Dear George CAUTHERLEY
By : The Association For The Advancement Of Feminism
We are a women’s advocacy group in Hong Kong, the Association for the Advancement of Feminism (AAF), and has been active in promoting greater gender equality and fighting for women’s rights in Hong Kong since 1984. We would like to introduce you to our work, and hope that after reading this letter, you might find our work worthwhile of your kind support.
About us
Our Major Achievements 1 Since our establishment in 1984, we have actively campaigned and lobbied for politicians and public policy makers to make gender perspectives central to their thinking, processes and policies. Together with other women’s groups we have formed Hong Kong Women’s Coalition for Equal Opportunities to monitor and publish reports on politicians’ performances on gender related issues. As a direct result of this, most political parties now incorporate women’s issues as part of their manifesto, and some have even established a women’s section. Women and gender issues are now debated regularly in the Legislative Council.
2 We have actively campaigned for greater legal rights for women, including the high profile 1994 campaign for inheritance rights of New Territories indigenous women, the extension of CEDAW (The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) to Hong Kong, and the enactment of various Anti-discrimination Ordinances.
We fought for inheritance rights of New Territories indigenous women in 1994.
3 One of our major achievements lobbyinb for sexual harassment to be recognized as unlawful, and is now incorporated in the Sex Discrimination Ordinance. We closely monitor the work of the Equal Opportunity Commission, in particular on how they implement and interpret the Sex Discrimination Ordinance and through evidence collected from our own anti-sex discrimination helpline. Through such continuous work, we are able to recommend changes to legislations that will enhance legal protection for women. ďƒœ We monitor the performance of EOC.
4 Since the establishment of the Women’s Commission (WOC) in 2001 as the central women advisory mechanism to the Government. we have successfully lobbied the WOC to adopt gender mainstreaming as one of its key strategies. As a result,government departments have since taken concrete steps in its implementation.
Aside from targeting change in the government and its policies, we have created a platform to cultivate gender and feminist discourse, especially with the younger generation. Every year we accept new members, mostly young women, who join our campaign for greater gender equality.
Our Main Work • Gender Budgeting • Sexuality and Human Rights • Publication • Social Movement
Gender Budgeting
Gender Mainstreaming has been promoted in Hong Kong for 10 years, yet gender sensitivity at the level of resource allocation is still lacking. This is not hard to understand as the WOC does not have an independent budget - an obvious obstacle to its work - and the HKSAR budget has no gender perspective whatsoever (high level officials mostly have little idea what gender mainstreaming means). With the onset of the financial tsunami in 2008, it is timely to introduce Gender Budgeting as the next step of the Gender Mainstreaming process. With the concept of Gender Budgeting, our demands are no longer only restricted to the demand for gender sensitive services and resources (as is the case of gender mainstreaming), but more importantly and more precisely, the right to participate in the decisionmaking process of resource allocation. Our goal to push for greater awareness and implementation of Gender Budgeting also underscores the importance of community participation in the government’s budgeting process.
Our Working Plan for Gender Budgeting • • • • •
Commenting exercise on HKSAR budget Workshops for women’s groups Workshops for other grassroot organizations that work on women’s issue Publish concise guidelines on gender budget Attend seminars on gender budgeting and engage in exchange and dialogue with women’s groups in China, Taiwan, Macao and HK
In order to enrich our members’ understanding on participatory budgeting and gender budgeting, in June this year we organized a trip to visit several NGOs in South Korea which are active in advocating participatory and gender budgeting (participants joined at their own expense).
We held a sharing session for this Gender Budgeting Korean Trip with other women’s group and NGOs on 28th Aug, 2010. Through this sharing,we hope to start a dialogue and network with other local women’s groups and NGOs interested in promoting gender budgeting. Our goal is to better prepare and organize ourselves advocate gender budgeting in the coming Financial Budget in 2011.
A sharing of Gender Budgeting Korean Trip
Sexuality & Human Rights
Sexual well-being of women is one of our chief concerns. Our Sex, Sexuality and Human Rights subgroup works closely with gay and lesbian organizations advocating for legislation to outlaw sexual orientation discrimination and to challenge the discourse of religious fundamentalists in Hong Kong.
Our working plan for Sexuality and Human Rights • • •
Develop local discourse on women’s sexual autonomy through conducting workshop with women in the community Monitor the Obscene Articles Tribunals (OAT) reform Advocate for gender equality education
We did a LOT of public educational products.
A postcard: Women are only equal to Breast and womb?
My Body, Myself! Even without breast or womb, I’m still a woman. A proud woman!
A postcard: Sexual Education handbook (Words on the Blackboard: “Something”, “Somewhere”, “Don’t say it”, “Don’t think about it”)
Sex education is not to teach abstinence of sex! Teenagers have sexual rights. Everyone, including teens, should have the right to explorae their own body and sexuality.
ďƒž
A postcard parodies the menu of local Cha Chan Tan Restaurant. People can freely choose their sexuality and marriage status.
ďƒ?
A postcard parodies a typical primary school assignment. The drawing is about a family in which mother is in love with Auntie May, father is in love with Auntie Fong. They all love the child and the puppy.
Heterosexual marriage is not the only way to form a “happy family�. Happy family could be composed of single parents and their children, grandparents with their grandchildren, remarried couples with children from their present and previous marriage, homosexual couples cohabitating couples and many other form of union.
A
bookmark: Whether we are alone or with others ,we still have the right to explore our sexuality without shame, through communication, physical contact, emotional expression and love.
Shopping bag: To promote the message of “Self. Love. Sex”
We joined ...
The International Human Rights Day Carnival/ International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia / Sex Festival
Publication
We’ve done a LOT of Publications ...
Social Movement
We support universal suffrage and the abolishment of Functional Constituencies. Although the political reform suggested by the government has just been passed by the legislative council, we continue to fight for a more democratic political system. We hope we can encourage more women to join us in our campaign and to participate in the upcoming district council and legislative council elections.
We designed a lot of accessories to publicize our political views.
Sticker A: Kick away Fuctional Constitution!
Sticker B: Universal Suffrage
ďƒ›Sticker C: Functional
Constituencies bring shameless Councillors to Legislative Council.
Sticker D: Donald Tsang did not keep his promise to give Hong Kong people a surprise for our political system.
ďƒœ
A poster urged people to demand for universal suffrage.
We supported on the 516 election and reminded our members to vote.
Our Animation Please use the following links to view our animation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1AUF0G-luk Earlier in 2010 the government produced a serial of advertisements to promote their proposed political reform package. One of them was about a mother who made a dress for her daughter. We parodied Donald Tsang to be the mother who forced the daughter (HK people) to wear an invisible dress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gayBG5BS_dY High rank government officials also took to the streets to promote their ‘Act Now’ campaign. We think their direction of the political reform is unclear and misleading, so we’ve made this animation to mock their political show.
Every year, we join ...
The May 1st Labour Day Rally
The June 4th Candle
July 1st Rally
However ...
We are facing serious financial problems now. As we seldom provide direct services to the public (apart from workshops and seminars which we only charge a token honorarium), compared to NGOs that do, it is more difficult for to find financial resources. Donation therefore becomes our main source of income. However, our monthly regular donation is only at $24,000 per month, quite a gap from our regular fixed monthly expenses of $54,000. As of now, our funds can only support our regular operations for two and half more months. We really need your support to keep on our work to fight for equality, justice, democracy and human rights.
Thank you for spending time to read “us”. It would be our pleasure to meet you in person to tell you more about our work, so please feel free to request any further information. We look forward to hearing from you.
Contact Person : Ms. Amy Yeung (Executive Secretary) G/F, No. 119, Lai Yeung House, Lei Cheng Uk Estate, Cheung Sha Wan, Kowloon Tel : 27200891 Fax : 27200205 Email : aaf@aaf.org.hk Website : www.aaf.org.hk