Berkley Center

Background: This May 2010 telephone exchange between Kathryn Poethig and Katherine Marshall explores Dr. Poethig's academic and professional experience with women's struggles for social justice and peace, particularly in the Philippines and Cambodia. She urges a particular focus on the role and efficacy of networks in both religious and non-religious contexts. Noting that the gulfs between secular and religious tend to be less pronounced outside the United States and Europe, she sees important roles for religious ideas and networks in women's movements. She highlights the importance of defining peace broadly so that it encompasses efforts to work for social justice, particularly when that is the way women and women's groups frame their work for peace.

Can you start by telling me a bit about your story, how you came to be interested in and to work on the issues we are discussing (women, religion, peace)?

My interest goes back to the beginning! I was born in the Philippines, a missionary kid. My father worked there on labor and justice issues with the United Church of Christ Philippines. In many respects, therefore, I was raised in the presence of the U.S. empire, on its edge, and in an environment of left-wing activism. When I came back to the United States, that link follows me in whatever I have done.

Watergate was going on at the time I came back to the United States; there was martial law in the Philippines and protests in the United States. It was a turbulent time. And the Vietnam War soon ended. I went to the University of Chicago as an undergraduate. I shuttled back and forth year after year to Southeast Asia; I estimate that I have spent about 25 years in the region over my working life.

After college, I became very much involved in refugee issues in the United States, working in transit camps in the Philippines, in refugee life in the United States. This sparked my interest in the realities of people coming out of post-conflict situations, long before they were called that. In some respects we were creating refugee as clients.

I went to seminary at Union [Theological Seminary], then on to get my doctorate at [Graduate Theological Union] in Berkeley, studying religion and society, and transnational anthropology. So my advanced degrees really focused on religion and globalization.

In the past decades, I have traveled back and forth between the United States and Asia and have worked with people from all over the region. Besides the Philippines, I have spent considerable time in Cambodia working with “entrepreneurs of democracy” at a time when the Cambodian refugees, who had scattered all over the world, were coming back to Cambodia. I taught at the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute and was academic consultant for the Applied Conflict Transformation Studies (ACTS) master's program in Phnom Penh. ACTS is accredited by Pannasastra University in Cambodia. It was the brainchild of Responding to Conflict [Birmingham, United Kingdom]. It is hosted by the Center for Peace and Conflict in Phnom Penh. Each graduate cohort has about 12 to 15 people. I find it a very valuable resource to have people coming to the program with questions that arise from what they are doing.

I am currently a professor at California State University Monterey Bay in the Global Studies Program. And I work with many groups and networks, including the People’s Forum on Peace for Life, which draws key figures of the World Council of Churches and progressive interfaith Christian-Muslim work against empire.

What was the picture of women’s movements during the early years you were involved in the region? Did they have much link to religion? How?

There have been and are many women’s movements and groups that have emerged in Southeast Asia. Many of them have quite tight ties to religion.

By far the most active are in the Philippines. One icon was Sister Mary John Mananzon, in many respects the “queen pin” of Philippines feminist theology. She was involved with the Gabriela Network [a federation of Filipino women’s organizations that emerged after 1986]. Alliances of women’s movements, coming out of the Gabriela movement, allow women in the United States to support women’s organizations in the Philippines and have enabled the people’s movements to take on a more international character as they have moved more into the public sphere. The alliances had sectoral representation and during the 1980s and 1990s were very powerful, with many links to other movements. Then there was a split among the left wing of the women’s movements. To a degree they have gone more mainstream. It is an interesting trajectory, and it is not unrelated to the mounting interest in peacebuilding. It also relates to the large, sometimes excessive focus on the Mindanao peace community. The Muslim community is much more visible than the [New People's Army] conflict and the role of the Communist struggles. The focus on Mindanao is handy but somewhat distorts the overall picture.

Recent work on Filipino feminist theology has taken place at many levels. It has been influenced by interfaith women’s networks in Asia, the U.S. war on terror, as well as by conflicts on the ground. The question of what we mean by just peace also comes into the picture. Thus, our analysis of women and peace and the practical networks are influenced by this work coming out of the Philippines.

This is less true in Cambodia, where the broader issues of women’s roles have just entered into the discussion. The peace community in Cambodia, and what women are working on there, has much more to do with gender violence and focuses on development interventions, rather than on social movements. In Cambodia, just the existence of women’s NGOs serving the community is important, but presence is not the same as effectiveness. It is good to see more presence, but there is still a real need to improved their effectiveness.

The development community generally, especially in Cambodia, has tended to focus on domestic violence, and to a lesser extent on community justice mechanisms. A lot more work could be done in the area of women’s roles in terms of gender analysis and community justice. There is some reviving interest in the topic. (Three of the ACTS' M.A. papers deal with community justice mechanisms and domestic violence in Bangladesh, Vietnam, and currently one in Cambodia.)

The Action Asia network (Action for Conflict Transformation) is one of the best examples of a program that has served to feed into the larger network of peacemaking. It has, however, not focused much yet on women. Though some of the master's degree students do deal with gender, they do not have much basic analysis.

You focus on the need to go beyond just recording and reflecting on experience, in this case women’s experience in peace work, to the broader significance of the struggles in which they are involved. Can you elaborate on what this means?

We need to start with an analysis of what peace means, and in doing so bring together theologians, religious activists, and practitioners, and to ask questions at a different level. This is not easy because the conversations that are taking place in the various communities are so different, and they span a wide spectrum of different analysis. So the question of what to include in the conversation is difficult. The conversations in feminist movements, churches, the development community, and diplomatic circles, for a start, use different language and follow different agendas. But what is most important is to listen to what the people on the ground are including in the conversation and how they are framing the challenges.

In the Philippines, it is important to look beyond Mindanao. In many senses, Mindanao is overworked, over-studied. There are important questions for the Philippines in other areas, for example the indigenous groups, and the intersections between the left and the Church. These are often left out. The Philippines Development report in 2005 had an interesting analysis. The report had UN support, but what was important was that it was a Philippines-based report, prepared by Filipino experts. In terms of conflict, it looks at the [Communist Party of the Philippines] and [National Democratic Front] strains, in relation to the role of the Church in the conflict. These are areas that need more attention.

For Mindanao, a transnational analysis raises important issues, both in relation to the United States and to different alliances among the groups that are working on the ground. Within the Catholic Church there are alliances. The Muslim groups are also horizontal, with relationships that go in the direction of the Middle East. There are progressive religious groups there. I did a series of interviews with Muslim women in 2005 in different areas. What I found most interesting was where they saw their networks radiating from. What are the transnational networks that align us? What resources do they find and have? Where do they come from? Where are ideas generated? What language is used?

There are important Muslim networks that are emerging. Amana is an important Muslim Asian peacebuilding network. It would be good to explore how they define the field and what peace is about. How do they see the intersections and interests?

What we should focus on are questions, not cases. Valentine Moghadam’s analysis of transnational feminist networks is interesting. We should be focusing on networks like this in this era of globalization. And we need to explore more identity-based understandings, for example as they apply to transitional justice. How do we understand the feminist understanding, what justice means at a multisectoral analysis, and how it is implemented. Much of the scholarship on conflict is not linked to cultural theory. Few suggest many interesting intersections, especially around coexistence, and the challenges involved in attempts to return, and to live together.

You have focused on the challenges of framing the question of what we mean by women and peacemaking. Could you please elaborate?

Clearly one dimension is intervening in conflict zones to bring conflict resolution and activities, mostly around transitional justice. That means looking at women in conflict zones or in situations of conflict transformation. But peace is not just about anti-militarization, it also should be about positive peace and about the root causes of conflict. And that is where religious communities provide the strongest intersections.

How do you see religion coming into these organizations, networks, and understandings?

The role of religion is particularly problematic because of the lack of women’s presence in hierarchies and in the formal structures of most communities. This issue came out strongly at the conference of women on religion in Geneva that followed the 2000 New York/UN Millennium Summit of Religious Leaders. It highlighted the problem of the invisibility of women and their very presence in religious organizations and meetings. It also highlighted the complicity of women in many cases with the male leaders that they are working with. That affects how many are thinking about the issues and how they come together. Is it a space or an implosion? And within an implosion, where is the challenge to male leadership? Thus there are different kinds of conversation, some with women at the table, some about women at the table.

In the work on women and peacemaking, there is little of that kind of analysis, especially within women’s religious communities. We are seeing some analysis in Latin America, where there have been women activists since the 1970s and 1980s. There is also more interest in Africa and more within the Muslim world. But it is still shallow and scattered.

But there are positive signs and direction in many places. AMAN, the Asian Muslim Action Network, is an organization of progressive Muslims in Asia and is a good example of a dynamic network of Asian women Muslims. It also has a School of Peace Studies and Conflict Transformation. A young woman heads their magazine. They represent a new Muslim feminism, similar to Yasmin Busran-Lao’s good work on reproductive rights in conflict zones. Sisters in Islam is another great network that is doing important work on reproductive rights in Malaysia, the Philippines, and elsewhere. What we are seeing more is women in communities producing their own analysis. More and more, these practitioners are exchanging information.

In terms of feminist theology, the Christian networks have moved from an early stage to greater depth, and from the [Global] North to the [Global] South, and to other kinds of analysis. Women are taking stronger roles in leadership in many Christian organizations in South East Asia, especially in Indonesia, and to a lesser extent in Thailand.

Another development out of Indonesia that is interesting is around sexuality and diversity. I was fascinated by a meeting two years ago of a very diverse group of women representing a feminist interfaith network in Indonesia, in Yogyakarta. There were representatives coming from labor organizations, the middle class, domestic workers, students, and professional women (thus diversity in terms of sectoral representation). There were self-identified gay and lesbian members as well as religious women, and they spoke explicitly about issues of sexuality, which of course is unusual. The conversation addressed problems in legislation and efforts that aimed at keeping diversity off the table. Some of most interesting work in Asia in the last two years is in fact coming out of Indonesia.

What about relationships that you have seen between secular and religious women and women’s organizations?

Martha Nussbaum has made comments about this tension in the North. But in Asia, you do not find that tension or separation to anything like the same degree. Among movements everywhere that I have seen, the line is not such a big issue. There are, however, significant differences by country.

In the Philippines, the nuns are among the women who are most active. In Cambodia, it is not so much the Buddhist feminists. That is a bit more evident in Thailand. In India, you tend to see more of a distinction between the secular and the religious feminists. India has a strong network of secular feminists, Marxist feminists who would not align with religious communities.

Within communities, there are also differences, even within different Muslim communities, but you will be interviewing Muslim women about this. There seems to be the full range, from Muslim communities that reject the term feminist totally to those who embrace it. But even so the kind of tension that you see in the North is less pronounced. Feminist is a word that some people object to. The issue is not that it is secular; it is more the association of the term “feminist” with women’s rights. Sometimes throwing “women’s rights” into a room like a bomb will provoke a reaction.

Again, the development community is different from the movement community in terms of how they approach the issue. The communities do tend to leak into each other, but issues around women and peace tend to be more articulated in the NGO community and are less prominent in the church communities. Perhaps that would be less true in Africa, or among the larger faith-based NGOs like Caritas or [Catholic Relief Services]. They are hosting peacebuilding programs in countries where Catholics are in a minority, trying to stimulate non-Christian movements. That suggests some interesting issues in terms of framing the problem.

You express some reservations about using the term peacebuilding. What does it mean to you? What about the links to community development or community driven development?

The term is indeed fuzzy, and I find that more and more that people and institutions are wary about using it. I had understood that both World Vision and Oxfam had decided to significantly adjust their peacebuilding programs. Among other questions that the concept suggests, there is doubt about what it entails. How it can be evaluated? What exactly is peace and development?

It would be very interesting to trace the trajectory of use of these terms: how they were taken up, by whom, under what circumstances, and what did they expect when they did so? But the fact seems to be that no one really knows what it means. I’ve seen some good effects of Mary Anderson’s [Reflecting on Peace Practice] training in this area.

When it comes to community development, questions about what peace is supposed to look like come into the picture.

But the terms are important, and how people identify concepts and frame them are important. In the Philippines and Cambodia both, the term peacebuilding seems to have started largely from human rights discussions. As those concepts evolved, people started using the language of peace. It is an interesting and important genealogy. In many ways, the groups may be doing the same work but calling it something else. But the question is what they mean, and how do they claim the terms? In a larger context, what is their interest in using a certain word? Clearly one factor is that the donors like using the words peace and peacebuilding, so groups use the terms in hopes of getting money. Again, they are to a degree donor-driven projects.

But the questions around the programs and approaches deserve a more thoughtful look, and the roles of gender are among the least carefully analyzed. What are the conflict resolution projects actually doing? What is the implicit approach? What is implied by conflict prevention? And in the community based justice mechanisms that folks are trying to do on the ground, what is involved? How do you intervene at community level? Dekha Ibrahim is very good at that and is thinking about gender roles. But, really, who is doing the kind of gender analysis that is needed, and what kind of analysis do they bring to the table? But we need to ask more: What do you want in bringing women to the table? In short, we need more people who can do better analysis.

Can you elaborate on this challenge of deeper and better analysis of gender challenges?

In general, the kind of analysis that flows will come from the kinds of question that are asked. The questions often entail or suggest implicit assumptions about what is or what could be different when a gender perspective is introduced. But there is the danger of simply thinking that, if women are present, gender issues are taken care of. It’s the difference between women versus analysis of women. The underlying assumptions and thus the analysis need to be looking beyond women’s bodies, to take into account the gendered state and related policies that keep women in certain places. That includes, of course, the religious hierarchies. There, the images are very strong of women’s roles, focused on always reproducing; that is how they often think about realities. If you just ask the basic questions in a gender discussion or analysis, if you just talk from experience, you will never ask the deeper questions and never ask the questions (beyond the ones that are always asked) that will get us to another level.

One person who does it is Irene Santiago. She has taught in the Mindanao peacebuilding program and also was key to the Beijing 1995 Women’s Conference. She has a grasp of what a distinctive gender analysis involves. It is an example of what kind of analysis can follow when important and powerful people (like Santiago) are asking for it and understand its significance.

Do you have specific suggestions about what we should be discussing at the July conference, and about what might come out of it?

I have thought a lot about this topic and am so glad this is happening. My concern is that we are not linking fields well enough. We are not looking at all the sources of wisdom, at how we connect, how we can take the discussion to the next levels. In many efforts, like Women Waging Peace, I am not sure that this is happening. We need the three levels—activist, practitioner, and theoretical—but we need to bring them together to get to another level of understanding of what we are doing and can do.

What could come out of the meeting? I suggest that it be seen as the start of a conversation. It can help to get us to think inside communities, to get gender analysis into conflict resolution curricula and into the thinking of the NGOs that are doing this work. We can ask why the structures blocking access to women are still standing, which are maintained, and why we let them continue?

How do these questions relate to us in the United States, as U.S. citizens? U.S. militarism is a dominant question in this equation. We need to keep our attention on the different levels of privilege and be aware of where we stand, and thus not to speak for people who are not in the room.

We also need to keep our eye on the new generation that is coming and that is doing a whole range of exciting things. Amina Rasul and others like her are the mothers of the topic, but we need to look to younger people also.

We can ask questions that will help people to develop innovative programs that question male dominance and challenge the status quo, that allow and encourage women to speak back to power, and to go beyond what is happening already. A lot of this is happening already. In the Philippines there is also a sanctuary program under the [National Council of Churches in the Philippines]. Ideas like this can give us examples of how to think along that edge, rather than just to include women in the discussion because women’s bodies are violated.

The question is how to include women as full members of civil society in religious communities. What does that mean in practice? In the Catholic Church, it means that it is not just the bishops who get to talk, and not even just the nuns, but the people on ground. Again, in the Philippines, the religious women are so articulate and sophisticated in their analysis. They are doing terrific work. When I was teaching at Silliman University, there were theater projects that were powerful expressions about women’s bodies and powerful lessons for peace education. They spoke powerfully to youth. There are small programs, scattered all around the country.

We need to focus on curricula around human rights and around peace education networks, again building on remarkable things that are being done. And to focus on networks. One of most interesting areas where much is happening that is worth focusing on is in the colleges, thus looking at the next generation. How do people in their twenties see these issues? What kinds of programs are they initiating? And what programs serve them well?

The potential of social networking is really exciting and worth exploring.

You have highlighted networks several times, both as important sources of information and connection and as a useful line for this project to explore. What networks do you find most useful in your own work?

Networks are, as I said, more interesting than cases. But, I agree, there are some real questions about which ones work, how, and why, and those need to be addressed before we think of creating another network, or adding something to one that already exists.

As to networks that I find useful and pursue actively:

• ACT is one. It is a network that works on peace and life, and it is transnational/global;
• Peace for Life is a transnational/global institute out of the Philippines;
• Interfaith Institute for Justice and Social Movements (out of Canada);
• Women for Genuine Security, a California-based network where most of its member are young Asian American women;
• Gabriela Network;
• Presbyterian Church networks that connect the Presbyterian Church and its network;
• Other professional networks, especially that are global.

Questions about networks to ask people could include: What does this do for me? What do I have to do to make it work? Women are so busy that a common question is: What more do you want from me? We often hear a critique: you in the United States like to network with us, but what are you doing in your own community? What is the function of networks in the North? How do they help our work on the ground, in both a global and a local context? What is useful for you?

The women we tend to identify are so connected already, they are on everyone’s list. We need to ask if what will serve us will help us to know what will serve them.