Patricia Daniel is senior lecturer in social development at the Centre for International Development and Training, University of Wolverhampton, England. She is currently involved in a study on gender, peace and stability in Mali, in collaboration with the University of Bamako and the Centre for Democracy and Development in Lagos. She has also blogged for 50.50. Her website is here.

Recent articles

In her second report from Women's Worlds 2008, Patricia Daniel explores women and the global economy: New Zealander Marilyn Waring argues feminists must develop a new economic paradigm, and Sonía Parella Rubio examines a global care crisis.

Another wonderful speaker, New Zealander Marilyn Waring renowned academic, formerly the youngest member of the NZ parliament, anti-nuclear campaigner and currently gender advisor to the Solomon Islands, updated for us her seminal work from 1988: Counting for nothing - what men value and what women are worth.

In the first of two reports from Women's Worlds 2008, held in Madrid 3^rd-9^th July, Patricia Daniel is taken from Cambodia to Egypt, through moving presentations from Somaly Mam and Nawal el-Saadawi.

Held every three years since 1981, the international interdisciplinary forum Women's Worlds continues to flourish: located each time in a different capital, it has travelled across the five continents and more than 40,000 people from over one hundred countries have taken part. It provides the opportunity to explore all areas of academic study - and of life itself - from a feminist perspective. In Madrid there were discussions on fourteen different themes, with 130 invited speakers and hundreds of other contributions in exchange workshops every afternoon. This tenth event took as its overall theme "New frontiers: changes and challenges" and its slogan, open to a number of interpretations: "Equality is no utopia."

by Patricia Daniel

I think it's worth recalling the origin of the international day for the elimination of violence against women. It actually commemorates the assassination of three sisters, members of the underground working to depose the dictator Trujillo, on the 25^th of November 1960 in the Dominican Republic.

The picture shows a mural of the Mirabal sisters, called ‘Song of Liberty', on the seafront in Santo Domingo. It was painted on an obelisk erected by Trujillo and thereby subverts him in more ways than one.

The collective code-name for the three sisters was las mariposas (butterflies) which gave the title to a 1998 novel based on their experiences "In the time of butterflies" by Julia Alvarez.

This was later (in 2001) turned by and with Salma Hayek into a movie which was doubtless further romanticised.

But still, how often do we have the chance to see a strong female role model in the cinema these days? Even Joe Queenan has said: "I think women need to start their own film industry: this (mysognynist) one isn't working."

November 25th was initially declared International Day Against Violence Against Women at the first Feminist Encuentro for Latin America and the Caribbean held in Bogotá, Colombia, July 1981. Almost twenty years later, in 1999, thanks to lobbying from the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University in the US, the special significance of November 25^th was officially recognized by the United Nations.

by Patricia Daniel

I'd recommend the film Brick Lane based on Monica Ali's book (which I haven't read).

It's a salutary reminder of the everyday violence which is visited on so many women because decisions about their future, their behaviour and their aspirations, are made by other people - family, community, religious representatives and so on. No wonder the making of the film caused a little controversy among those same (male) community leaders in Brick Lane.

A reclaimed feminism can illuminate the ways that binary thinking flattens the diversity of people's lives and thus does violence to their effort to reclaim themselves, says Patricia Daniel.