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(en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #33 - The Women's Revolution in Rojava - Mara Mariani (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Date Thu, 10 Apr 2025 09:34:15 +0300


January 26, 2025 marked the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Kobane, a city that is a symbol of the resistance of Kurdistan in Syria. ---- The city of Kobane, in the Rojava region, is the beating heart of an innovative and revolutionary political experiment that, starting from what was developed by the leader of the PKK Abdullah Ocalan, who took up the libertarian vision of the American philosopher Murray Bookchin, has allowed the creation of a social model within which the liberation of women becomes a fundamental and inalienable element to create a society truly free from all slavery, a society that bases its roots on the principles of feminism, social ecology and libertarian municipalism that transcends the state and takes the name of Democratic Confederalism.
Equality between women and men is a fundamental choice in this model, which contrasts with the patriarchal social model, the historical oppression of men over women, and is based on absolute equality of rights and participation in public life.
It is an essential choice that is at the very basis of the Confederalism model which moves in the rejection of the logic of power and oppression between peoples and individuals because, as stated by Ocalan himself, "a society where women are oppressed is not a free society"
And precisely with the support and indications of Ocalan, the women of the Kurdish movement have laid the foundations of the women's revolution that today thrives in Rojava: in the mountains of Kurdistan they have created their own combat units (we cannot fail to remember the resistance of the Kurdish guerrillas in the fight against ISIS) their own academies, their own party, they have rediscovered their own norms and values especially through the development of an all-female philosophy such as Jineology.
Jineology or "science and paradigm of women" is a neologism derived from the Kurdish word jiin which means woman, and logos, from the Greek word, but jin has the same linguistic root as the word jiyan, which means life. Therefore, jineology should not be understood only as the science of women, but of life, of society as a whole that expresses itself with a new accessible language that aims to dismantle the concept of "homo economicus" (pillar of Western economic rationality) as the dominant actor of social relations.
Through jineology, a rereading of science, knowledge and history is carried out, revealing the unnaturalness of patriarchy (with all that came from it), which ousted the first ancient evolved societies that were matriarchal and that did not implement the social and gender divisions that we are all accustomed to today with the government of men who, instead, have monopolized all forms of power and oppression, especially towards women.
Oppression that, according to jineology, has been imposed in three ways: sexually, economically and through ideological transformations such as mythology and religion.
The starting point of Jineology is therefore to penetrate deep into history and look for the point where women were "made to disappear" to give rise to the patriarchal model that is still prevalent today, and, at the same time, recover the holistic vision of the world prevalent in matriarchal societies to apply it to science so as to allow a development of knowledge that is never disconnected from society and nature, but that responds to its ethics, its needs and the objective of rebuilding the balance between woman-nature-society.
In this perspective, the field of ecology becomes fundamental and environmental issues must be considered in their social, economic, political and cultural context. Protecting the environment is a question of true self-defense of society since the destruction of the environment represents a threat to life on earth. In this sense, ecology is understood as "social ecology" because ecological problems cannot be solved without addressing the problems of society.
Through Jineology, a new social paradigm is then developed that is expressed in social models based on inclusiveness and the "double apical"; that is, gender equality implies that all top positions are held by a man and a woman, starting from the neighborhood assembly.
This has led to a gender revolution in which a first concrete testimony was already had in 2014 when an Alevi Kurdish woman for the first time in modern times was appointed Prime Minister of the Canton of Afrin, one of the three autonomous cantons of Rojava. But that is not enough, in fact, in that same period as many as 75% of Kurdish women had become politically active and had joined various organizations, breaking the chains of the traditional society of those territories.
A true gender revolution that has developed its vision of society through the promulgation of new laws and in the practices of concrete sharing of power.
Regarding the first point, the new laws have banned polygamy, unilateral divorce and marriage at a young age; as regards the management of power, the system, already mentioned, of co-presidency with a woman and a man in all positions, from the local level to the confederation level, is adopted in the institutions.
Furthermore, from the neighborhood to the cantonal level, we find institutions for women only because it is considered fundamental to create new mutual relationships through the establishment of independent female bodies in every sector of society so that they can escape the influence of men, seek solutions to their problems and needs and carry on the fight against patriarchy with greater awareness and cohesion.
The strong push of women to free themselves from emotional, physical and psychological dependence on the male has led to a greater awareness of the same able to solve problems and carry out projects.
One of the proposals of the Kurdish feminist movement in Rojava was to find a place that was a female laboratory of citizenship and self-government, an ecological village made by women for women: thus in 2018 Jinwar was born, the place of free women, a village that is configured as a nucleus of houses built with mud bricks, straw and earth plaster in order to create social and ecological connections based on the use of local natural resources, because that idea of respect for nature that is at the base of the fundamental social ecology is always present in the vision of democratic confederalism. The Jinwar collective, which welcomes women fleeing from situations of violence, but also simply women who want to live an all-female experience, proclaims itself anti-authoritarian, self-organized and dedicated to food self-sufficiency. The women's academy, led by women with women, is also located within the village. The power and revolutionary scope of a people who, especially in a context like the Middle East, decide to self-organize by practicing social models that question consolidated hierarchies (of state, class, gender) is evident, and it is equally evident how in this revolution women have had, and still have, a role of fundamental importance.

http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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