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Southern Africa Rural Women’s Assembly

3^rd Feminist School

June 29^th – July 5^th 2017

Johannesburg, South Africa

 Land, seed and labour: “women carry more than half the sky”

 This is the third feminist school of the Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA). The RWA is a movement of ordinary rural women from across Southern Africa that includes farmers, peasants, farmworkers, forest dwellers, fishers and cross border traders. Many of these rural women do not call themselves feminists but in their different realities challenge patriarchy and leads struggles for change in the everyday lives of women.

This school is an important component of our leadership and feminist formation in the RWA. One of the main objectives of the school is to deepen their understanding and analysis of the African countryside and how it is inherently linked to patriarchy and capitalism. This system of patriarchy and capitalism subordinates both women and nature. If we are to imagine another countryside, and if we are to challenge these systems of oppression we must make the invisible visible. The schools theme Land, seed and labour: “women carry more than half the sky” is an attempt to make this system of exploitation visible.

Broad objectives:

1. Build a radical African feminist analysis
2. Introduce different feminist approaches to land, seed and labour
3. Understand feminism as a praxis

Specific objectives:

• Make visible the different strategic implications of a feminist approaches to land
• Connect seed to “her”stories, “land”stories, “seed”stories and social-economic-political-ecological histories through an eco-feminist lens
• Deepen the link between waged labour and unwaged labour as central to capitalist patriarchy
• Reflect on RWA evolving approach to its work “Women as Guardians of land, seed, life and love”