1. The Intro to the Proposal

castellano/deutsch | francais

sent to imc-process on Oct 14, 03

Hi,

Attached please find a proposal from the IMC-Women's list about how to positively address issues of diversity (gender and otherwise) within Indymedia. The proposal is specifically written to be incorporated as part of the New IMC process. Therefore, this proposal is about making a powerful amendment to the current process for new collectives joining the network. We recognize that the already existing collectives also need to address issues of gender and diversity and we hope that this proposal and the following dialogue will encourage such discussions to happen locally.

The proposal is in text below and has also been posted to the internal discussion website at: http://global.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=1098&group=webcast

On this page, it's translated in en español, em português, deutsch, italiano, francais.

Discussion should happen on imc-process and all liaisons are encouraged to take the proposal back to their local IMC. We hope that individuals and locals will use the link above to share comments and responses. Formal responses from local IMCs should be posted to the imc-process list.

Thanks,

IMC Womens List (a list of 105 women active in Indymedia)

2. The Proposal

sent to imc-process om Oct 14, 03

Proposal for New-IMC Process

The imc-women-list exists since summer 2001 and consists of women active in indymedias in Latin America, North America, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. Since two years, we have discussed in many facets the depressing situation of patriarchal repression in society which unfortunately doesn't stop at the doorstep of leftist groups.

Many concrete situations came up, in which women felt discriminated against in their local group. In most cases we were able to support the women emotionally and to give advice. But we feel that this is not enough.

Women are a small minority within many indymedia groups, some groups only consist of men. This may be due to the fact that people perceive indymedia mainly as a website and don't realize how much work needs to be done concerning building political relationships, outreach, editorial work etc. Therefore indymedia attracts relatively more people who are interested in computing than people who are not. Accordingly, the underrepresention of women within indymedia reflects the underrepresentation of women in Information Technology related fields.

However, only some incidents in which women felt discriminated against within their groups were tech related. Several complained about being silenced in meetings, some had experienced open sexist behavior, many stated that there was a general atmosphere that made it hard for women to work within their indymedia group.

This means that gender discrimination is not only due to the fact that techies have an important role within indymedia and techies tend to be male. It is apparent, that non-tech as well as tech males discriminate against women.

Many of our male co-activists have taken an active stance against gender discrimination within indymedia. And we hope they will keep up this stance as we don't perceive our struggle as females versus males but as a general cause.

However, the discrimination by individual men and the patriarchal atmosphere in some groups has reached such a degree that we believe action needs to be taken.

Furthermore we believe that similar mechanisms that minimize women's involvement also work against the participation of ethnic and sexual minorities and maintain a homogeneous class structure.

We talked about different measures to change this situation. As a result of our discussions, we would like to propose that these issues be addressed during the process which new imcs undertake.

Proposal:

We propose that the following questions be incorporated in the application form:

A. How does the makeup of your collective reflect the diversity of the local community (e.g. in realtion to gender-, sexual-, spiritual-, and/or cultural-identity)?

B. If your group currently does not represent the diversity of the local community, particularly in relation to groups who are underrepresented in mainstream society and denied access to vehicles of expression, what steps will be taken to address this on an ongoing basis?

C. What steps will be taken to involve individuals in workfields new to them? What measures will be taken to overcome a gendered work division?

3. Clarification on other forms of oppression ...

...that exist within the IMC network, such as racism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, and other forms of domination.

4. Discussion

• Global Internal Discussion Site: http://global.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=1098&group=webcast

• On imc-process, conerns were raised that the women's proposal is not radical enough (mail. The subsequent debate on imc-women is documented on ImcWomynListDebateProposal. It includes practical ideas how to support gender equality.

5. Support

Please add supporting IMC's here:

• sent to imc-process list
  • Fri Oct 3: "The imc-sweden collective whole-heartedly approves of, and welcomes the proposal that was made by imc-womyn to the process-list."
  • Sun Oct 26: Seattle: "We are in full support of this proposal. At the last general meeting where we discussed this again for the second time, several people expressed how impressed and inspired they were by the proposal and the fact that it was the first such proposal to come from a global working group. (...)"
  • Mon Oct 27: "Indymedia Netherlands is supporting the imc-women proposal."
  • Wed Oct 29: Indymedia Quebec is also supporting the imc-women proposal with unanimous approval by the collective. We accept the english formulation of the proposition but would like to make a correction to the french formulation that was not translated correctly. The french version of the proposition doesn't separate spiritual from cultural identity.

• sent to imc-women-list
  • Mon Oct 20: "the santa cruz collective has voted in favor of adding the new proposal to the application process."
  • Mon Oct 27: "I wanted to let everyone know that IMC Quebec voted unanimously to support the proposal at our collective meeting last week. This decision should be posted to the process list within a couple of days."
  • Wed Oct 29: "IMC/Atlanta unanimously approved the IMC-Women proposal last night!"

go back to ImcWomyn

-- AnNa - 21 Oct 2003 -- AnNa - 29 Oct 2003 added supoprting imc's -- IonNec - 05 Nov 2003 added debate from women's list
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