Women's world: A Transnational Network of Women Writers

Abstract

Women's world (an acronym for Women's World Organization for Rights, Literature and Development) is a feministglobal free speech network formed in response to changes in the world situation that have made the lives ofwomen writers increasinglyproblematic. We began as a committee inside International pen, and some ofus remain active there. By 1994, however, we had come to feel thatanother kind oforganization was needed to develop a feminist analysis ofcensorship and to concentrate on defending women writers.1 We also wanted to work with feminist writers and editors in the Global South, few ofwhom had anything to do with pen. As we became more truly transnational, our analysis deepened. Writers from Africa, Asia, and Latin America made itclearthat cases offlagrant public persecution ofwomen writers were but the tip of the iceberg and that ifwe really wanted to fight censorship we had to combine defenseworkwith much broaderconsciousness-raising, access and empowermentprograms. TheBeijingprocess offered us an umbrella under which we could hold our first meetings and produce our first publication,2 and, at our first international conference on gender-based censorship in 1996,3 we laid out the following goals: