DAY 1

9:00-9:15 Opening

9:15-9:30 Overview of 2018 conference

9:30-9:45 Announcements

9:45-10:00 Opening ceremony

10:15-13:00 Session I: World War III and smashing the armor of the state and the dominant male

What are the impact of World War III, the violence of nation-states across borders and the many wars, occupations, ecological crises and pandemics, in the age of women’s revolution? Two opposing fronts have emerged: the patriarchal system’s war against women and women’s anti-system resistance. The dominant system continues its physical attacks, whilst developing new methods and policies to undermine the women’s resistance front. It aims to render invisible the main contradiction of the 21st century. What can be done on the women’s front in this age of crises and wars?

1. State violence over society and women – its whip, the dominant male

The policies of the patriarchal system aim to draw women’s struggle into systemic reformism (e.g. through focus on access to legal rights). How can we weave an alternative line of struggle against this? How did the pandemic, which the patriarchal system took advantage of to implement policies
of society-cide, aff ect women’s struggle? This process not only deepened existing control and power mechanisms but also paved the way for more violence against women. To what extent did this process aff ect recent achievements? How can the women’s struggle, which will characterize the 21st century, come out of this crisis?

As seen in Afghanistan, Ukraine-Russia, Libya, Azerbaijan-Armenia, and the wars in Kurdistan and globally, the desire of imperialist powers to accumulate power continues, including by way of “hot” wars and occupations. How do these wars aff ect women? How do migration and demographic change aff ect women’s cultural, social and economic existence? Can women build a third way against the politics of war? Can the pursuit of peace and anti-war struggles undermine the calculations of the state system?

2. Ecocide: Dismantling domination, dispossession, oppression. The subordination and colonization of nature, and the ruthless appropriation and exploitation of resources

Struggles against the ecological destruction of the patriarchal-capitalist system defi ne the character of our current age. The ecological crisis has come onto humanity’s agenda as the most urgent global crisis. This crisis, which is directly related to capitalism, constantly produces violence against women. The liberation of women and the recovery of our planet from this catastrophic state are entwined struggles. How can we raise awareness of the idea that the fi ght against ecological crisis should be a fundamental principle of the struggle against the patriarchal system? How do women resist the life-threatening practices of multinational corporations and new forms of colonialism across diff erent geographies of the world?

3. Visibilising invisible labor: The survival of the system is based on women’s unpaid and low-paid labour

The state, class-based civilization, and the fi rst exploitation of labor, were all built on women’s bodies, labor and creativity. In the capitalist stage of this civilization, women’s labor is more deeply exploited and rendered even more invisible. For this reason, the class struggle is another area that is
as important as women’s political struggles against racism, war and colonialism. How can we create a perspective of struggle that will manage to overcome this reality of women, those whose labor is reduced to the lowest level on the ‘capitalist market’, who are condemned to work under the worst conditions, who are the fi rst to be laid off and whose domestic labor is made invisible? Is it possible to conduct class struggle on the axis of women’s liberation, in order to eliminate the fundamental basis of capitalist exploitation? What are our ideological foundations for this perspective? To what extent has the presence of women in class struggles developed this perspective?

13:00-14:45 Lunch Break

14:45-17:00 Session II: Workshops

1. We need a resistance front against forced migration, and for the right of people to live where they choose - one that promotes the protection and liberation of one’s land, instead of focusing solely on women’s problems arising from forced migration. How can we organize a resistance that shows the solidarity necessary to meet the needs that arise?

2. How can we ensure that existing political, cultural and economic movements, organizations and institutions (both statefocused and outside the state system) have content that focuses on women’s freedom?
3. What can we do in the fi eld of health? Health is one of the areas where patriarchy dominates by seizing, ignoring or appropriating women’s creations. How can we develop an alternative understanding and practice of medicine - one that is not in service of the capitalist profi t motive but can be organized according to society’s needs?
4. What is needed for an alternative understanding of the economy that can curb capitalism’s excessive greed for profi t? We have developed experiences of alternative economy on a small scale around the world and outside of the capitalist market. What kind of a path should we follow to organize them?
5. What should be women’s approach to the ecological struggle? How can we develop an ecological struggle that includes the freedom of society and gender?
6. Women often play the role of carriers of culture and language. They hold humanity’s memory. Against the hegemony of certain languages under capitalism, what can be done to revitalize local languages that bear the traces of moral and political community values?
7. Women in the struggles against racism, nationalism and fascism; the need for an antifascist women’s front.
8. Education. To lead the women’s struggle, it is necessary have xwebun, a philosophy of life and self-knowledge. It’s aim is the radical rejection of all of the norms and codes imposed on women. One of the most important tools for achieving this is for women to establish their own self education systems. How have the experiments, methods and alternative pedagogies developed by women in diff erent parts of the world contributed to women’s struggle?

19:00-21:00 Concert