Aims and content of the 10th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women Mundos de Mujeres/Women´s Worlds, 2008
One of the main challenges of the new century is, without a doubt, that of attaining equality between men and women in all walks of life while at the same time acknowledging the many diversities that distinguish us. For the Complutense University of Madrid, hosting the Mundos de Mujeres/Women´s Worlds Congress is not only a great honour and opportunity, it is also one of the biggest challenges in the University's recent history. Under the slogan “Equality is not a utopia”, this tenth Mundos de Mujeres/Women's Worlds event will focus on the fundamental problems and issues affecting women's lives – indeed all our lives – today. Its general theme “New frontiers: advances and challenges” encompasses a whole range of issues: empowerment and citizenship; the challenges of feminisms and political and legal action; new displacements and migrations and current profiles of spatial and urban inequality; gender violence and the struggle for human rights; the presence of women in education, science and the communications media; transversal application of the gender focus to develop knowledge and culture; the impact of globalisation on women's economy, employment and lifestyle opportunities; women's health and the situation of those who suffer some form of disability; the recovery of their history and their prominence in recent events; their participation in culture, art and creative pursuits; their role in all manner of activities and professions, in short, their different worlds.
Mundos de Mujeres/Women´s Worlds offers the opportunity to reflect on all these themes from an interdisciplinary perspective which is open to dialogue between the different approaches that originate in both social and experimental sciences and in the humanities and health studies. It seeks enrichment of these reflections through the contrast between these different approaches, at the same time as it encourages the mixing and interweaving that are products of debate and fruitful exchange of ideas. It intends to take into account a multitude of points of view, not only those derived from gender studies but those of the women of the world themselves, and integrate different contributions to form links between here and there, local and global, near and far, all of which define the complexity of the age we live in.
The numerous aims of the Congress take into account the goals of the Worldwide Organization for Women´s Studies (WOWS), which have also been the inspiration behind previous Congresses. The most notable are the fostering of gender studies and the strengthening and dissemination of international networks linked to these studies in the contexts of education and research. Other objectives are aimed at the creation of academic and social exchanges which did not previously exist, together with the mobilization of interest related to awareness of the situation of women in our societies and actions taken by students, teachers, different institutions and organizations and women's movements to improve it. The 10th Congress intends to enrich these objectives by recognizing the participation of the Spanish-speaking world, particularly in Spain and Latin America, leading to its definitive incorporation into international networks on women's studies, such as the one represented by the Mundos de Mujeres/Women´s Worlds Congresses. For this reason, the Congress is being held for the first time in two languages, with Spanish joining English as one of the official languages. Another goal pursued by the 10th Congress is the transversal incorporation of attention to disability, which has a significant effect on the lives of many women, whether directly or as the main carers of those who need assistance on a daily basis. This serious issue is not only reflected in the space especially allocated for debating the matter, but also in the human and technical resources that have been incorporated to facilitate accessibility to the Congress. A further aim is to raise awareness of the situation of women in Spanish society and analyse the changes that have taken place. To this end, presentations on the subject will be given by different associations, institutions and organizations, as well as by prominent academic and political authorities and respected researchers, both from Spain and other countries. The wide-ranging programme of complimentary activities taking place during the Congress will also play a part in this. These will include exhibitions, musical performances, theatre, cinema, book and women´s art craft fairs, and sporting events, offering a vibrant rapprochement of the approach to women's worlds of today through different cultural and artistic expressions. Interest in making our realities known is combined at this Congress with a strong international vocation, as shown by the considerable presence of personalities and speakers from outside Spain. Much effort was put into making it possible for them to attend. The task of disseminating information on this event at international level, which has been ongoing since 2005, presented itself as a complex one but this has now paid off, as shown by the more than fifteen thousand two hundred registrations on the Congress database to date. This opening to the international context will be favoured also by the wide audio-visual coverage of the Congress. It will include, among other many aspects, the broadcast in real time, or later if required, of all the plenary meetings that will be celebrated on July 4th, as well as of the more than forty semiplenary ones that will take place in the following days. Likewise, we will daily put on the air, via satellite, the images with the highest informative interest of the event, which will be used, later, to make a video with the summary of Mundos de Mujeres/Women's Worlds 2008. All these initiatives aim at facilitating the distant follow-up of the Congress, as well as at assuring its repercussion at an international scale, thus contributing to the strengthening of the networks of interest on this subject matter, and to increasing the world’s global awareness of the importance of gender issues.
Finally, the Congress focuses attention on the possibilities for gender equality, a goal which, as the title suggests, is not a utopia. It is an equality that not only refers to the distribution of resources or opportunities but also to the recognition of the positions and identities of women, both individually and as a group, aspects in which we still find ourselves in an inferior position. Many of the debates and exchanges will focus on the new displacements on a global scale that are reshaping the lives and everyday activities of growing numbers of men and women, including spatial and socio-cultural mobility that was previously almost unknown and new courses taken in both time and space. In some cases, these new realities are accompanied by the discarding of old frontiers at the same time as they contribute to the setting up of new ones, or they may unveil frontiers that, although invisible, nevertheless surround and restrict us. Such frontiers may be movable or transitory, changing with different contexts and situations in accordance with the social fluidity of our times, but they still configure the spaces for encounters and disencounters in which our lives are lived. This re-definition of mobility and frontiers affects women in a particular way by opening up new scenarios for our rights and the paths our lives take, in other words, for what we desire and what we practise. Moreover, these changes have been accompanied by the emergence of new forms of violence against women, both in the public domain and in domestic and more intimate situations. Because it is in radical opposition to human rights and the public conscience, gender violence, which historically has always been present, has today taken on a particularly dramatic dimension which, despite obstacles, has opened a way forward in a world in flux. Most of the reflections dealt with at the Congress will be concerned with this crucial theme and many others already mentioned, which amount to a total of more than a hundred; some of the papers appear on the following pages. To accompany these reflections on Mundos de Mujeres/Women's Worlds, we invite analyses, evaluations and proposals that can be transferred to society in general where they can contribute towards making the proclaimed equality possible.
