Building Young Women Collectives
In the last four years, of my conscious engagement with society as a professional, youth and feminism have been the highlights. I have worked with young people in about four states of India, mostly striving to build young feminist communities in smaller pockets. The experience has been exhilarating and deeply inspiring and I would reflect on and share some of my tips, tricks, and learning in this short span of being a young feminist and engaging with young people (women and other marginalized genders) as we together build collectives.
The ‘Personal Is Political’ Realised
‘Personal is political’ as a motto is among the most difficult characteristics to bring into a collective space. When we live in a deeply mistrusting society where the ‘personal’ is considered as something to be protected and preserved – especially for women, it is a major step for women to find safety in spaces and begin with the person without feeling lesser for it. As organisations and individuals who enter women’s spaces, majorly involving closed rooms in homes and other personal spaces, it’s important to start with being vulnerable ourselves. Personal stories are the strongest binders and the first step towards forming relationships that evolve into groups and collectives.
Young women, we know, are very early on (often after puberty) forced into confined spaces (which are under constant surveillance), and over-burdened with household responsibilities. Often in response to these confinements and as a very natural silent resistance they creatively sneak out time and space to talk about their personal – while washing clothes by the river, or going to the field together (ODF is not a reality in India – thank goodness!!), cleaning their houses, getting water from the local tap, working in the field and a million other such work. It’s a privilege to be able to find your way into these personal spaces and it’s of tremendous effect to transform these personal spaces into catalysts of change. As we begin to acknowledge the need for time and space to talk and connect over personal experiences that young women have, the collective strengthens and finds its identity in the shared personal experiences.
Building Spaces Of Leisure, Joy And Comfort
In a society, defined by patriarchal, casteist, and fundamentalist lines, among the most denied opportunities for women is that of leisure and fun. Young women are often so caught up in so much reproductive work that the idea of fun and leisure becomes far-fetched for them. It is important, therefore, to build spaces of leisure and comfort for young women. Organising leisure events – like games, songs, dancing, etc. are among the most political acts of change in themselves. I, personally, enjoy making friend circles, where we play, talk, lie around without any ‘purdah’, laugh and sing, make reels, watch movies, and sometimes learn new technology, and I am very often retorted by these very girls for not having anything ‘better’ to do :-). I often learn in these circles that open, safe spaces are such a huge privilege for women and they are so scarce that these curated 2 hours of ‘playtime’ in a month are the most relaxing, rejuvenating, fun times for them. To be able to spread your body freely, laugh loudly, not bother about every piece of cloth on the body, and physically take up space is the most liberating experience.
Being able to access their own time and spaces around them is a liberating act for women and in supporting them in achieving that negotiation power, we, as external forces, can significantly shift social structures from within.
Love And Care – Central Values Of Organising
There is a lot of conversation around prioritising self-care and self-love on social media and consequently, among young people. What we fail to take into consideration, though, is the role societies and structures play in imbibing self-hatred and loathing in an individual. While we work on building young women collectives, it is essential to accept love and care as guiding factors. And when I say love, it is love in all forms. We often want to live in denial of how crucial love as an event is for young people and box it out as a personal affair. But love as an act is highly political and has deep gendered consequences. Open conversations about individual experiences of love and care should be normalized and brought into the mainstream.
Moreover, as we strive toward building collectives of young women and harnessing their leadership capacity, it is important to imbibe collective love and care as a central value. When we talk about building safe spaces and bringing in the personal, it’s only with honest emotions of care for each other and the collective, that such safe spaces can be created. Moving from self-love and self-care to community love and community care is a long journey but a crucial one to keep going on.
Understanding Power And The Complexity Of Sharing It
As external organisations and individuals working towards building youth collectives, we must reflect on our power-positionality. As an organisation, as an individual from a privileged caste, or class background, and as a facilitator, I am always holding a lot more power than the groups that I am working with. I have grown to learn that it’s healthier to acknowledge and accept that power position, and it’s important to be cognizant of one’s power to even begin the process of sharing that power. I have read and tried to educate myself about different ways of sharing power and experimented and failed also in doing so. I have, but, learned that the key is to initiate by letting the collective (or individuals within a nascent collective) take day-to-day decisions. It is important to accept the leadership of individual young women as and when they claim it and reside in the role of providing guidance, mentorship, and resources. It is important to build mechanisms of feedback for oneself as an external in the collective and constantly reflect on one’s role in different situations. While we do end up monitoring the collectives we work with, developing internal monitoring mechanisms and ensuring that the feedback system is two ways for the organisation and collective helps in sharing power to some extent.
Young Women As Decision Makers And Not Beneficiaries
Building collectives isn’t an outcome or an end product but an ongoing process and the role of young women is very crucial in this process. As organisations we tend to run on a slippery slope of running pre-decided agendas and therefore making the community an inherent beneficiary. It is, therefore, crucial to constantly ensure that agendas are set by the young women we are working with. They are the decision-makers and participants, not the beneficiary of a certain program. Agency, choice, and consent of young women leaders are crucial in the collective building process. They must set the agenda and they must build the narrative. We have built campaigns together where young women are trained in mediums like filmmaking and given access to audio-visual resources and then they have built powerful narratives about themselves and of their communities that have catalyzed seismic shifts in their lives and within their communities.
A Long Way To Go…
As a young woman myself, I work toward finding my community of people and building my own space while actively working with other young women. I have found and lost those spaces because there are constant larger social forces at play in my own life and therefore every success story is followed by a failure story. While I strive to move away from this binary I believe it’s important to stay aware of this phenomenon. Being part of such collectives has helped me not to lose hope and feel cared for. Finding safe spaces has helped me heal, recuperate, rest, and find my way back into the movement. And to be able to reciprocate and reproduce these feelings and enable such spaces for more and more young people is what the journey is finally about.