Southern feminists are organising two panels of the Feminist Dialogues (FD) 2009 on 29 January 2009, 12 noon to 3:00 pm at the UFPA Basico, Capacit, Auditorio do Capacit during the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil.

The first panel will highlight the impact of the financial crisis and its compounding factors such as military and religious fundamentalisms on women. As the financial crisis merely manifests the failure of neoliberalism, the FD refocuses the spotlight on women and their visions of alternative politics and economics that they have long been espousing.

The second panel will provide a space for reflection on the very WSF process, its gains, difficulties, and future. It intends to interrogate WSF as a secular space in developing collective positions out of a diversity of identities, contexts, and relationships.

Aside from the panels, FD will sponsor the Inter-movement Dialogues at the WSF, which will be held on 31 January 2009, from 3:30 to 6:30 pm at the UFPA Basico, Ab, Room A4. The Inter-movement Dialogues highlight the multitude of social identities and consequently, the interconnection of various forms of discrimination and ultimately, struggles.

As Nanditha Gandhi of the FD Coordinating Group put it: “We have to take into account that people who participate in these movements are not defined only by one identity. Rather, they are exposed simultaneously to multiple others forms of discriminations. So the analytical tool of intersectionality will help us to visualize the linkages between the different contradictions in each movement and between social movements.” Expected at the Inter-movement Dialogues are Brazil's indigenous peoples and minority groups, LGBT networks, Dalit movements and labour movements, among many others.

Another activity during FD 2009 is the Women's Rally which will be happened on the first day of WSF, 27 January 2009.

First held in Mumbai, India in 2004, FD was a space for feminists to surface women's specific and collective identities, advocacies, solidarity and actions in the face of increasing forms of fundamentalism particularly against women's bodies, resources and participation.

FD 2009 is organised by the African Women’s Development and Communications Network (FEMNET); Articulacion Feminista Marcosur (AFM); Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA); Development Alternatives for Women in a New Era-Southeast Asia (DAWN); INFORM, Sri Lanka; Isis International; Latin American and Carribean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights (CLADEM); Latin American and Carribbean Youth Network for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (REDLAC); National Network of Autonomous Women’s Group (NNAWG), India; National Network of Popular Education between Women (REPEM); Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML); and Women in Development Europe (WIDE).

For onsite reports on FD 2009, please visit http://feministdialogues.isiswomen.org