Monday, March 10, 2008

Köln: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger Förderung von Frauen


Bild: Peter Rakocyz
Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger Montag 10. März 2008

Talente und Potenziale liegen brach

VON CLAUDIA HAUSER, 09.03.08, 20:55h
BILD: RAKOCZY

Beim Internationalen Frauentag informierten im Rathaus unterschiedliche
Gruppen vor allem über Themen, die Migrantinnen betreffen.

Elisabeth ist 15, kommt aus dem Kongo und hat einen einfachen,
mädchenhaften Wunsch: 'Ich möchte mit 20 heiraten!' Das Foto, das die
Künstlerin Jane Dunker von ihr für die Ausstellung 'Innenwelten
Außenwelten' machte, zeigt Elisabeth deshalb im Brautkleid vor einer
Fototapete mit Strand und Palmen. 'Falls ich nicht heirate, habe ich
wenigstens ein Foto von mir im Brautkleid' , steht neben dem Bild. 17
Mädchen, die regelmäßig den interkulturellen Treff 'Lobby für Mädchen'
in Mülheim besuchen, zeigen über Bilder und Collagen, was sie sich
wünschen, wovor sie Angst haben und was sie berührt.

Die großformatigen Fotos waren beim Empfang zum Internationalen
Frauentag im Rathaus zu sehen, zu dem die Stadt unter dem Motto 'Frauen
International - Dialog der Kulturen. Wir feiern - Wir fordern'
eingeladen hatte. 'Niemand darf Frauen daran hindern, sich frei zu
entfalten und zu bilden', sagte Bürgermeisterin Elfi Scho-Antwerpes in
ihrer Eröffnungsrede. Vor allem um die Förderung von Mädchen und Frauen
mit Migrationshintergrund sollte es in den einzelnen Foren gehen. So
referierte Faize Berger über die Stärkung von multikulturellen
Unternehmerinnen, die Psychologin Azra Pourgholam-Ernst stellte das
Gesundheitserleben von Migrantinnen in den Fokus, außerdem wurde die
Chancengleichheit in Ausbildung, Bildung und Beruf diskutiert. Die
Ergebnisse der einzelnen Foren sollen in das Integrationskonzept der
Stadt einfließen. `In Köln leben 159 000 Frauen mit
Migrationshintergrund`, sagte Petra Engel, stellvertretende Leiterin des
Amtes für Gleichstellung von Frauen und Männern. `Es wird dringend Zeit,
sie mehr ins Blickfeld zu rücken.` Engel findet es bedenklich, dass
einerseits die Erwerbsquote von Migrantinnen wesentlich geringer sei als
bei deutschen Frauen; die Beschäftigung der Frauen in privaten
Haushalten als Reinigungskraft oder Pflegerin aber deutlich zunehme.
`Die Talente und Potenziale dieser oft sehr gut ausgebildeten Frauen
liegen brach`, ergänzte Scho-Antwerpes.

Köln hat als erste deutsche Stadt 1982 eine Gleichstellungsstelle
eingerichtet - auch dieses Jubiläum sollte im Rathaus gefeiert werden.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Internationaler Frauentag Köln 2008


Internationaler Frauentag 2008
Frauen International - Dialog der Kulturen
Wir feiern - Wir fordern!
8. March. 2008
Cologne Rathaus

Vicky, Elsa, Elda, Edwina, Mary Lou

Marilou, Gul, ML, Lena, Yvonne, Elsa, Elda, Helen


Babaylan Germany (philippine women`s Forum e.V.) participated in
this year celebration of International Women's Day organized by the
Office for Equal Opportunity for Women and Men-Amt für Gleichstellung
von Frauen und Männern
www.stadt-koeln.de

Program

Empfang des Oberbürgermeisters am 08.03.2008 im
Historischen Rathaus
Multikultureller Infomarkt im Atrium und Stehcafe
Begrüßung
Elfi Scho-Antwerpes, Bürgermeisterin
Petra Engel, stellvertretenden Leiterin des Amtes für
Gleichstellung von Frauen und Männern
Chor `Tonquelle´

Foren
Porentief gleich?
Ein Blick auf Frauengesundheit und ihre Nebenwirkungen
Femina politica - politisch aktiv, aber wie?
Ressourcen stärken, Barrieren abbauen- Chancengleichheit
in Ausbildung, Bildung und Beruf
Erfolgreich, weiblich, multikulturell-Stärkung von
Unternehmerinnen und solchen, die es werden möchten

Modenschau der afrikanischen Frauengruppe Mwangaza

Schlussplädoyer mit Kernaussagen aus den Foren mit
anschließender Übergabe an die Politik

Get-Together im Atrium
Moderation Daniela Milutin
Fotoausstellung InnenweltenAußenwelten von
Jane Dunker und 17 Mädchen von Lobby für Madchen e.V.



Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

A Forward: A Letter from Feminists on the Election

A Letter From Feminists on the Election
The Nation Posted February 27, 2008 (March 17, 2008)
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080317/feminists

Two days after the Texas debate between Hillary
Clinton and Barack Obama, a group of old friends
brought out the good china for a light breakfast of
strong coffee, blueberry muffins and fresh-squeezed
orange juice. We were there to hash out a split
that threatened our friendship and the various
movements with which we are affiliated. In some
ways it was a kaffeeklatch like a million others
across America early on a Saturday morning - but
for the fact that this particular group included
Gloria Steinem, a co-founder of the National
Women's Political Caucus; Beverly Guy-Sheftall,
director of the Women's Research and Resource Center
at Spelman College; Johnnetta Cole, chair of the
board of the JBC Global Diversity and Inclusion
Institute; British-born radio journalist Laura
Flanders; Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law at
Columbia and UCLA; Carol Jenkins, head of the
Women's Media Center; Farah Griffin, professor of
English and comparative literature at Columbia;
Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority;
author Mab Segrest; Kenyan anthropologist Achola
Pala Okeyo; management consultant and policy
strategist Janet Dewart Bell; and Patricia
Williams, Columbia law professor and Nation
columnist.
It was a casual gathering, but one that settled down
to business quickly. We were all
progressives but diverse nonetheless. We differed
in our opinions of whether to vote for Hillary
Clinton or Barack Obama - our goal was not an
endorsement. Rather, the concern that united us all
was the "race-gender split" playing out nationally,
in which the one is relentlessly pitted against the
other. We did not want to see a repeat of the ugly
history of the nineteenth century, when the failure
of the women's movement to bring about universal
adult suffrage metastasized into racial resentment
and rift that weakened feminism throughout much of
the twentieth century. How, we wondered, did a
historic breakthrough moment for which we have all
longed and worked hard, suddenly risk becoming
marred by having to choose between "race cards" and
"gender cards"? By petty competitiveness about who
endures more slings and arrows? By media depictions
of white women as the sole inheritors of the
feminist movement and black men as the sole
beneficiaries of the civil rights movement? By
renderings of black women as having to split
themselves right down the center with Solomon's
sword in order to vote for either candidate? What
happened, we wondered, to the last four decades of
discussion about tokenism and multiple identities
and the complex intersections of race, gender,
sexuality, ethnicity and class? We all worried
that the feminist movement's real message is not
being heard, and we thought about how to redirect
attention to those coalitions that form the bedrock
of feminist concern: that wide range of civil
rights groups dedicated to fighting discrimination,
domestic violence, the disruptions of war,
international sex and labor trafficking, child
poverty and a tattered economy that threatens to
increase the number of homeless families
significantly. We thought of all that has
happened in just seven short but disastrous years
of the Bush Administration, and we asked: how might
we position ourselves so we're not fighting one
another? Our issues are greater than any
disagreement about either candidate. We all know
that there is simply too much at stake. On the
one hand, we celebrate the unprecedented moment in
which a black person and a female person have risen
to the lead in the Democratic race for President of
the United States. On the other hand, both of them
are constantly pressed to deny their race or
gender, to "transcend" it, to prove by their very
existence that misogyny and racism no longer exist.
This, even as both are popularly and reductively
caricatured in perniciously stereotypical ways.
Clinton as a woman with balls, Obama as
"unqualified" and "grandiose,"Chelsea Clinton
being "pimped" by her mother while Bill O'Reilly
declares that Michelle Obama should be "lynched."
How do we resist such a toxic Punch and Judy show
of embattled identity, to the degree that many
women feel that a vote for Obama "cheats" Clinton
of her chance to break the glass ceiling, and many
blacks feel that a vote for Clinton is a betrayal
of the chance to break the race barrier? We
agreed that everyone needs to refocus on the big
picture. All of us know that another Republican
presidency would effectively bury the gains of both
the civil rights and the feminist movements of the
past fifty years. Judicial nominations alone could
upend decades of hard work.How, therefore, to
reclaim a common purpose, a truly democratic "we":
we women of all races, we blacks of all genders, we
Americans of all languages, we immigrants of all
classes, we Latinas of all colors, we Southerners
of all regions, we families of all ages, we parents
working three jobs without healthcare, we poor who
sleep on the streets, we single mothers whose homes
are being repossessed, we displaced New Orleanians
whose neo-Arcadian epic of displacement has yet to
resolved. "Can't we all just get along?"
could have been the mantra of this power breakfast
though certainly not forever, nor for all
purposes. Just long enough to roust the Republican
rascals: the oil barons and Enron fraudsters and
pre-emptive warmongers and sadistic torture-masters
and trigger-happy antiabortionists and Blackwater
mercenaries and the tribal extremists of various
religious stripes who seem to look forward to
Armageddon finally segregating humanity into true
believers and recalcitrant, disposable trash. In
the confusion of this triumphalist but precarious
moment, therefore, it is important that the
alliance between a now global feminism and a now
global civil rights movement not be turned against
itself and ultimately defeated. Obama and Clinton,
each a complexly archetypal "role model,"
represent, at their best, a new kind of American
possibility. If we could get over our fixation on a
fantasy that many of us hoped to see realized in
our lifetimes, maybe we could finally turn to the
issues that each of them brings to the table. We
cannot remain tangled by stereotypes that demean
with their sweeping divisiveness and historical
cliché. As we gathered up the empty plates, we
recommitted ourselves to further joint discussions
about how to attain that collective better future,
however many early mornings, late nights and urns
of coffee into the future that may take. We hope
women across America will choose to do the same.