Reconciling diverse cultures: the gender factor.

AuthorMoses, Ingrid
PositionEssay

This topic includes three concepts which are wide open to interpretation, value judgements, stereotypes and hopes--reconciliation, diverse cultures and the gender factor. I could address it from many different perspectives. We could talk about cultural diversity in attitudes and practices in relation to girls' and women's education and training, rights and health, to women's economic empowerment rights and participation as citizens, to tolerance and affliction of violence against girls and women, and about the role of women in working across cultural divides.

As a German born woman whose professional career was spent in Australia and who has worked across cultures, I could spontaneously say that I am reconciling cultural diversity in myself, and my professional life has been enriched by being not only bicultural but having worked across cultures. As a woman, the other cultural dimension has been more difficult, and it has opened opportunities for reconciliation. However, it is not about instinctive or intuitive action that I want to write about, but on purposive action by women to reconcile diverse cultures.

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Non-native English speakers in Australia, such as immigrants and indigenous people, still face barriers in their civic and professional lives. They might finish school in larger proportions and even have an undergraduate education, but when it comes to leadership roles in the professions or membership on boards, committees or in parliament, they are under-represented. As a non-native English speaking woman in an English speaking country, I am aware of the potential marginalization.

Political and church leadership is still largely male, even though in Australia we have a female Prime Minister and a female Governor General, and there are women priests and ministers and a few women bishops. The dominant male gendered perspective is challenged by the women clergy, but less so by women politicians, for although reconciling country-internal cultural diversity may be on their agenda, cross cultural diversity rarely is.

There are regional, national and international women's organizations which focus on shared values, shared circumstances, shared issues, and shared hopes, (1) such as the fate of children in conflicts; peace and disarmament; implementation of UN resolutions; education for girls; neighbourly respect and understanding across national borders.

One of the oldest organizations, of which I am a member, the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF) was established in 1915 "by some 1300 women from Europe and North America, from countries at war against each other and neutral ones, who came together in a Congress of Women to protest the killing and...

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