Meral Çiçek speaks on the role of women in today's Kurdistan

Women are playing a strong leading role in the articulation of a Kurdistan autonomous region which includes a political project in democratic confederalism. They also play an essential role in fighting against the Islamic State. On 7 July, Meral Çiçek spoke on this subject at the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts.

01/07/2015

On 7 July at 12 noon the conference hall of the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts played host to a conference by Meral Çiçek, President of the Kurdish Centre for Women's Affairs in Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan).

The event formed part of the project entitled "Escampant la llavor: revolució feminista kurda i epistemologies radicals" (Spreading the Seed: the Kurdish feminist revolution and radical epistemologies), financed by the Antipode Foundation and coordinated by Maria Rodó-de-Zárate, researcher of the UAB Geography and Gender Research Group. The project received the Scholar-Activist Project Award 2015.

Kurdistan, the world's largest nation without a state, is currently fighting the advances of the Islamic State in the Middle East. At the same time, in 2013 it declared a Kurdish autonomous region in northern Syria (Rojava). In this region, a specific political project based on democratic confederalism is being put into application, in which gender equality is one of the main elements, together with communitarianism and the ecology.

Women's movements play a crucial role in this process by contributing to the construction of autonomous spaces for women, to the development of new forms of knowledge production, to different levels of political organisation and self-defence units, women guerilla fighters who play a leading role in the fight against the Islamic State and were essential in freeing the town of Kobani in 2014.

More information: Geography and Gender Research Group