resistance to the current model of neoliberal globalization. There are also networks of associations and NGOs, whether linked or not to the service sector, and information networks and the transversal conduits that seek out new ways of life and different relations of power for a "better life."

I see LACWHN and the Rede Feminista de Saude as networks that mix various models and that are strengthened by a political agenda built on the debate over the meaning of autonomy, citizenship, human rights, equity, equality and access, in short, everything that enables us to make decisions that will determine the destiny of the world. What are currently the key issues with regard to citizenship and feminism in the region?

In Latin America and the Caribbean, we have much in common, but what stands out is our history of submission to the diverse forms of economic, cultural and political domination. The great Brazilian social scientist Jose Murilo de Carvalho describes three traditions--slavery, patrimony and patriarchy--as influencing our formation as a people. Not all countries follow this scheme; in some, the population advanced further, while others still do not have the right to identity, sovereignty, etc. And so feminism--which originated in the women's movement--matured as part of the struggle for democracy and for the republican system, which only recently allowed us to specialize thematically in the 1990s.

In our region, we started to network around specific issues like education, health, economics, work, violence, political power and public policies. When I compare the earlier forms of networks and those of today, I see that we are a generation of "super" women who tried to meet all the challenges and that we were able to grow with a more global vision of social and political processes. But I also have the sensation that we delayed specializing and that this has had a prejudicial impact on us.

On the other hand, there are current social movements born of the identity-discovering process that characterizes the era of globalization, which somehow overturn our agendas. I am concerned that issues like the unequal distribution of income among women and men, the lack of gender justice, the models of domination and the continuance of racism and gender-based violence are not sufficiently confronted and may be pushed aside by other agendas. These models may not be expressed in a direct form, but in the control of information and communication, in the imposition of esthetic models for the market, in the interference of the Church in matters of the State and in the rules that are imposed upon democracy and the citizenry.

But there is a specific agenda for LACWHN, which derives from this reality and leads us to ask: how are women's sexual rights and reproductive rights affected by everything that has an impact on women's health? How does this context generate maternal mortality, unsafe abortions, sexual violence, sexual exploitation, human trafficking, organ trafficking? To what extent can women be considered citizens when they do not have universal access to comprehensive health care? What sort of health-care systems select people according to their incomes and pre-existing illnesses in order to guarantee them basic coverage?

Based on this consideration, I think that among all of our many priorities, and using all the creativity for which we are known, we need to work to ensure universal access to women's health, focusing on sexual and reproductive rights and bearing in mind their wealth of diversity.

The Rede Feminista de Saude in Brazil has invested considerable effort in strengthening women to advocate for public policies to ensure quality health care. The Rede encourages an exercise of monitoring, also known as "citizen control," which implies empowering women who have not yet managed to see themselves as agents of change. It also promotes alternatives of participation that strengthen mechanisms which can be used to defend their rights, not to preserve cultural patterns but to promote ruptures and to establish the necessary connections for the generation of social capital.