Fwd (GLW): Women students' conference heads left

["Alan Bradley" <alanb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following article appears in the latest Green Left Weekly
(http://www.greenleft.org.au):

Women students' conference heads left
BY SARAH CLEARY & APRIL-JANE FLEMING

ADELAIDE -- Feminist students have described as a significant shift
leftwards this year's Network of Women Students Australia (NOWSA)
conference, held at Flinders University, July 10-15. The conference,
attended by 300 mainly young women from around the country, marked an
increase in the anti-capitalist sentiment in women's collectives and a
stronger impulsion towards united activism.

>From its opening, by veteran feminist and Democratic Socialist Party (DSP)
member Connie Frazer, the conference was full of urgency -- to embrace the
fighting legacy of the women's liberation movement, confront the federal
government's regressive policies and rebuild a strong, confident, militant
movement.

But there was also considerable debate. One factor was the re-emergence of
traditional ?socialist? feminism which, as described by Melbourne activist
Kate Davison in a session on different strands of feminism, argued for a
dual-systems approach: ?patriarchy? sat side by side with class, she
argued, intertwined with but independent of it.

Maria Voukelatos, an Adelaide Resistance activist and member of the NOWSA
2000 organising collective, responded by laying out a Marxist feminist
position. Davison's argument fails to explain the origins of ?patriarchy?,
Voukelatos said, while Marxists saw women's oppression as arising from
within class society. The liberation of women is thus inextricable from the
liberation of the working class, she argued.

The idea of ?autonomous organising? was also much contested. In a panel on
the topic, Kim Bullimore, a member of the Indigenous Students Network and
the DSP, argued that the movement needed to get beyond an obsession with
?identity? in order to forge links and build alliances on the basis on
common, unified goals.

For Bullimore, the autonomous organising of different oppressed groups was
a tactic, not a strategy; its appropriateness had to be decided on the
basis of whether it strengthened or divided the movement. Others disagreed,
claiming that autonomous organising should be a strategy, a principle even,
for all oppressed groups.

Similarly contested was how women in the advanced capitalist countries
could, and should, link with the struggles of their Third World sisters.
Some argued that Western feminists are being culturally insensitive by
criticising practices such as the compulsory wearing of the veil.

Resistance's Nikki Ulasowski disagreed, arguing that it was crucial that
feminists in the First World take a stand. It is not a case of enforcing
values, she argued, but of supporting the actual struggles of some women
against these practices. She described, by way of example, the Worker
Communist Party of Iraq's campaign against the ?honour? killings of women
in Iraq.

The final resolution session featured a debate on whether or not
transgender women should be welcomed into NOWSA. Some student leftists have
accused transgender women of not being ?real women? because they have
benefiting from male privilege for some of their lives. This view was
overwhelmingly rejected by the conference, which supported the stand of
NOWSA 2000 collective member Alexis Tindall and voted to actively encourage
all those who identify and live as women, transgender or not, and who are
committed to the feminist struggle, to participate in future NOWSA
conferences.

The debates at this NOWSA conference were generally healthy and
strengthening, without the bitterness and division that has plagued some
earlier conferences. There was also considerable interest in activism, both
in specific women's rights campaigns and within broader movements against
capitalism and corporate greed.

There was extensive support for the call by Aboriginal activist Rebecca
Bare-Wingfield for support for the campaign against the nuclear waste dump
proposed for northern South Australia. An enthusiastic protest against
Western Mining Corporation, which mines uranium near Lake Eyre, was held
mid-conference.

That enthusiasm seems likely to carry over into renewed activism when
campus resumes, with many feminists set on building the protests planned
for during the Olympics and against the World Economic Forum meeting in
Melbourne on September 11-13.

The conference finished by passing resolutions encouraging the
participation of women from high schools and TAFE colleges in future NOWSA
conferences. NOWSA 2001 is to be held in Sydney.