Gewalt gegen Frauen ist überall. Jede von Gewalt betroffene Frau ist eine zu viel. Neu :Members of the coordinating group: Sofia Roque, Nina Simunovic, Riikka Taavetti. Advisors:Hilde Grammel, Christiane Reymann, Gunna Starck.

hier die Erklärung

Protocol of the EL-Fem-Meeting, Berlin, 16 November 2014

Feedback, agreements and considerations
 
Sissy Vovou: To bring feminist demands into our parties, there should be an
electronic booklet of the results of our conference. Our website should reflect the
work, demands and achievements of women, who are not only victims of aggression, but
responsible agents.  
 
Parwaneh Bokah (Linke): European women should not forget they have sisters elsewhere
in the world, therefore the EL-Fem-network should support women who do not have
access to media (Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and others).  
 
Christiane: Can Rami please put entries from her blog on the Indian women’s movement
on to the EL-Fem list and Facebook page?    
 
Sophia Roque (Bloco): Feminist work in Portugal needs to be re-initiated in the
current crisis situation, EL-Fem can share our experiences; we can initiate a “Train
of Freedom” for our projects.  
 
EL-Fem network is needed for two reasons: we are members of parties and building the
EL is our task. But for us it is not an interesting party if it is not also a
feminist party. As EL-Fem we need to network with social organizations, movements
and organize feminist resistance. EL-Fem is a tool of international solidarity.
 
Gunna Starck (Red-Green Alliance): The conference programme was too tight, have
fewer speeches in the future to have enough time for debates.
 
Nadia Trallori (Austria): She is very glad that the topic of reproductive rights is
eventually taken up by political institutions. EL-Fem should formulate a resolution
on pronatalist and antinatalist policies which are both pervaded by of racism and
classism. We should use our contacts to act in solidarity with women in the entire
world and in the spirit of the UN-Women’s World Conferences: In many Asian countries
female foetuses are aborted while the male ones are allowed to live – this
devaluation of women has demographic consequences on the lives of women:
trafficking, wars etc.   
 
Eva Brenner (Austria): The dramaturgy was as important as the content – structure
the next conference differently so as to integrate the analysis and the acting in a
better way. In her experience, EL-Fem is the only structure in the EL open also for
cultural work. The budget for EL-Fem needs to be doubled.  
 
Anja Eichhorn (Linke): How can the women’s movements be connected? What / How can we
contribute to that?
 
Brigitte Scheffler (Linke): EL-Fem shall publish a solidarity address to the women
of Kobane. There is a documentary to be put online.
 
Hilde Grammel (CPA): the great thing about our conference was that we managed to
bring together theory and practice, because without a good analysis and our
theoretical grasp of the situation, no good political practice is possible. We
should keep up this two-partite structure of one day (“conference”) dealing with
theory, analysis and our own education, the second day (“meeting”) dealing with the
questions of our network, how we can develop it, who wants to take on responsibility
in it.
 
 
 
EL-Fem: Bringing together different feminist traditions (Christiane Reymann)
 
EL-Fem was founded on 8 May 2004 at a historical moment, namely when eight left
parties joined to form the EL. Then the EL had 8 member parties, now it has got more
than 30.
 
At the founding congress it was 14 men that had been speaking and no woman. Without
knowing each other, several of the women present wrote a protest note saying that
both an independent feminist structure and a list of speakers were necessary.
 
Now, ten years later, if we look at the statute of the EL and the practice of the
party, we can see that EL-Fem has left deep traces.   
 
The EL-Fem network is an accepted structure of and for active women which means that
it depends on us, if we can and will fill the space provided.  
 
The EL is an organisation founded in Western Europe, which also implies that the
feminist tradition we as the activists of the network know is mostly a western one
as well. In Germany this was experienced first-hand during the reunification
process, when we saw that the women of the GDR were emancipated in a different way
from us. In Eastern Europe feminism has a negative connotation until the present day
and it is part of the tasks of the EL-Fem-network to bring together the different
feminist traditions.  
 
Thus we have to expect that also among socialist feminists there are differences,
especially with regard to the questions of self-organisation and to the
understanding of what is the feminist agenda.  
 
The only and politically crucial consequence of this situation must be that we know
about our differences and that we learn to deal with them in a respectful way.  
 
Currently, two thirds of the EL-parties do not have women’s or feminist structures,
but a mere reflection of the Ex-board just with female members does not work for
EL-Fem either.  
 
EL-Fem has an annual budget of € 25,000, which covers the costs for our
participation in the Summer Universities and the convening of a conference.
 
 
 
The coordination of EL-Fem
 
As regards our experience with the coordinating team, we find it crucial that the
members of this team communicate with each other in both timely and transparent
ways.   
 
The coordinating team is not entitled to make independent decisions of its own but
has the responsibility that both the organization and staging of our meetings and
conferences are realized.  
 
To guarantee the functioning of the coordinating group, it is important that it
consists of women who are experienced in putting into practice the things that need
to be done and who pass on their experience to others. It has therefore proved good
practice that there are 3 members of the coordinating team and 3 consultants
communicating with each other about the work at hand.
 
It does not mean that one country is more important if it is represented in the
coordinating group, because “as a woman I don’t have a country, my country is the
whole world” (Virginia Woolf). As a feminist left we should not reproduce the
divisions that have opened up in Europe as a consequence of the crisis, but we
should try to develop and practice a culture of solidarity.  
 
Tasks of the members and advisors of the coordinating group: The coordinating group
is not a leadership group, but a group of women facilitating that the network is
working and can work. Its task is to enlarge the network. It organizes EL-Fem
meetings and conferences: finds the venue, the topic, the speakers, clarifies
questions about the budget, puts together a programme, draws conclusions of the
conference, collects the contributions to publish them on the EL-Fem homepage and on
the EL-Fem-FB-site, prepares documents before meetings, drafts documents with the
conclusions of the meetings to present to the EL for discussion, establishes
contacts to women from outside Europe and from Eastern Europe etc.     
 
 
 
Link to EL-Ex-Board: Judith Benda (Linke), one of the representatives of DIE LINKE
will be the interface between EL-Fem and the Ex-board: she will communicate
decisions by the EL to the EL-Fem network and vice versa.
 
Judith reports that the Ex-board meeting in Athens has decided for the EL to
intensify its actions with regard to the issues of austerity, TTIP, the Climate
Conference in Paris, peace an international solidarity, women’s labour rights and
the 70th anniversary of the victory over Fascism in January.  
 
In May there will also be a meeting in Paris of the European Forum for Alternatives
on the occasion of the successful NO-campaign against the Lisbon Treaty.  
 
 
 
Members of the coordinating group:
 
Sofia Roque, Nina Simunovic, Riikka Taavetti.  
 
Advisors:
 
Hilde Grammel, Christiane Reymann, Gunna Starck.
 
 
 
Activities
 
*Each participant in the Berlin conference is asked to send her picture and three
lines about herself to gunna@enhedslisten.dk <mailto:gunna@enhedslisten.dk>   
 
*March 2015: World Social Forum in Tunis – Gunna will go there.
 
*World March of Women in 2015: members of the EL-Fem-network will establish contact
with its organizers and include the marchers into activities regarding reproductive
rights in our cities.  
 
*Preparation of 8/3 and of EL-Summer University: For the SU it is important to
establish cooperation with the Ex-Board in advance so as to coordinate the
programme.  
 
*Organization of next EL-Fem-conference and meeting in Split.
 
*Documenting the results of the conference and meeting and gleaning political
demands for the EL to take up in its programmes or actions.   
 
*The link to the film YO DECIDO, EL TREN DE A LIBERTAD (in Spanish with English
subtitles) is to be provided for all the women of the network to use it in their
political work. It is: http://vimeo.com/102124953 the film can also be downloaded
from there.   
 
 
 
Possible topics for the next conference
 
Women and nationalism
 
Women’s labour rights  
 
Prostitution and sex-work