Newsletter of the Asian Women's Resource Centre for Culture and Theology
Vol. 13, No. 1, April 2008

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Evaluation Report of the YWDT Network

We, the young women of the AWRC, would like to share the story of our journey with the Young Women Doing Theology (YWDT) network. The YWDT network of AWRC has been in existence for almost four years now. We felt that it is essential to evaluate our journey together to: assess if we are on the right track; analyse if we are serving a purpose and creating an impact on ourselves, on each other, and in our communities; and to focus and plan our future thrust.

To carry out this evaluation process we devised an evaluation form with three questions: 

1. What is the impact of the YWDT workshops for you/in your life? 
2. Why do you feel you are part of this Network? How/why is this significant in your journey? 
3. How can we sustain the YWDT Network as a continuing “ekklesia of wo/men”? Give suggestions.

This report is a compilation of all the reflections shared by the YWDT members in their evaluation forms. This report is to be shared with all the YWDT members, the CTM and members of AWRC and AWRC’s funding partners. 

Background

How the YWDT was initiated and formed

The desire to have a space for young women in the AWRC network was expressed at the Feminist Theology seminar in Jan 2004. We were challenged at the Coordinating Team Members (CTM) meeting of AWRC in May 2004 to think for ourselves what we wanted out of AWRC as young women of the AWRC network. In response to the challenge, we presented what we thought we needed as young women doing theology. The CTM accepted the need for such a network and asked us to plan.

Objectives

The purpose and rationale for the YWDT to be formed were presented as the following: 

1. To create and develop young women leadership in the AWRC membership.
2. To encourage and sustain young women leadership in the efforts towards doing feminist theologies in Asia. 
3. To create critical feminist consciousness through a praxis of critical feminist theology of liberation among the young women leadership group and network. 
4. To promote and continue the need for a critical feminist reading and interpretation of the Bible.
5. To use the “Dance of liberation and transformation” to reflect critically on our lives for liberation and transformation.

Membership constituency

The YWDT hoped to include young (25-45 years old) women from different constituencies who were involved in doing theology like the following:

Activities

Young women in AWRC have always been an important part of all programs and the life of AWRC. Different young women have been attending various programmes at different points of time. This has been more intentionally done with the formation of YWDT in 2004. Many new young women have been brought into this network with each program and it is still growing in number.

We had two programs that were conducted by and for the YWDT: 

1. January 2006, KL, Malaysia: We gathered for 2 days prior to AWRC’s history workshop to share our social biographies and to bond together as a group for the first time. We were also participants of the history workshop. 
2. August 2007,Tainan, Taiwan: Doing Theology from the perspective of the Body [Our stories, self and sexuality] 

Evaluation

We would like to reflect on and evaluate our YWDT journey in terms of three areas where we feel we have been influenced and impacted, namely: 

Our journey as critical Subject Selves

The YWDT has become a space for the development of a critical self. AWRC provided the support, space and resources for the YWDT to be exposed to a critical feminist framework for analysing our lives and selves. 

We have learnt to critically reflect on our own lives individually and as a group. The critical analysis of our life stories has become the basis for our active theologizing. AWRC has continually been an agent in challenging young women to think for ourselves as ‘subject selves’.
YWDT is always involved in conceiving, planning, and conducting what we want for ourselves in our activities. In this process we already exercise leadership as young women, which is critical, liberating, empowering and shared. 

Our journey as a network

Young women doing critical feminist theology of liberation and transformation

In YWDT we challenge one another to move beyond traditional theology. We engage in critical thinking/questioning to deepen and sharpen our analysis of our selves, our faith, our ideologies and our involvements. The methodology of the “Dance of liberation and transformation” has provided us with the tools for critical analysis. The subject for our theologizing is our experiences. We continually seek ways to move forward by critical questioning. 

For all of us in the YWDT this has become a very real, warm, safe space that sustains us in all our individual and professional struggles as women in Asia. While this is a comfortable space, it is also a space where we critique each other, learn from each other and grow both as subject selves and as a group involved in critical resistance and struggle. We push each other to be critical, vigilant and accountable. In the YWDT we recharge our energies for our struggles for liberation and transformation.

Ongoing sustenance: YWDT e-network

As a way to sustain our support for each other in our journey we have created an e-space for ourselves at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ywdt_awrc/. When we need support from the group in our individual struggles back home, we come to this space to share our struggles and sustain each other. We do not only share but seek critique, debate and clarifications for where we are in our journeys.

We recognize that it is not easy to be critical subject selves in isolation. Hence we need each other’s support and solidarity.

Our future journey as a network

As YWDT we feel the need to continue to build this space because we have very few other spaces for meeting and solidarity. 

Towards this end some suggested action plans are: 

1. Visiting and experiencing the life and work of others in the network. 
2. Sharing reading resources that are critical, analytical and transformative.
3. Coming together every year.
4. Having a newsletter to express ourselves.
5. Building a resource bank for all of us to draw from – e.g. writings, cultural expressions, liturgies.
6. Continuing the e-group.
7. Clarifying and sharpening our vision, mission and praxis as a network.

The YWDT also seeks to expand itself to include more young women in this journey of becoming subject selves involved in struggles for liberation and transformation. 

Some suggested ideas for expansion are: 

1. Forming local YWDT groups in our countries/ regions (some have already started).
2. Having joint programmes with young women in other ecumenical organisations like WSCF-AP Women, CCA Women etc. 

The dynamics of our meetings and ways of working together and sharing responsibility are affirmed as good feminist praxis that we will like to build on. The responsiveness to always be conscious of and build on the evolving group dynamics was also affirmed as a good point to keep in mind while running future meetings/programs. 

Many members have taken ownership of the network as expressed in this way: “To keep the continuity of this group each of the members has a commitment to build and keep this network.” 

However we also want to recognise that each of us is at a different level and we may require workshops of a more basic nature to inculcate feminist consciousness and critical thinking.

Summary

The evaluation has revealed that the YWDT has filled a crucial purpose by becoming a space for the development of a critical self. It has been a place where everyone in the network learnt to critically reflect on our own lives individually and as a group. It has become a space that has enabled the exercising of critical feminist leadership. By planning and running our own workshops we exercise leadership as young women that is, critical, liberating, empowering and shared.

By engaging in critical thinking and questioning the YWDT has helped to deepen and sharpen our analysis of our selves, our faith, our ideologies and our involvements. It has become a space to express solidarity as well as critical and constructive dissent that fosters the growth of each person as a critical subject self as well as the growth of the group involved in critical resistance and struggle. Through the YWDT we have recognized that it is not easy to be critical subject selves in isolation and we therefore push each other to be critical, vigilant and accountable. Many members have taken ownership of the network.

As YWDT we feel the need to continue to build this space because we have very few other spaces for meeting and solidarity. To this end the YWDT seeks to expand itself to include more young women to join this journey of becoming subject selves involved in struggle for liberation and transformation. 

Compiled and written by Jessica Richard, Anna Marsiana, Woon Yoke Heng, Clare Law, Yong Ting Jin

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Women Doing Theoloy

The Women Doing Theology Workshop of the World Student Christian Federation – Asia Pacific (WSCF-AP) was held on November 13-19, 2007 in Seoul, South Korea on the theme “Women & Sexuality: Transcending Boundaries & Embracing Inclusiveness”.

17 young women from Asia and the Pacific participated in the said workshop, representing the national Student Christian Movements of Australia, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, Timor Leste and Thailand. Also there were representatives from SCA, Ecumenical Youth Council of Korea and Hanshin University of Korea. The workshop was hosted by the Korean Student Christian Federation (KSCF).

The intent of the workshop was 

Apart from the participants’ sharing of their own stories, we also had Yong Ting Jin – Feminist Theologian and Coordinator of the Asian Women’s Resource Centre for Culture and Theology (AWRC) in Malaysia, HyeRan Kim-Cragg – senior friend of KSCF and visiting professor of Hanshin University, Korea, Michael Wallace – General Secretary of WSCF-IRO, Geneva, and Sunita Suna – Regional Women’s Coordinator of WSCF-AP, Hong Kong, to facilitate this workshop.

Sharing of Her Story was a motivating exercise, which helped the group to discuss/share their own experiences, more confidently, like “how I feel as a woman”. “How do I experience my own body, my own sexuality?” This process also helped them to name the taboo of sexuality from their own context. Ting Jin’s exercise on breaking the taboo of sexuality, helped the group to understand how our body & sexuality belong to someone else – to family, to husband, to the church, to male pastors, to the Bible, to the institutions. 

The group exercise on Church, religion, scriptures and sexuality, led them to critically analyse “What do the church/temple, religion/Christianity, Bible/scriptures say to women about sexuality? What are our positive and negative experiences?” Ting Jin explained the relationship between “my sexuality” and “my self” based on the stories. She said, “I’m not totally liberated if you’re not – we need to get liberated together!!” 

HyeRan Kim-Cragg’s paper on Women’s Sexuality (Socio-cultural and political implications) covered a range of female sexuality. This also covered the Judeo-Christian and biblical understandings of sexuality, the place of sexual minorities in Asian cultures and other faith traditions. At the end of her session the group could appreciate our bodies and our sexuality. 
Re-reading Judges 19 was a shocking and an eye opening experience for the group. What Ting Jin explained was a critical feminist reading of the Bible which goes beyond a woman’s perspective on the text as it was an act of terror and violence on women that the power clash is between men whereby the woman becomes an object/victim. 

The Exposure programme: The group went for an ‘exposure’ to two different places to find out how women’s body/sexuality is abused and violated as an object of pleasure. 

I – Durebang – “My Sister’s Place”, women living within camp towns [the towns which surround the US military camp in Seoul] – hiring women for prostitution and trafficking of foreign women for the sex industry. 

II – House of Sharing (Comfort Women) – The Korean women were used as sex slaves (Comfort Women) during and after World War II, which was occupied by the Japanese Military at that time.

Michael Wallace also led us in a Bible study on partnership between women and men, by discussing on the texts from the model of women and men in partnership (Genesis 16:1-6; Matthew 28:10-10; 1 Samuel 1:1-8; Acts 18:1-26, especially vv 24-26) 

Finally the WDT was concluded with the affirmation that we had looked at our stories, the construction of our sexuality from people and forces outside our bodies and how they want to control our sexuality. Therefore we need to deconstruct by breaking taboos then reconstruct our sexuality.

Some excerpt from the reflection of the participants: 

“This workshop has helped me to construct my sexuality”. “I want to love myself as a woman”. “I love my personality, no matter how it is in people’s eyes.”

“I feel free by sharing my/our taboos...I realised a lot of things while sharing our experiences as woman.”

“I am perfect the way I am, and no one else has the right to tell me what I should look like.”

“I Love my body and embrace my sexuality the way it is.”

Report by Sunita Suna
Regional Women’s Coordinator, WSCF-AP

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Statement of Unity

BabaLa (Babae Laban sa Katiwalian)

Representing Filipino women from various fields and political persuasions, we stand together with the Filipinos in the search for truth, responsibility and justice amidst the turmoil currently besetting the nation.

We express our deep outrage at a woman, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, whose presidency has evolved into arguably the most fascist, dishonest, corrupt, cynical and morally degenerate in this country's history. She has betrayed the great and resplendent tradition of heroism and integrity of women leaders and shamelessly disgraced the Filipino people.

While most mothers teach their children the value of honesty, this one has taught her family and country the enjoyment of corruption and lies. She has channeled monies originally intended for education, health services, housing programs and other such basic needs that any human being desperately needs, into the pockets of her family and cronies.

While most women teach their students the value of responsibility, this former economics teacher and current Commander-in-chief has yet to account for charges of electoral fraud, corruption, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and the economic dispossession of many of our people.

Whistleblower Jun Lozada's recent detailed account of Malacañang's trail of insatiable greed, bribes, kickbacks and brazen acts of cover-up (including kidnapping) merely exposes the latest example of Arroyo administration's penchant for evasion of responsibility and completes the picture of a decadent and desperate leadership.

As women who have consistently and proudly held the role of safeguarding the formation and upholding of positive values in society, we cannot helplessly stand back and allow Mrs. Arroyo's morally bankrupt leadership to cast away our future as a nation. We cannot allow a presidency that has survived through cheating, lying, stealing and killing.

We join the Filipino people in saying that there is nowhere for Mrs. Arroyo to go but out. Together, we aspire to a future where leaders are true models of good governance and accountability to the people. We are determined to succeed in our united fight to oust her from office now. 

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Call for Papers

We would like to issue this call for papers for our feminist theological journal in Asia, In God’s Image, for the whole year of 2008. 

(1) March 2008 is a national edition by Korean women on the theme, “women and family.” It also features the IGI 25th Anniversary and AWRC 20th Anniversary celebration which was held in January this year in Seoul, Korea.

(2) June 2008 will be a mixed and open issue. This is to give space to essays, Bible studies, reflections, poems, etc. that are already available but may not fit with the forthcoming editions with assigned themes.

Deadline: April 20, 2008. 

(3) September 2008 will be on the theme, healing & reconciliation. At a time of so much conflict and violence, it would be good to have your stories and reflections on healing and reconciliation. Feel free to write something on the following:

Deadline: June 1, 2008.

(4) December 2008 will be on the theme, women, art & theology. We specially call upon the members of our constituency and network, who are more artistically inclined, to share your unique way of theologizing through art – visual art such as painting, drawing, photography, etc.; poetry; song composing; etc. The month of December being the time of Advent and Christmas, it might be good to have a variety of forms of the nativity, mother and child, etc. 

For those who have not done any of these art forms, you may contribute your reflections on some pieces of art that have touched you, inspired you, or have aided your theologizing as Asian women. When you write your reflections, please also send a photo of the art piece and please get permission for us to publish that photo of the art piece.

Deadline: September 1, 2008.

Please send ALL your contributions to Clare Law of AWRC at igi@awrc4ct.org.

Thank you so much for your continuing support. 

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