[Original in French]
| Final
report of the Paris Workshop is available
in the Documents
section (only in French) |
On November 10 and 11, 2003, a workshop
focussing on exchanges and reflections took
place in Paris in presence of 13 women and
one man participant (and 2 observers for
part of the workshop). The participants
were from the following countries : Germany,
Greece, France, Italy, Peru, Portugal, Québec
(Canada), Sénégal.
Invited under the theme «Women and
solidary economy : skills used and developed
by women in their practices of solidary
economy and the repercussions of these practices
in the local environment», this workshop
didn't permit to deepen the question to
our satisfaction but has raised many other
questions related to the specificities of
the initiatives developed by women.
The initiatives of which we talked about
are born in contexts where the women lived
one or the other, or even a combination
of the following situations : being excluded
of the usual «circuits» of productions
and exchanges, interested to combine their
domestic responsibilities with the quest
of other aspirations, forced to take over
the well-being of their families. As one
of the participants mentioned it at the
beginning, it is «in the margins»
that these women's initiatives are developed.
A question remain : How do we make do we
extract them from this margin? If the expressed
ideas of for answering this question could
have dragged us toward fruitful exchanges,
we postponed the deepening of this theme
to another moment.
Other themes that didn't fail to emerge
are those of local and terrritorial development
and the relation to collective action. If
for some of us, the initiatives are primarily
women's collective initiatives, several
conceive the relation to the «collective»
as related to the process and the method,
with results that could possibly be translated
in individual initiatives within a process
of collective development (local or territorial).
So the capacity to undertake (be an entrepreneur)
appears differently according to the context
in which these women organize the means
to satisfy their aspirations.
The exchanges that were held in small working
groups reflected their composition. Nevertheless
the 3 groups have underlined that the recognition
and the development of the expertises of
the women had to be sustained by an adequate
accompaniment, which accompaniement doesn't
appear in the usual (formal) means of support
of collective enterprises. Thus, the accompaniment
and its requirements become an expertise
in itself to develop or already developed
by women.
If the meaning given to words constitute
in itself an object to be clarified in order
to pursue some progress of the analyses,
the workshop didn't choose to dedicate a
lot of time to it, letting the participants
express the whole diversity of their ways
of conceiving things. So under the expression
«strategic skills», recognized
inadequate (insatisfaisante) because of
its proximity to the military vocabulary,
we talked about a variety of knowledges
and skills (already acquired or to be developed)
: those that emerge from «inside»
of the persons and express themselves in
the articulation of the collective work
and those that express themselves toward
the outside in the relations to powers (political,
social, etc.) and even in the power relations
within the families and the communities,
etc. Belonging mainly to the domain of the
immaterial, the capacities to put on strategies
to articulate processes and methods of collective
work appeared to be primordial.
If the knowledges and technical skills
are essential in several domains and maybe
more and more in the society being internationalized
(even globalized), the recognition and acquisition
of value (valorisation) of the skills and
knowledges specific to women and women's
collectives necessitate adequate processes.
In addition, new knowledges and expertises
may be acquired while taking support on
a suitable accompaniment, respectful ot
the rythms, the priorities and the values
of the women being concerned..
This workshop has been followed by multiple
exchanges between the participants either
to learn more about the experiences that
had only been mentioned during the meeting
or to explore possible new collaborations.
It has also been followed of a workshop
during the European Social Forum to which
10 among us participated. Eleven (11) other
participants mainly from France, but also
from Belgium and Sénégal,
joined us in the workshop to exchange on
«women and solidary economy».
Did new relations emerge between participants
attracted by a theme that brought us together?
Cécile Sabourin
For the «women and economy»
Workshop
