As part of 8M, International Women's Day, the OAR is bringing back different resources featuring women. In recent years, women from different religious and spiritual confessions and faiths have played a leading role in activities, videos and interviews with the goal of fostering dialogue, sharing their reality and lending visibility to their claims.
Many of the activities, interviews, articles and partnerships organised by the OAR have featured women. In recent years, the OAR has fostered the increasing visibility of women, who have become the voice, eyes and opinion of different issues related to religious and spiritual pluralism with the goal of serving as mouthpieces and sharing women’s perspective. Some of these activities include the following:
The two editions of the ‘Fe(r) i dones’ conference, organised by the OAR and the Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Pedralbes, sought to boost women’s visibility and celebrate their role in different faiths and beliefs. The two organisations’ partnership around women and spirituality started in 2019 with the activity entitled ‘Women and religions: Spirituality as a meeting point’, which consisted of four meetings behind closed doors with women of different religious and spiritual faiths from Barcelona, which allowed for an exchange of the current experiences, needs, expectations and interests of women with different faiths and spiritualities. This project culminated with a closing ceremony in November of the same year. The ‘Fe(r) i dones’ conferences revolve around the themes of women and religion/spirituality, but each edition focuses on a specific topic. The first one, whose subtitle was ‘Texts/Rituals/Transmission’, examined how religious texts, rituals and transmission in different traditions are viewed and experienced from a woman’s perspective. The participants in the 2021 edition included renowned thinkers who are experts on studying their traditions and on reflecting on the role and value of women in them. Internationally prominent figures participated, including Lama Guelongma Tsondru, Teresa Forcades and Asma Lamrabet. The second edition, which was subtitled ‘Communities as agents of change’, focused on communities of women. The community perspective featured prominently in the debates at the conference, which focused on reflecting on how women with different beliefs and faiths organise themselves and act in the community sphere with a transformative perspective. The event was co-chaired by Montse Castellà Olivé, the chair the previous year, and Jenabou Dembaga, and women from local, international and virtual communities were given centre stage.
‘The Violet Hour: Feminist gathering space’ at the Francesca Bonnemaison Library is a space to talk, share, learn, question and be questioned, and to gain new perspectives that help to fight the heteropatriarchal society in which we live, a space for unlearning what we have been taught from girlhood and learn what has been concealed from us. It is a space for networking and accepting diversity. Specifically, the session on ‘Feminism and religion: Two incompatible realities?’, organised in conjunction with the OAR, shared the experiences, testimonials and debate of two women who shared their viewpoints as feminists of faith. This enabled the audience to grasp how feminist proposals are articulated in different religious traditions and deconstructed stereotyped images of feminist and religious women.
The thematic monograph on ‘Female figures from the religious traditions’ in both editions emerged from the constant calls for the importance of female figures and women’s major contributions to all religious and spiritual traditions, which the social imaginary has often rendered invisible or silenced.
Many women have participated in the different series and monographs organised both by the OAR and in conjunction with the office, such as the #Barxiluna activities and the various editions of the ‘Transits: Music of the Spirit’ series with the Museu de la Música. One clear example of the latter is the session ‘Magal Porokhane, a festival featuring women’. Find the materials from #Barxiluna and the #Trànsits series HERE.
Barcelona’s Interreligious and Interfaith Dialogue Groups (GDIs), promoted by City Council, are spaces where people linked to various beliefs and faiths in a specific region can gather so they can to meet to spotlight and lend visibility to religious pluralism in the city, defend the right to religious freedom and freedom of thinking and conscience, break down prejudices against these traditions and improve social cohesion in the area. The Women’s Interreligious and Interfaith Dialogue Group was created within this initiative as a cross-cutting space where women from different religious and spiritual traditions can engage in dialogue about topics of mutual interest and promote joint initiatives in the city.
Some of the materials generated by or which feature women include:
#FeRiDones conference, first edition:
- Live video of the panel discussion on ‘Reflections and dialogue: Reading, doing and transmitting with women at the core’.
- Video summarising the conference.
- Article summarising the conference.
#FeRiDones conference, second edition:
- Video presenting the women from the communities participating in the reflection circles.
- Conclusions of the reflection circles.
- Video of the lecture ‘We all walk this path together: Islam, gender, sexuality and justice’ by Amina Wadud.
- Video of the online panel discussion ‘Inspiring communities’.
- Video of the Instagram conversation between Jenabou Dembaga and Chaimaa Boukharsa, Muslim, feminist and activist content creator.
- Video of the Instagram conversation between Jenabou Dembaga and Elisa Fernanda Barreto, founder of ‘No la típica feminista’ [Not the Typical Feminist].
- Article on Spiritual women in community: The example of the evangelical church’.
Women and religions, spirituality as a meeting point:
- Video summarising the gathering ‘Women and religions, spirituality as a meeting point’.
- Short video of the conference on ‘Women and religions, spirituality as a meeting point’.
- Article on the closing ceremony of the conference on ‘Women and religions, spirituality as a meeting point’.
Interviews:
- Interview with Montse Castellà i Olivé, chair of the first edition of #FeRiDones.
- Interview with Asma Lamrabet, participant in the first #FeRiDones conference.
- Interview with Jenabou Dembaga Susoko, co-chair of the second edition of #FeRiDones along with Montse Castellà.
- Interview with Amina Wadud, keynote speaker at the second edition of #FeRiDones.
- Interview with Lurdes Casanovas, member of Dones Creients Alcem la Veu [Women Believers Raising our Voices], an organisation which is asking the Catholic Church to take women into account when participating, deciding, sharing opinions and leading.
- Interview with Mayson Douas of the ‘Entierro Digno’ [Dignified Burial] association as part of the #Barxiluna ‘Cemeteries’ activity.
- Interview with Gemma Celigueta, member of the Research Group on Indigenous and Afro-American Cultures (CINAF) and participant in the panel discussion on ‘Religions and democracies: Perspectives and dialogues on governance and religion’ (Biennial of Thought).
It is also worth highlighting that the OAR has organised different trainings on ‘Gender perspective and equality measures for organisations’ with Barcelona City Council’s Department of Gender Services and Time Use Policies, with the goal of sharing the basic concepts of gender equality, providing tools and strategies to include gender equality in organisations and religious communities and fostering the exchange of good practices among the participating organisations.