Vulnerability and empowerment on the ground: Activist perspectives from the global feminisms project

Abstract

Vulnerability is a standard criterion used by state and non-governmental organizations to identify groups of people in need of protection or support. Over the past two decades, however, this notoriously ill-defined and potentially stigmatizing term has been subjected to scrutiny by researchers, service providers, and theorists across multiple disciplines. This study examines the relevance of vulnerability to the ways international feminist activists who were interviewed between 2003 and 2019 for the Global Feminisms Project (GFP) described their struggles for women's rights in various settings over the past 50 years. Citing examples from nine countries, we show that these activists rarely used the term vulnerable, and never to classify groups of people. Instead, they frequently explained how particular groups were subjected to precarious conditions, and how they resisted subjugation, within multiple layers of gendered social relations and political structures. Many activists connected their locally-grounded work to global historical processes, emphasizing particularly the impact of neo-liberalism. Although using different vocabularies, these analyses resonate with work by bioethicists and feminist/queer theorists who reject the use of vulnerability as a classificatory term but embrace it as a tool for analyzing subjugation, building solidarity, and challenging neo-liberal conceptions of individual autonomy.

Unsettling vulnerability: Queer and feminist interventions

“…In the final article of this SI, a transnational account of challenges to the “ideology of vulnerability” is provided by activists from the Global Feminist Project (GFP). Savaş et al (2023, this issue) outline several discourses highlighted by international feminist activists as fostering and perpetuating a colonialist, patriarchal, and capitalist vision of cultural, gender, and socioeconomic relationships. Many activists have denounced the ongoing (white) assumption of empowered subjects as supposedly aware and liberated and as “framing racialised black or brown ‘Third World’ girls/women as vulnerable victims” (Savaş et al, 2023, this issue, p. 432)—a dynamic perhaps most obviously encapsulated in the problematic phrase “giving voice.” Within this conceptualisation, most programmes and actions stem from a principle of “protection” rather than “participation.” It is worth noting that, similarly to Venäläinen (2023, this issue), protection is aligned with an analysis of asymmetries, whereas participation is mobilised to focus on the sharedness and connectedness of experiences.…”

“…Savaş et al (2023, this issue) outline several discourses highlighted by international feminist activists as fostering and perpetuating a colonialist, patriarchal, and capitalist vision of cultural, gender, and socioeconomic relationships. Many activists have denounced the ongoing (white) assumption of empowered subjects as supposedly aware and liberated and as “framing racialised black or brown ‘Third World’ girls/women as vulnerable victims” (Savaş et al, 2023, this issue, p. 432)—a dynamic perhaps most obviously encapsulated in the problematic phrase “giving voice.” Within this conceptualisation, most programmes and actions stem from a principle of “protection” rather than “participation.” It is worth noting that, similarly to Venäläinen (2023, this issue), protection is aligned with an analysis of asymmetries, whereas participation is mobilised to focus on the sharedness and connectedness of experiences. Another reflection within this framework is that NGOs are “motivated by charity rather than solidarity” with the twofold effect of “transferring the responsibility for baseline social welfare from the government to NGOs,” and failing to “identify the [systemic] root causes of poverty and injustice” (Savaş et al, 2023, this issue, p. 441).…”

“…Many activists have denounced the ongoing (white) assumption of empowered subjects as supposedly aware and liberated and as “framing racialised black or brown ‘Third World’ girls/women as vulnerable victims” (Savaş et al, 2023, this issue, p. 432)—a dynamic perhaps most obviously encapsulated in the problematic phrase “giving voice.” Within this conceptualisation, most programmes and actions stem from a principle of “protection” rather than “participation.” It is worth noting that, similarly to Venäläinen (2023, this issue), protection is aligned with an analysis of asymmetries, whereas participation is mobilised to focus on the sharedness and connectedness of experiences. Another reflection within this framework is that NGOs are “motivated by charity rather than solidarity” with the twofold effect of “transferring the responsibility for baseline social welfare from the government to NGOs,” and failing to “identify the [systemic] root causes of poverty and injustice” (Savaş et al, 2023, this issue, p. 441). In this sense, the discourses of vulnerability, protection, and charity serve a wider predatory neoliberal discourse that supports outdated colonialists and patriarchal stances disguised under a false pretence as new or novel, and in stark opposition to the goal of community empowerment, grassroot participation, and transnational solidarity.…”

“…Savaş et al (2023) also point to the role of psychology as a discipline, and the psy professions, in medicalising and pathologising vulnerability (see Marecek & Lafrance, 2021, on the politics of psychological suffering). Echoing Kaulino and Matus's (2023) work on protection programmes in Chile, Savaş et al claim that this is another manifestation of the neoliberal trend to fix a structural problem at the individual level.…”