Mahnaz Afkhami interview on women's current status and struggle for equal rights globally, Roundtable with You, Voice of America [Part 1] (video, Persian)
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Summary
On the occasion of International Women's Day (March 8, 2006), WLP President and founder Mahnaz Afkhami speaks with Voice of America's Ahmadreza Baharloo on the current status of women globally and the strategies and impediments to achieving rights and equality. They note that on that Women's Day, women (and some men) demonstrators in Iran, including the popular Iranian poet Simin Behbahani (1927-2014), were beaten and prohibited from advocating for their rights.
In this context, Afkhami discusses the work of Women's Learning Partnership (WLP) to bring ideas of freedom across the world, spread participatory leadership, develop curricula, and support organizational development and civil society building through the cooperation of 18 partners.
WLP's approach emphasizes the importance of both the building of leadership skills and also the type of leadership developed (non-hierarchical, inclusive, and participatory) for those implementing human rights work on the ground. Much of WLP's work also focuses on a small area of the world that is the birthplace of the three Abrahamic religions, which all share many basic core tenets of freedom and justice.
Afkhami also speaks about the work of the Foundation for Iranian Studies (FIS) to research issues related to the issues of Iranian women and to document the oral histories of 35 Iranian women. The remainder of the program is a question and answer session with international callers on topics around women, leadership, religion, and politics. The question and answer session continues in part 2 of this 2-part program.
Runtime: [01:03:15]