Empowerment: More Examples!

Feminist Self Defence - Sweden

The fundamental principle of Feminist Self Defence is that all girls and women are valuable and worth defending.

Feminist Self Defence is about taking back the right to your own body, about turning fear to anger and readiness of action, about seeing solutions instead of threats.

The starting point for Feminist Self Defence is that girls and women are being exposed to boys and men's violations and violence. To add the word feminist means that we originate from girls and women's shared experiences and together work out strategies to handle threatening or offending situations.

Feminist Self Defence gives girls and women an opportunity to practise setting limits and defending themselves with their mind, voice and body.
Feminist Self Defence is designed to fit all women in all different shapes and ages and it's not about strength or technique but about a will and a feeling of being valuable.

Methods

• We use different games to relax, laugh and feel at ease in the group.
• We use different exercises to get in touch with our bodies, our feelings and our boundaries.
• We use different role-plays to work out and try strategies for solving uncomfortable or threatening situations in a safe environment.
• We use our voices, we scream and sing to learn how strong our voices actually are.
• We have discussions, reflection rounds and reflection groups to discuss topics and issues important to girls and women. Topics and issues we might not be able to deal with anywhere else.

It is important to be able to share and to learn from other girls and women's experiences.

In reflection rounds everyone gets the opportunity to speak their mind and the reflection groups give girls and women a chance to meet in smaller groups.

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Outcomes

The most important outcome of Feminist Self Defence is the empowerment of girls and women.

Feminist Self Defence provides both immediate and long term empowerment.
Participating girls and women explain how strong they feel, both mentally and physically, how good it feels to discuss things like the men's violence against women, rape, gender inequality, situations they experience in school or at work, how important it is being reminded of their right to their own feelings and the right to say no. And they just can't stop shouting No! No! No!

Feminist Self Defence heightens girls and women's awareness of their own physical strength. They get in touch with their body and experience how they can feel safe in and with their own body, how they can use their whole body to defend themselves. They get a sense of their body being a subject and not an object.

Feminist Self Defence heightens girls and women's awareness of their complex mix of identities, their intersectional identities created by their sex, gender, nationality, ethnicity, age, disability, religion, political view, class and education.

They are, for example, made aware of the role their sex and gender play by discussions about gender inequality and feminism. They are made aware of the role their nationality, ethnicity and religion play by doing role-plays together with girls and women with different backgrounds and religious beliefs.

They are made aware of the role their possible disability play by practising how to defend themselves considering the disability. This heightens girls and women's awareness of the complex mix of their identity and the influence it has on their capacities to participate in society. It gives girls and women an opportunity to take a look at the whole self.

Feminist Self Defence gives girls and women an opportunity to experience solidarity amongst women. They practise and experience the importance and strength of support to and from other girls and women. Girls and women connect to each other and to a forum where they are able to talk about issues focusing on being a woman.

Feminist Self Defence enables them to share experiences with other girls and women and to learn that although all women are different individuals we do share a lot of experiences from being women. This gives them a sense of belonging to a bigger context and an awareness of their situation and rights as girls and women in our society.

Feminist Self Defence gives girls and women access to tools for empowering themselves and other girls and women, it strengthens girls and women's self esteem and break them free from oppression, it strengthens girls and women's self confidence which helps them to overcome social or personal barriers, it raises girls and women's awareness and knowledge about their rights and how to defend their rights, it heightens girls and women's strength to participate in the society on the same conditions as boys and men, it supports the emancipation and inclusion of girls and women.

By practicing Feminist Self Defence girls and women gain power through awareness, mental and physical strength, solidarity with other girls and women, they get access to their own resources and possibilities by talking about and dealing with them in different ways, they get a bigger control over their own lives through awareness of their strengths and their rights. All this enables girls and women to reach their aspirations and goals.

And last but not least - Feminist Self Defence brings a lot of joy, laughter and happiness to the participating girls and women.

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Feminist Self Defence and young ethnic minority women

When using the method of Feminist Self Defence in groups of young ethnic minority women these women's specific situation need to be taken into account. It is important to have knowledge and awareness of the participant's backgrounds, their specific cultural situation and their ethnic and social environment and of their specific and cultural barriers and problems. It is of big importance to be extra sensible to these culturally specific issues.

When working with young ethnic minority women you might need to put an extra emphasis on certain methods in Feminist Self Defence considering the ethnic group in question. Young women from different ethnic minority groups can have different culturally specific needs, barriers and issues they need to work with, in a certain way.

Young ethnic minority women also share many problems, barriers and issues. One issue many young ethnic women have in common is the oppression and often strong control they suffer from their own family and even the whole ethnic community. In this case more time need to be spent on this problem than on, for example, boys and men's violations and violence in general.

Other shared issues can be the participant's lack of being in contact with their own body and sexuality.

Their own boundaries can be less clear and strong due to their background and ethnic environment. They can be less used to scream, shout and use their body physically. They can be less aware of their own strength. They can be less used to and less comfortable speaking their own mind and talking about their feelings in a group.

Feminist Self Defence can be an important and unique opportunity for young ethnic women to meet and share their experiences with other young women in the same or similar situation.

Feminist Self Defence can offer young ethnic women access to the bigger society, a society they can be cut of and isolated from.

It is also important to bear in mind that young women from ethnic minority groups suffer from double oppression. They suffer from the same oppression majority women do plus the culturally specific oppression. They are both women and ethnic women. This makes them extra vulnerable and in extra need of tools of empowerment.

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