FII Founder Japleen Pasricha was invited by the Government of Netherlands to speak on a panel at UN Women’s annual conference on Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The 61st CSW took place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 13 to 24 March 2017.
The panel titled ‘Intersectionality: An Inclusive and Effective Approach To Gender Equality‘ was organised by the Permanent Mission of The Netherlands to the United Nations. Intersectionality is a tool for analysis, advocacy and policy development that addresses intersecting inequalities. It helps us understand how different sets of identities impact on access to rights and opportunities. An intersectional approach to gender equality acknowledges the fact that women have different experiences based on aspects of their identity including race, social class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, age as well as other forms of identity.
Japleen spoke about FII and how it uses an intersectional approach in its advocacy. She also talked about FII’s new editorial policy and its focus to centre marginalised voices. She further spoke on social justice, affirmative action and gender equity and how it is different from gender equality. She stressed upon how one cannot and must not empower a community without involving them and how the revolution of the marginalised will be led by them. It was taken quite well by the audience with Japleen ending her talk to an applause.
Apart from Japleen, other people on the panel included Janet Mock, debate writer and gender rights activist, Jon O’Brien, President of Catholics for Choice (CFC) and Anthony Keedi, Program Manager at ABAAD-Resource Center for Gender Equality.
A snippet of the panel is available on Ministry of Education, Culture and Science‘s Facebook page. To view the full video of the panel, click here.
Here are some of the pictures from the session.
