The workshop that took place in New Delhi in February ‘97 entitled "Reconciling the masculine and the feminine" was the founding stage of the Yin Yang/Man-Woman relations workshop. Being aware of the low female participation in the dynamics of the Alliance, it was not a question of putting together a women’s group as often happens to correct the balance of the strength. We wanted to go past the "Gender" ghetto that is unjustly reserved for women as a socially dominated category - ghetto to which they are confined as eternal victims. We therefore proposed to create a space for reflection and dialogue that was open to men and women interested in the transformation of the man-woman rapport and its implications in social transformation in general. That meant the common sharing of the women’s point of view with regard to their condition in society as well as that of men regarding their manner of living their roles. Even more important for us was the overlapping of these reflections in order to draw up a vision of society and proposals put forth by men and women. We were sure of the importance of including men in the reflection for as long as they were aware that the emancipation of women also involved freeing men from the dominant masculine model. To deconstruct these models and be rid of them, a great deal of effort has still to put into listening and into personal self-examination amongst men, amongst women and between men and women. Finding new values, changing roles and transforming mentalities starts first with personal practice and surmounting the traditional divisions that govern our thinking patterns which are essentially deeply patriarchal.

Thus, following a preliminary exchange of written testimonies, 15 men and 15 women from different cultures met over a week and devoted themselves to this patient work of reflection and building of bridges.

Whereas most often, the question of the man-woman relation remains confined to the private sphere or is generally only discussed in exclusively feminine or masculine groups, the participants confronted their lives and their experience with a lot of reciprocal curiosity. This ambiance of patient audience and spontaneous expression owed as much to the originality of the preparatory stages as to the desire, the need to externalise, to share, to put words to the injustice and fears that are sometimes experienced in the solitude of one’s sex.

This collective internal journey led us to understand the complexity in which we are evolving. We realised just how difficult it is to build our identity as woman or man . And moreover, to what extent the conservative patriarchal tendencies are present or threaten to reassert themselves in a majority of societies.

Having navigated the length of the divide that separates the male from the female, the private from the public, the individual from his/her society, tradition from modernity and men from women, one realisation seemed to arise from this journey. All these dichotomies were not a finality but an evolution that was mainly social, perhaps in answer to certain priorities in the past. Today they seem to lie at the origin of great imbalance both at the individual and global level. The will to change is becoming stronger and is further shared, it marks a first step towards transformation...

[the report of the New Delhi workshop (112 pages in French, English and Spanish) is available with the Caravane editors]

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