Shana Penn
International Coordinator
Network of East-West Women
1621 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20009
U.S.A.
(202)332-4840 FAX:(202)332-4865
In the current political-economic transition underway in the former Soviet Union, the marginalization of women provokes urgent questions: How to integrate women into democracy-building, both at the grassroots and government levels? How to increase women's political involvement and encourage a political identity for women that provides a healthy sense of citizenship, that is born of particular cultural conditions to each country and is not a western import? How to safeguard the social welfare benefits and rights that women want to retain?
One path links women's issues with environmental concerns. In the former Soviet bloc, it is undeniable that the environment mobilizes women. How might women's groups, environmental activists, and western advocates advance the political potential of this vital combination of people, resources and burning issues?
By drawing on direct experiences and case studies of individual women and women's groups who are exploring the web that connects women and environment, I will discuss women's leadership capacities in these areas and identify points of intervention, for example: environmental degradation, women's health care, and control over women's bodies. The linking of issues, where appropriate, may increase options for women's political involvement in the post-Soviet transition.
Within the cross-national and multi-issue web that women's and environmental issues create, I will address the following themes:
(1) The impact of Chernobyl on the launching of women's feminist and environmental activism in the 1980s to the present;
(2) FSU and US perspectives on ecofeminist thought and its relevance to women living under post-communist conditions;
(3) FSU and US perspectives on environmental degradation as a women's issue/women and women's bodies as an environmental issue;
(4) identifying "the players" in environmental and women's NGOs, in research institutions and at the policy level;
(5) strategies for mobilizing women through networking,
coalition-building, education and media training.
Return to Women of the World Interacting with the Environment: Part B
Go to Women of the World Interacting with the Environment: Part A
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