Learning Center Conducts Workshops on Empowerment of Women

 

By Judith Latham
Most development experts agree that improving the economic and political status of women is a key to combating the conditions that give rise to religious extremism, particularly in the Muslim world. But women and girls in Muslim-majority societies often have limited opportunities to develop the leadership skills necessary to take their rightful place in society.
Now, an organization headquartered in Washington is dedicated¹ to strengthening women's leadership, communications, and advocacy skills. Its president describes the ways that women are being helped to contribute to democracy and peace building in their nations.
Mahnaz Afkhami, president of the Women's Learning Partnership², was the former Minister of State for Women's Affairs in Iran prior to the Islamic Revolution. The author of nine books on women's human rights, civil society, and democracy, Ms. Afkhami now lives with her family in the suburbs of Washington. She says that the Women's Learning Partnership is a trans-national organization, dedicated to strengthening the role of women in decision-making across the Global South -- and especially in Muslim-majority countries.
"We co-create learning tools and manuals with our partner organizations in 20 countries," says Ms. Afkhami. "And we conduct workshops on empowerment, on enabling women to take part in decision-making, in helping³ them run for political office, in helping them manage civic⁴ organizations, and also helping our partner organizations to rebuild their capacity as civil society organizations. There are a lot of active, articulate, inspired women, but there is a need to help grow these organizations into viable⁵ organizations with credibility."
Ms. Afkhami says the Women's Learning Partnership focuses mostly on Africa, Asia, and the Middle East:
"Especially in the Middle East and North Africa, there are a huge number of women who have skills, who are trained, who are literate⁶, and who are active. But there isn't a commensurate role for them in society and in political decision-making. Especially within the family, they face extraordinary challenges. They have some of the lowest statistics in terms of involvement in decision-making. So, the combination of the potential and the challenge has inspired us to work with our partner organizations in these countries to help involve women in the process of development in democratization, in improving the human rights conditions."
The Women's Learning Partnership develops multi-media learning tools, Ms. Afkhami says, because experience has shown that people respond better to the training process when visual and audio guides accompany reading materials:
"That is why we have created videos through the institutes that we organize and the workshops that we organize. We actually videotape them and then edit them. For instance, one that we have on communication is supposed to help women do better in television interviews, radio interviews, and so forth⁷. We have samples of our members doing interviews and then critiquing each other to improve their performance and get their message across better. In addition to the training manual, we have guides to go with each video and guides to go with each audio recording⁸."
The training manual is available in 12 languages, including English. In addition, Ms. Afkhami says, there are two versions of Arabic - one for North Africa and another for Jordan and Lebanon:
"We are also developing a version of Arabic for the Gulf⁹ States. And then we have Russian, Uzbek, French, Persian, Assamese [Indic language of South Asia], and Hausa. And recently our women colleagues in Nicaragua have volunteered to produce a Spanish version. And one of our colleagues in Brazil has volunteered to work with a local organization to create a Portuguese¹⁰ [version] to make it available to parts of Africa as well.
Thus far, 3,000 women have gone though the leadership training workshops. Ms. Afkhami says that not only is it important to involve large numbers of women in decision-making, but developing a particular style of leadership is also critical.
"We don't want women to have the same leadership styles as are prevalent in the world - that is, hierarchical, authoritarian¹¹ kinds of leadership. What we want is a participatory, egalitarian kind of leadership.
The Women's Learning Partnership has just begun experimenting with electronically-based distance learning for women who cannot get to the workshops.
"There are places where women don't have an easy time coming out of their own private space and joining a public space," says Ms. Afkhami. "So, we experimented with doing an 'e-based' teaching situation. And the prototype course we did last year in fact had participants coming from 16 countries, and it was in English. Then, we adapted it to Persian. We are also planning an Arabic course as well as a Russian course that we hope to be able to implement¹² next year."
Partnership organizations from 12 countries in Asia, Africa, and Central Asia recently met in Beirut, hosted by the Machreq/Magheb Gender¹³ Linking and Information Project.
Ms. Afkhami: "It's called MACMAG GLIP for short. It is a wonderful, very active organization in Lebanon, and we worked together to create the curriculum. They organize workshops in various parts of Lebanon, and they work with different groups - working women, university women, and rural women. And they will be involved in creating the Arabic e-learning course with us as well as the videotapes in Arabic.
Mahnaz Afkhami says that designing programs for Iranian women have presented a special challenge:
"Iran is a unique case. Because of a history of some 100 years of activism and organization and advancement¹⁴, Iranian women have had a tremendous degree of success and progress that was stopped and push back by the Revolution of 1979. It is a very precarious¹⁵ situation in Iran and very difficult and unpredictable. So we don't attempt to do actual workshops in Iran. But we're hoping that the e-courses in which we do have participants will be a way of getting around that.
Women - as well as men -- in some Muslim-majority countries and among the Muslim Diaspora communities in North America and Europe are beginning to reinterpret the Qur'an. Ms. Afkhami says this process, called ijtihad, or reinterpreting Islamic principles for the 21st century, is important because it illustrates¹⁶ what rights women had at the time of the Prophet and what Islam was like in its early days:
"This is actually a very important process - the idea of looking at the text in a new way with fresh eyes and with the eyes of women who are seeking democratic participation¹⁷ and rights. We actually offer women choice. The idea is not to push for a particular interpretation¹⁸. We don't want to replace one rigid¹⁹ way of thinking with another rigid way of thinking."
Among the countries in which the Women's Learning Partnership has worked are Afghanistan, Cameroon, India, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, the Palestinian Territories, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe. For example, in Morocco, earlier this year, a new landmark²⁰ Family Law was passed supporting women's equality and granting them new rights in marriage and divorce. The minimum age of marriage is 18 for both men and women. The law was drawn²¹ up citing passages from the Qur'an to show that there is no contradiction between Islam and modernity.
注释：
trans-national 跨国的，超国界的
manual 手册，指南
decision-making 决策
civic 市民的，公民的
viable 可行的
commensurate 相称的，相当的
in terms of 根据，按照
multi-media 多媒体
videotape 录像
critique 批评
Jordan 约旦
Lebanon 黎巴嫩
Assamese 阿萨姆语
Nicaragua 尼加拉瓜
hierarchical 分等级的
authoritarian 专制的
participatory 供人分享的
egalitarian 平等主义的
Persian 波斯语
Beirut 贝鲁特（黎巴嫩首都）
curriculum 课程
precarious 不稳定的
Diaspora 犹太人散居
reinterpret 重新解释
Qur'an 古兰经
ijtihad 宗教领袖诠释伊斯兰传统教法
Prophet 先知
Cameroon 喀麦隆
Malaysia 马来群岛
Morocco 摩洛哥
Zimbabwe 津巴布韦

1 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

2 partnership   

n.合作关系，伙伴关系

参考例句：

• The company has gone into partnership with Swiss Bank Corporation.这家公司已经和瑞士银行公司建立合作关系。
• Martin has taken him into general partnership in his company.马丁已让他成为公司的普通合伙人。

3 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

4 civic   

adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的

参考例句：

• I feel it is my civic duty to vote.我认为投票选举是我作为公民的义务。
• The civic leaders helped to forward the project.市政府领导者协助促进工程的进展。

5 viable   

adj.可行的，切实可行的，能活下去的

参考例句：

• The scheme is economically viable.这个计划从经济效益来看是可行的。
• The economy of the country is not viable.这个国家经济是难以维持的。

6 literate   

n.学者；adj.精通文学的，受过教育的

参考例句：

• Only a few of the nation's peasants are literate.这个国家的农民中只有少数人能识字。
• A literate person can get knowledge through reading many books.一个受过教育的人可以通过读书而获得知识。

7 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

8 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

9 gulf   

n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂

参考例句：

• The gulf between the two leaders cannot be bridged.两位领导人之间的鸿沟难以跨越。
• There is a gulf between the two cities.这两座城市间有个海湾。

10 Portuguese   

n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语

参考例句：

• They styled their house in the Portuguese manner.他们仿照葡萄牙的风格设计自己的房子。
• Her family is Portuguese in origin.她的家族是葡萄牙血统。

11 authoritarian   

n./adj.专制(的)，专制主义者，独裁主义者

参考例句：

• Foreign diplomats suspect him of authoritarian tendencies.各国外交官怀疑他有着独裁主义倾向。
• The authoritarian policy wasn't proved to be a success.独裁主义的政策证明并不成功。

12 implement   

n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行

参考例句：

• Don't undertake a project unless you can implement it.不要承担一项计划，除非你能完成这项计划。
• The best implement for digging a garden is a spade.在花园里挖土的最好工具是铁锹。

13 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

14 advancement   

n.前进，促进，提升

参考例句：

• His new contribution to the advancement of physiology was well appreciated.他对生理学发展的新贡献获得高度赞赏。
• The aim of a university should be the advancement of learning.大学的目标应是促进学术。

15 precarious   

adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的

参考例句：

• Our financial situation had become precarious.我们的财务状况已变得不稳定了。
• He earned a precarious living as an artist.作为一个艺术家，他过得是朝不保夕的生活。

16 illustrates   

给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明

参考例句：

• This historical novel illustrates the breaking up of feudal society in microcosm. 这部历史小说是走向崩溃的封建社会的缩影。
• Alfred Adler, a famous doctor, had an experience which illustrates this. 阿尔弗莱德 - 阿德勒是一位著名的医生，他有过可以说明这点的经历。 来自中级百科部分

17 participation   

n.参与，参加，分享

参考例句：

• Some of the magic tricks called for audience participation.有些魔术要求有观众的参与。
• The scheme aims to encourage increased participation in sporting activities.这个方案旨在鼓励大众更多地参与体育活动。

18 interpretation   

n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理

参考例句：

• His statement admits of one interpretation only.他的话只有一种解释。
• Analysis and interpretation is a very personal thing.分析与说明是个很主观的事情。

19 rigid   

adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的

参考例句：

• She became as rigid as adamant.她变得如顽石般的固执。
• The examination was so rigid that nearly all aspirants were ruled out.考试很严，几乎所有的考生都被淘汰了。

20 landmark   

n.陆标，划时代的事，地界标

参考例句：

• The Russian Revolution represents a landmark in world history.俄国革命是世界历史上的一个里程碑。
• The tower was once a landmark for ships.这座塔曾是船只的陆标。

21 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。