Overview:

In 1999 younger women attending the CSW created the youth caucus to ensure that younger women's voices are heard in the CSW, Beijing reviews, and UN process in general. The youth caucus made strong representation at the Beijing +5 review, and has been instrumental in empowering young women at the UN. During the same time period, younger women from around the world were organizing in grassroots organizations, larger feminist organizations, the international peace and global solidarity movements, and on university campuses. Five years on, what has the growth in the participation of younger women meant? Are they any more successful in having their voices heard? How are their specific issues and concerns best addressed?

The International Dialogue: Young Women Organizing for Change
Roundtable Discussion in Conjunction with UN CSW Meetings
identified issues of concern to young women in different parts of the world, as well as challenges and opportunities for addressing these issues within the broader feminist movement. The session addressed young women's experiences both within different types of NGOs and within the women's movement and feminist scholarship more generally, recognizing that many younger women are mobilizing and building coalitions around specific issues, rather than working through mainstream feminist organizations. Through sharing their unique concerns and experiences, feminist activists from diverse contexts identified potential new strategies for promoting issues of concern to them.

Here is a summary of that session:

Common themes resulting from dialogue:

• What kind of mechanisms can we use to talk with each other? At what points are coalitions useful-and what point can we support each other on different levels?
• How can we move past the rhetoric of "youth participation" to a true concern for and inclusion of younger women's voices within the feminist movement, including in institutional structures like the UN?
• How can we best involve younger women who see themselves as "outside" of the feminist movement?
• How can younger women share power responsibly and effectively in a way that we are actually "walking the talk" of our critique?

Summary of speakers' main points:

The roundtable opened with brief introductions from all attendees. For a list of participants please see below.

Gwendolyn and Anna from the National Council for Research on Women commented on the importance of having a forum for younger women to discuss their specific needs and concerns, and also gave a brief description of NCRW. The CSW meetings in New York provided a useful framework for the discussion, particularly because the conditions for an international dialogue were available, and because this year's CSW meetings were marked by the Beijing +10 Review. The 10^th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action gave younger women the ability to assess both the progress made in the last 10 years in terms of younger women's organizing, as well as gauge what issues require further action. The need for younger women's voices to be heard during the Beijing Review process, and in the feminist movement in general, was importantly noted.

Shireen Lee and Franziska Brantner
Shireen and Franziska, co-founders of the CSW Youth Caucus, began the opening participants' portion of the dialogue with a brief overview of younger women's participation in the CSW process, answering the questions: Why was the Youth Caucus created? What have been the results? What needs to be done?

Shireen talked about the successes of the Caucus, and youth involvement at the CSW in general, noting that there is a much greater presence of young people at the Beijing +10 Review than there was at Beijing +5 (including, importantly, the official on younger women and men at the CSW itself), including in leadership positions within the official system in the form of government delegations. However, she also stressed that there is still much work left to do. Some challenges that Shireen pointed to were:

• Young women often do not have the support of their organizations to keep coming to the CSW year after year (in terms of funding). Possibly need to think of ways to fund ourselves.
• How to keep young people engaged after their "transition period." Here, Shireen noted that young people in their early 20s are often in a period of transition (from university to the work force) and that people often drop out of the movement after this period. How do we sustain this commitment?
• The growth of the right-wing movement, which aims to rollback the advances of women's rights. Shireen commented here on the rise of right-wing movements, particularly within the UN system.
• More media coverage is also needed. A lot of the work that gets done at the UN does not get mainstream media coverage. She noted the need for more public outrage against this-and the need to let the public know what goes on at these meetings.

Franziska noted the positive growth of youth movements, particularly within the UN system, but also stressed the need to put gender on the youth agenda. She noted that there are many young women and men actively involved in the anti-globalization/global solidarity movements, but that gender is not often on their radars. The challenge, then is to get them to be engaged with gender issues. Using the example of trafficking, Franziska pointed to the need of engaging people both working within the feminist movement, and without. Although she noted that there was a delicate balance when it comes to working outside of any particular movement, she stressed the need for both.

Franziska cited the fact that young people have much more of a presence at the CSW meetings, and stressed the importance of continuing to engage within the UN system. She also sees a need for the CSW to be reworked in order to strengthen its mechanisms. Young women need to be involved in the reworking of the CSW-and should not give it up because is not working as well as it could right now. Franziska acknowledged that there is not a specific focus around the future of the CSW and that we need to think strategically about where we would like the CSW to go, and what specifically we would like to work for.

Med Manzanal
Med spoke specifically about young women's experiences as young people within the feminist movement based on her experiences in the Philippines. She stressed the point that we are the future of the feminist movement, but yet we are often marginalized within the movement and are not recognized in a significant way. She believes that young women's concepts and ideas about feminism are being negatively impacted by their treatment within the feminist movement in a way that will impact the future of the feminist movement. This plight is sometimes compounded by the intersections of race, class, and gender, but yet is not adequately addressed in those terms. Med stressed that young women should be given the support to make their voices heard, both through full participation and financially.

Some challenges that Med identified were: age discrimination and marginalization of young women within the feminist movement; young women are scared to address power relations within the movement; there needs to be more mentoring and capacity-building mechanisms put in place for younger women within the movement, as these are now lacking. Although youth participation is now a "buzz word" - especially to funders-Med stressed the need to move beyond the rhetoric to the full support of younger women within the feminist movement. She also saw a need for younger women to organize as a group, defining feminist terms and gender experiences as they see fit based on their experiences. She argued that this did not necessarily have to be within the feminist movement, but that younger women could make their own spaces for such a movement.

Andrea Powell
In Andrea's experience as a young woman working within the feminist movement, she believed that we can also take the initiative to make our own organizations, which she herself had done. Before starting her own organization, Andrea made a point to meet with younger women from different feminist and women's organizations in order to talk about similar experiences that they shared as younger women within the feminist movement. One commonality that came from these dialogues was the idea that all of these younger women wanted a voice at the table. Andrea's organization, Fair (Fem Aid International Relief) Fund, Inc., which works primarily with women in Eastern Europe, set out to give women that voice.

Andrea spoke on two issues important to her in her work: trafficking, with a focus on gender violence, and empowering young women to organize for change and to be leaders in their community. The first project that her organization took on was in Uzbekistan, on trafficking. The younger women that Fair Fund, Inc. worked with saw that there was a lack of the voices of those most affected by trafficking in policy and legal responses. The program that Fair Fund, Inc. organized involved young women trainers going into schools to talk to their peers about trafficking. Another project, called Fem Vote, involves young women and political organizing. The goal of this program is to create a space for young women within the local community to become involved with politics. This project started in Belarus with "get-out-the-vote" style conferences and concerts. However, it has been hard to engage the effectiveness of this program due to the political situation, in that many young people are scared to become involved in politics.

An important part of FAIR Fund's work, and the Dialogue today, Andrea said, was the ability to learn from the experiences of others from all over the world.

Victoria Budson
Victoria talked about some key issues and challenges in terms of young women and leadership. Through her work in youth and feminist movement, as well as with politics, it became clear to Victoria that change was going to come through the politicization of young women, with their involvement in the democratic process and politics. Victoria is the Executive Director of WAPPP at the JFK School of Government at Harvard, where they run a young women's leadership program which trains 50 young women every year to run for political office. Part of this training is helping young women to know that they have the ability to lead. Victoria also acknowledged the importance of documents like CEDAW and Resolution 1325 as important to getting women involved in politics at the national level, and, in the case of 1325, becoming involved in all stages of peace-building processes.

Some critical points identified by Victoria were:

• Not to get suck in the past divides of the women's community/movement. We should be able to address these issues in different ways, and be comfortable with the fact that we will not always agree. We should find ways to move beyond these presupposed divides, and move forward for change as a cohesive whole.
• How to politicize younger women and ensure that they are actively engaged in the political process-both on the individual level, and to help and support other younger women to become involved.

Elizabeth Placido
Elizabeth spoke about her experience working in Mexico for younger women's reproductive and sexual rights. Her organization, a member of RedLac in Latin America, organized a similar panel at the recent World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where younger women came together to talk about issues that mattered most to them. In particular, Elizabeth cited challenges to younger women resulting from political and economic globalization and their effects on younger women. For example, younger women often have to migrate far from their homes to the Global North in order to get better wages. There is also less economic security in the situation of younger women as a whole. Forced prostitution is also an issue for younger women in Mexico. Young Latin American women also have to combat stereotypes about Latina women from women of the North.

The problem with the younger generations, according to Elizabeth, is that younger people often believe that they have all of their rights, not recognizing that these rights are often not realized or are not being respected ("the veil"). On the other hand, the jobs and input of young people is also often not recognized.

Elizabeth also addressed some concerns within the feminist movement, and called on the feminist movement to work with the youth movements. She noted that part of the feminist movement is open to our agenda as young women, and that they do recognize our ideas and different approaches. However, there is a challenge within the feminist movement in Latin America to get our concerns to be heard and taken up within the movement-and not to be marginalized as "young women" in specific projects. Young women's concerns are concerns within the feminist agenda, and we need financial support to recognize this. We should also consider working with different NGOs and forming coalitions. A final challenge is to recover knowledge and histories of feminism and women's status, and therefore, it is very important to have intergenerational dialogue. The most important challenge is how to share what we learn in these spaces with those in our own movements within our own contexts.

Svati Shah
Svati has a history working with LGBT organizing in the U.S., and part of the feminist movement in various incantations. She expressed the feeling the she has been in the youth movement for a long time, partly because of where she is positioned. Here she noted that this indicative of the way that the feminist movement does not share power as effectively as it could. Svati then talked about the way that young women have been used by the feminist movement and the sexualities movements. Young women have been seen as a pool to recruit from and have been seen as long-term support for these movements. Youth are seen both as the future of the movement, and the support - or backbone-of the movement.

Svati then examined the ways that young women work in the movement that are not talked about a lot: how they are used as a source of new ideas, and as a source of intervention. She noted that a lot of young women bring perspectives and experiences to the movement that were not there before (she gave the example of working as a queer person in the U.S. south). This is a very confrontational process, and our institutions, thus far, are not able to accommodate that kind of confrontation. The movement needs to be fluid and flexible, and is not at that point yet, but younger women are offering that perspective over and over again. The challenge for the movement then is that it should be fluid. The second challenge is also to recognize that these interventions are needed politically, and they are also important moments for young women to mobilize "internal critiques"-where they learn how to think critically, how to make demands and challenges that need to be made, and how to get things done. Svati also cited another important challenge, which is not only to learn through consensus, but to learn through "productive dissent." By definition, our institutions do not share power, and therefore, a major question left to younger women is: how to share power responsibly and effectively in a way that we are actually "walking the talk."

Alison Stein
Alison is the founder of the Younger Women's Task Force of the National Organization of Women's Movement. The goal of the YWFT is to reach all progressive younger women, whether or not they identify with the feminist movement to provide them with a stronger voice in the policy making process. From Alison's experience with her progressive peers, she realized that younger women often did not specifically identify themselves as "Feminists," and in fact, sometimes had serious aversions to the terms. However, Alison realized that these women were "feminist" in theory and that what was needed was a different concept of feminism through a "younger women's frame" in order to address the issues that mattered most to younger women.

One of the main challenges that Alison sees in terms of younger women organizing for change is the fact that so many younger women have internalized sexism in their lives. For example, Alison cited a group working on economic issues for younger women at the YWTF founding meet-up (held in January 2005 in Washington, D.C. bringing together 100 women from 42 states), in which some younger women denied the gender pay gap, instead placing the blame on the gap on themselves and their "poor negotiation" skills (i.e. they didn't ask for more money and that was the reason for the gap), and recognizing the pay gap as a societal issue. Therefore, Alison noted the importance of talking about these issues in ways that younger women can relate to, as the YWTF does. Alison closed with optimism that this strategy would work to build a more inclusive movement that addresses the issues of younger women in a way that all young women-no matter how they define themselves-can work towards feminist change.

Discussion:

The following are question/comments raised during the discussion period:

• The question was raised on how to engage with younger women outside of the feminist and/or progressive movements.
• Elizabeth noted that it is important for youth movements not to limit their discussions to only a few groups-we have to share the discourse in other spaces.
• Franziska also remarked that we should also consider whether or not to engage with others based on the goals worked for in any particular situation.
• Afamia noted that, from her experience working in Lebanon, discussions like the one at the session on leadership are not important to her. She did not view leadership to be trickling down. In her perspective, she is thinking about having to work everyday, serious poverty, and issues that most affect the women-and men-that she works with. Her conversation is a different one.
• A question was asked on whether it was practical to form coalitions based on only the fact of a similar age group. She noted that experiences within these age groups are very different based on race, class, gender, and geographical location.
• Taylor asked what mechanisms worked for younger women in terms of coalition building: In what ways can we reach out to other young women, particularly those not engaged within the feminist movement, and support each other? College and university settings were raised as one venue to engage young people, and the internet was also discussed as a networking tool, while also noting the limitations for those who do not have access. (Andrea noted that women in Eastern Europe only have limited internet access if at all.) Engaging those already working in other ("non-feminist") grassroots and community organizations was also proposed.
• Franziska noted that what she sees as missing in the feminist movement right now is an examination of the history of the societal limitations of women and social construction of gender. She noted that these limits are still there, but that the younger generation does not often realize it because things "seem okay."
• The point of the need to get rid of the societal idea-in all societies-that women are wives and mothers first and foremost, was brought up. The need, in the U.S., to move the feminist movement away from cities and, particularly, away from the East Coast, in order to reach more women and to address their concerns was also cited.
• Alison discussed the need for the feminist movement to think more about ways to get away from the perception that the movement is "anti-mother."
• Franziska pointed to a recent report done by the OECD on childcare, which cites the societal benefits-not just for women-in countries with well-functioning, government-funded child-care programs.
• The point of working with men to end patriarchal oppression was also raised. It was noted that it is important to involve men, and to have men recognize that ending patriarchal constraints also works towards their benefit.

Participants:

Gwendolyn Beetham, NCRW (Organizer and Chair)
Anna Skiba-Crafts, NCRW (Organizer)

Franziska Brantner, CSW Youth Caucus
Victoria Budson, Women and Public Policy Program, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Taylor Hatcher, George Washington University, National Partnership for Women Families
Shireen Lee, CSW Youth Caucus
Maiden (Med) Manzanal, Youth Coalition
Elizabeth Placido, Elige Red de Jovenes por los Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos
Andrea Powell, Fair Fund
Svati Shah, Columbia University
Alison Stein, Younger Women's Task Force, National Council of Women's Organizations