In the national front Sama continues to play an active role in the autonomous women’s movement. Sama is a part of the National Coordination Committee (NCC) of National Network of Autonomous Women’s Groups (NNAWG). Sama efforts have geared towards initiating debates and discussions on health in NNAWG.
Sama was involved in coordination of the National Women’s Conference held in September 9-12, 2006 at Kolkata after a gap of 9 years. The theme for the Conference was ‘Towards a Politics of Justice: Affirming Diversities, Resisting Divisiveness’. The focal themes of the Conference were Globalization, Fundamentalism, Patriarchy and Violence. Number of workshops and parallel sessions were conducted to bring forth the issues raised under these focal themes. For members of Sama, the conference provided an opportunity and platform to gain knowledge of history of the previous conferences, the changing nature of women’s movement as reflected in issues as raised within the movement. The conference provided a common platform for women from all over India to engage in debates, voice their opinions on different issues.
Sama co-coordinated with Saheli a full day plenary under the theme identity based groups focusing on caste based issues.
Another plenary on Resistances and Strategies was coordinated by Sama, Akshara, and Jagori where Sama held a plenary addressing globalization and its impact on health and livelihoods particularly on women. Both the sessions were well attended with discussions on future strategies to address the issues related to both the issues.
The conference also held Workshop on Confronting Globalization: Struggles and Alternatives. Discussions focused on impact of globalization, fundamentalism and patriarchy on women. A skit was prepared by Sama members to reflect impact of the process of globalization on various aspects of health, poor condition of the public health system in the country, increasing costs of treatment, inclusion of user fees etc. Another Workshop was on caste based identities: Discriminations, Struggles and Challenges. Sama coordinated the parallel session on Caste, Gender and State Policy: Development, Health, Livelihoods and Economic Survival. This session included presentations and discussion on coercive population polices and their impact on the health of women from dalit and other oppressed castes; manual scavenging and the cleaning work in the municipality, which is primarily done by women from dalit, oppressed castes and minority communities. The session also included discussion about sex work as livelihood, the identity of sex workers primarily as women and discrimination and violence against women involved in sex work. The struggles by dalit women on land issues in Uttar Pradesh, loss of livelihood for dalit women due to changing patterns of work due to globalization was also presented and discussed in this session.
The main objectives of the Conference can be stated as:
- To explore the various dimensions of how gender and caste intersect, the relationship between the caste –based movements, caste based women’s groups and the women’s movement in general.
- To explore the role that the autonomous women’s movement needs to play at this intersection.
Specifically (for the session on Caste, Gender and State Policy: Development, Health, Livelihoods and Economic survival)
- To understand and discuss how various state policies affect the health, livelihood and economic domains of everyday live with respect to the caste and within it women.
- To bring forth the debates raised by state policies with specific reference to coercive population policies and caste dynamics.
Sama along with Saheli coordinated the one day identity based workshops, ‘ Caste-based Identities, Discrimination, Struggles and Challenges’ on 10th September 2006. This was one of the twelve parallel identity based workshops and included a morning plenary followed by four parallel sessions on the following themes:
- Caste, Gender and State Policy: Development, Health, Livelihoods and Economic survival
- Caste, Gender and Public Image: media stereotypes and creative counter expressions
- Caste Gender and Sexuality: control, conflict, violence and autonomy
- Caste and Women’s citizenship: democracy, reservation, education and rights