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Sanam Welcome to If You Were In Charge, a podcast about people, power, and possibilities.
Kavita Ramdas With me, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. And me, Kavita Nandini Ramdas. (.) I've been worrying about you. I'm back in the United States after having had a little bit of time with you. And I have to say there's a complete air of surreality being here. And I'm thinking about how you are. Because every day I read anything about Iran, I think about how you are. So how are you, Sanam? We don't ask that question, Kavita. I know, I know.
Sanam Thank you. No, the reason why I say that is because there's a little meme that's gone around saying, you know, you can ask me and I'll tell you I'm fine. But don't ask me again because I might cry. And I think that's really the state of mind of so many, yeah, so many Iranians. I mean, we're also in cognitive dissonance because if you're living abroad, you're getting bits and pieces of news around what's happening.
Kavita Ramdas And I think that's really the state of mind of so many Iranians. Sanam, earlier you were talking about hospitals being under notification for evacuation. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you've been hearing?
Sanam Sure. So I received a message from a contact in Iran who was involved in one of the major children's hospitals. And he said that they are preparing for the eventuality of perhaps not having electricity, water, gas, sending the kids that aren't in critical care home. I'm trying to figure out what to do with the ones that are actually in critical care, but anticipating something horrific coming up because yesterday Trump issued a statement. And it's just, he's just kind of off the walls. And he's basically what he's saying is Tuesday, 8 p.m. Eastern time. It's coming, you know, and you're saying, well, what's coming? And where is the world? And, you know, what really bothers me, Kavita, is that for the last, literally from the beginning of this war, I've been saying it's a logic of escalation and the risk of nuclear disaster. Whether it's, you know, Boucher, if they attack Boucher, it can affect the Gulf and other countries. But if they attack Natanz or Isfahan, it might just be contained in Iran because it's more internal geographically. (.) But all of the institutions that we have, the UN, the IAEA, all of these things, they exist to prevent this.
Kavita Ramdas Exactly this. And, in fact, the IAEA, I've been reading their statements. I mean, honestly, they've been issuing statement after statement after statement. But at this point, we're sort of at the point of, well, statements are not doing it. Nobody is stopping these bad actors, both the United States and Israel, from actually carrying out whatever the hell they want to do. And I see the UN nowhere in this, Sanam, which also makes me think, have we reached the point where our sort of post-World War II infrastructure of what we thought was going to be a better replacement for the League of Nations is now failing us, completely failing us?
Sanam This is what I've been kind of looking at and looking at the history of the League of Nations. The League of Nations basically was disbanded in 1946. But it was kind of in a coma from the beginning of the World War II because they didn't stop it. And the UN genuinely feels the same right now. And, you know, with the IAEA statements, I'm like, yeah, these statements of concern, I'm like, you guys should be convening global summits. You should be convening world leaders to talk about precisely this. The United Kingdom, they convened a bunch of world leaders to talk about how to, you know, open the Straits of Hormuz, which, by the way, are open if you're not part of the war. You don't even have to side with Iran to be, to have your ships go through. The French have gotten their ships through. They're concerned about that. But I'm like, it's a potential nuclear disaster. Yeah. Catastrophe, as the Russians have said it. Yeah. And where are you? And it's on their watch. So I'm like, even if it wasn't, you know, it's my country, so my heart is breaking in a thousand pieces. (.) But even if it wasn't my country, if it was somewhere else, I hope I'm wrong. I hope that all of this in a week's time we can sit back and say it was all a bluff. But the point is that they are bombing petrochemical plants as it is. So they're, you know, the chemical warfare weapons ban and the biological. But if you're bombing petrochemical plants and biological sort of pharmaceutical plants, you're already contravening those conventions.
Kavita Ramdas Multiple conventions, exactly. And we saw that, as you said, in various episodes of this podcast that we've spoken about before, that Gaza was really the litmus test for all of this, because it was the same failure of the world to actually act on actions that we all agreed collectively would be never again. And now, you know, we have chemical weapons treaties for a reason. We have nuclear weapons treaties for a reason. We have an international criminal court for a reason, you know, and it goes on and on.
Sanam I mean, and the part of, again, a part of it that really strikes me, that is really not addressed, is that all of these institutions and all of these laws and all of these norms, line by line, were worked on by people who cared. I mean, having worked on R1325 and Resolution 1820, I mean, every single word, every single comma. It sounds kind of nerdy, but they are there because people spent time thinking about them and anticipating and thinking about, okay, what's the compromise we have to make?
Kavita Ramdas Even the universal declaration of human rights, you know, and when people say, oh, well, that's a Western thing, I'm like, I hate to break this to you, but there was an Indian woman who was working on it. There were people from all over the world who were working on this. You know, in some ways, it makes me think about the conversation the five of us had in Berlin, you know, and you were saying, what's the radical idea that we wish wasn't so radical? And I'm sitting here now thinking, God, you know, we were already reeling from what was happening in Gaza. And who knew we would be here at this point, now wondering again, whether, as you said, you know, the carefully crafted, I mean, it was the work of care, wasn't it? Like all of this effort. (.)
Sanam It's the work of care. It's the work of generations that anticipated the future. And we're thinking we want the future to have better than we've had. Yeah, this is really what gets me. I mean, when I did my research on the history of diplomacy many years ago, you know, in the Western literature, it goes back 500 years when they started thinking, oh, why don't we have, you know, a council of states where diplomacy can be done so that war is averted, so there are rules, you know, rules of the game, if you want, right? So there's a lot of thought that's gone in and a lot of attempts at trying to control might and trying to control how we behave towards each other. And even just the basic rules of war around, you know, what happens when you, when, when a ship is sunk during World War II, they took the sailors and they became prisoners of war. The Americans torpedoed an unarmed frigate, an Iranian frigate, and they left the sailors to die. Right. And then when we had, you know, this just in the last few nights, when, when we've had this incident of the, of the American pilots, which turns out to be a whole other story, it seems, it seems that there was an attempt at a ground invasion and things went wrong. The attitude about, oh, well, how are they going to treat this, this pilot? And, and I was thinking, actually, I would imagine that, that, that the Iranians, maybe they'll parade them on TV. I don't know, but I would imagine that they will abide by international law, which is much more than you can say about, than what the Americans did with those sailors. Or what the Israelis are doing with both Palestinian prisoners and the Lebanese law, and the new law that they've passed, which is saying that they can execute, the death penalty exists for Palestinians, but not for Israel, not for Jews.
Kavita Ramdas And if we needed any more affirmation of it being an apartheid state, I think we now have it in formal, I know.
Sanam So, so it's, it's beyond apartheid at this point, right? //S03: Right.// Um, yeah, and, and so go, as you said, going back to our conversation with our, with our lovely, lovely Bosch fellow fellows and, and thinking about the issues of what's a radical idea and, and, and the notion that care should matter or that actually, you know, if women were in charge, what would it look like? If rules were abided by, what would it look like? I mean, this, this should not be radical. This, this should be the norm.
Kavita Ramdas No, and I think what an interesting mix we were. We were a Finnish policymaker and academic, Pakistani, British, climate activist and environmentalist and Indian, um, uh, gender, women's rights activist, um, a Palestinian, a Palestinian biologist, scientist who looks at epigenetics. Of trauma, epigenetics of trauma, which is so important. And I, and I, and I just think that was probably one of the most wonderful ways for us to step outside of the kind of, um, horrors of the moment and actually, um, challenge ourselves to imagine what a different world could look like.
Sanam So let's listen to our conversation with our wonderful friends, Rana, Rita, you, of course, and, and Farhana. And Farhana, yeah. (........)
Reetta Toivanen My name is Rita Toivanen. I work at the University of Helsinki. My field is in human rights. At the moment, working in a big research project that is looking at kind of refugee knowledges in Europe. And at, at addition to that, I work also in the climate transition and the just transition issues.
Rana Dajani My name is Rana Dajani. I am Palestinian, Syrian, with a Jordan citizenship. I'm a mother. I have four children. I'm an educator. I'm a scientist. I work on epigenetics of trauma and how it gets transferred across generations. I'm a social innovator. I started a program called We Love Reading that is in 78 countries around the world. And now, finally, I'm an activist to liberate Palestine and therefore liberate the world.
Farhana Yamin I'm Fahana Yamin. I was born in Pakistan, so salam to everyone as well. I live in the UK. I'm a climate lawyer. I work on philanthropy to try and make sure that those on the front lines of injustice can organize and move us to a better world. And I'm here as a fellow looking at global governance and how to make things better. Fantastic. Thank you, everyone.
Sanam So, question to everyone. And whoever wants to jump in first, please take the mic. Like, what's one radical idea that you work on or an issue that you work on that you actually wish wasn't radical, that you wish that it was kind of common sense and accepted as a norm?
Reetta Toivanen Free movement is something that I would hope that would not be a radical idea, that we wouldn't have these issues of not entering each other's countries on an equal basis.
Sanam And just to follow on from that, you're working on issues of migration into Europe. What is that? What is, again, from the European standpoint, what's one thing you wish people understood around migration and what migrants bring to our societies?
Reetta Toivanen If you look at the European history, so you can see that migration and actually even refugee knowledge has been very instrumental for what Europe is about. So, basically, also all the intellectuals who have imagined Europe were refugees. They were refugees who left Europe to U.S. or to other countries and started to think about the European Union and the Council of Europe kind of developments. But then also the kind of refugees that have come here, for example, from the socialist countries in the 70s, 80s, have taken positions where they have radically supported and found new ways for Europe to develop. So, kind of thinking that this refugee knowledge should be something that should be appreciated and also understood that something that is transforming our countries in a good way. And we should, you know, find ways to appreciate that. And also to kind of understand that's a key issue if Europe wants to keep existing.
Sanam Kavita, did you want to add to that or your version of what is, what shouldn't be radical these days? Yes.
Kavita Ramdas As somebody who has worked with feminist movements all around the globe, I led the Global Fund for Women for 14 years and have continued to work supporting women's rights movements all over the world. I think the radical idea that I wish wasn't so radical and really shouldn't be, especially after having gone through two years of a pandemic from 2020 to 2022 is the notion of valuing, respecting, and re-enumerating the precious work of care, which is done disproportionately by women and girls all across this planet and without which no other work is possible. So, the understanding that we have of care work, the work that makes it possible for each one of us to get up, to get out of the house, to do anything else, and upon which all notions of development have essentially been premised, is something that right now seems radical. But it's not included in any GDP analysis, it's not included in any GDP analysis, it's not included in the economic outputs of countries, it isn't actually reimbursed for women who actually spend vast quantities of time, even when they have outside roles in which they're earning money, work at home is disproportionate to that of men, even in the most progressive of European countries. And so, for me, the radical idea would be first to acknowledge that care work does not depend on your gender or your sex, but that because of patriarchy, it is currently unequally distributed. And for me, as we saw in the pandemic, I think we also understood that care work is the whole gamut of healthcare workers, childcare workers, people who care for the elderly, and I think we have ended up creating a capitalist society, which is so premised on profit and has so little attention to care, that we've actually created a set of priorities that are completely not in keeping with a healthy and long-term sustainable culture. I would also like to say that much of the care work of the planet is also done by women and girls, and that work is also caring work, that work which is taken for granted about how forests are looked after, how they are managed, how traditional plants are kept in circulation, medicinal values, and being able to use that as a commons, none of those things are actually possible without the work of care. And so, I would wish that was not such a radical notion.
Sanam That's a great segue for my conversation. Farhana, Farhana, tell us about it from your standpoint.
Farhana Yamin I think my radical idea would be to abolish national borders and to abolish the nation-state. And I think a lot of the five-year history, including the rise of capitalism, is very much tied to the rise of certain empires, and then the nation-state was created and has, in effect, become one of the bulwarks of our legal order. It is the reason why we're now thinking of migration policies, building walls, not just legal borders, but now walls, to police the movement of people, which has been the basis on which humanity flourished. Humanity flourished as a result of the free exchange of people and ideas through culture, through nomadic ways of living, through pastoral ways of living. And all of that has been jeopardized and lost with this rigidity that we hold onto the nation-state as the framework for governance, as the framework for cooperation, as the framework for capitalist economies. And we cannot control capital through the nation-state. It is becoming obvious. We cannot control AI through nation-states. We cannot control excessive use of force and militarism through the nation-state. So, for me, this is a fundamental aspect of what we need to do, and it should really not be a radical idea. We should also not forget nation-states are a relatively recent idea. They're only really 300, 400 years old, and only in some parts of the world. So, a large number of countries, around 100 countries, only came into existence, really only became nation-states in the last 100 years. This is a very recent, novel idea, which in many cases was imposed on countries that have very different, diverse ways of managing their own affairs or managing their resources. And it has led to some of the deepest conflicts and wounds as a result of those borders.
Sanam As an Iranian, I would say that the idea of Iran, whether empire or state, goes back thousands of years, and we really feel it. But the idea of freedom of movement, it seems anachronistic, as you say, because whether it's diseases, technology, ideas, climate issues, they don't recognize borders. Strange human creation, and then it's causing so many problems. That said, Rana, as a Palestinian...
Rana Dajani The way the conversation is going, I have two radical ideas. (.) I think one radical idea that follows through with what's been said before is that to have a free Palestine. A free Palestine where Jews, Christians, and Muslims live together side by side, where they all have equal rights, literally and practically, on the ground. And this would be a form of existence that could spread around the world and destroy the racism, the inequality that we see in different parts of the world. But I'm going to move on to more my field of work. Because again, one thing we learned is that everybody excels in one part and we collectively complement each other. So I work on epigenetics of trauma. The idea is that we manifest in the world as a manifestation of the genes we inherit from our parents and the environment we interact with. And that's what epigenetics is. And forever we have been told that people who have been exposed to trauma become victims. And so the mentality, the framing is always that, oh, you are the poor victims. And surprisingly, those who have been oppressing us are never victims. Although they have a history of being subjected to war and to trauma, but they are never victims. So to me, what I, the radical idea I want to change is this concept that the global south who has been colonized and oppressed is perpetually a victim forever. And therefore verifies or gives legitimacy for the oppressing powers to come, first they oppressed us and now they want to come and save us. So they steal away our agency, which is part of how we evolved as a species. So I draw from evolutionary biology as a species, we actually survived from my point of view for three things. One, we're curious. Second, we are social creatures. We need community. And thirdly, we have agency. And that's how we survive. So in the context of trauma, the radical idea that I propose and base it on my biological findings is that we, what we inherit from our parents and grandparents who have been exposed to trauma is not victimhood and vulnerability, but actually agency and adaptability to face and interact with an unpredictable. environment with a whole spectrum of traits and diversity that will allow us to lead better lives in the future. And the radical idea is to remove the victimhood from our mindsets, from our framing and how that will be influence and impact policies, interventions and everything around us. And that's why you see countries who have been sanctioned, although it seems terrible, I know, but it's terrible in the world we know today. But in a way, there's a silver lining. These people have been able to innovate, come up with their own solutions that make them independent, sovereign in terms of food, in terms of resources. And therefore, when you are sovereign and independent, you can take better choices. You have a freedom to choose what is right and what is wrong and not what caters to other powers and therefore influence your decision.
Reetta Toivanen But isn't that then going back to what we were just discussing about the problems of nation states, that you have borders inside of which you create this sovereignty? Yeah.
Farhana Yamin So just looking at some of the ways like right now, you have huge numbers of diasporas in, you know, global, those who are from the global majority countries are living in the global north. You know, many of us here at this forum have dual heritage and dual nationalities, sometimes multiple nationalities. And actually, one of the main things that is invisible right now is the role of those diaspora communities in supporting and maintaining conditions of life on earth. Actually, diaspora flows, remittances are the ways in which our own people are supporting each other. When a crisis happens, as is happening more and more frequently in a world where we're facing cuts to humanitarian aid, cuts to overseas development, remittent flows are huge and larger than these sources of flows. And this is invisible. And I think it's invisible largely because the idea that the richer nations, traditionally the Western nations will come and save us and that is somehow their responsibility, their duty, their right, their obligation, you know, morally, financially to come and do the rescuing, to come and do the saving. I'm not saying they don't have responsibility as a result of their larger wealth and so forth. I'm just saying sometimes it masks the systems that are already there. And in many parts of the world, including, for example, Pakistan, the basic caring systems are provided by our own people, by religious institutions, by local authorities, by local communities, by families and clans. And this system is really robust and is working much better.
Kavita Ramdas And that's part of what I was talking about with care economies. So if we had a care economy as opposed to a consumer economy, if we valued the structures within which we show care for each other and in which we demonstrate that caring, those are examples that I think come from many indigenous cultures and traditions. We don't have to rely on a new form of formal philanthropy. I mean, when you look at the word philanthropy, what does it say? It is love of humanity. Philanthropos. Phila from love in the Greek word and anthro, human beings. And that love of human beings doesn't require a foundation. It doesn't require huge amounts of money. It doesn't require anything except this sense of mutual independence, interdependence, and mutual support for one another. And I think that example you gave, Rana, both of how diasporas provide that support, but also how within our own communities. And I think women's movements have been a very important example of that because within the home also, women have really had access for literally until the last maybe 100, 150 years to financial resources. But they've had access to many other kinds of resources. They've had access to how you grow food on the planet. They've had access to how you take care of the basic provisions in the community and you can exchange those with each other.
Farhana Yamin So one of the, I just want to come back on this because it's so interesting, is that one of the reasons, in my view, that climate movement has, you know, been less successful. It's been very successful on some fronts, but it's been less successful than the feminist movement, than the anti-apartheid movement, than racism movements. Those are much older, by the way, and have deep roots. But it's because it has been funded primarily by philanthropy and by northern philanthropy at that. So this over-reliance on the accumulated wealth in the global north, you know, a lot of gatekeeping, and that funding has not gone to community-based forms of care and resistance and love and mutual aid. So all of these things have suffered as a result and have made the climate movement less deep and less wide.
Sanam I'm gonna, okay, I'm gonna just jump in on this care question and flip it, actually, because I think the part that we also consistently overlook or we take for granted in the West is that so many of our care workers, our nurses in the NHS in England, or the doctors, are being trained in the Philippines or in Zambia or in Malawi or, you know, countries invested thousands of dollars in the training of a nurse or a doctor, and then they migrate. And they're probably getting a lower job, maybe more money than they would earn at home, but not the same status in a Western hospital. And we just take that for granted. And then we treat them badly because they're migrants now.
Reetta Toivanen Yeah, but it's also a business. So I think the capitalist logic that Gavita was describing here fits very well in this because it's, of course, it's purposeful. There is a kind of defense argument to say that, okay, but they are sending money home. But yeah, then you get like as a Philippine mother of three, you get a two year contract to work in the Finnish hospital, you have to leave your kids to be taken care of by somebody else while you are for this two years required to learn Finnish. And then after two years, you're kicked out, so very horrible logic. But I just wanted to come back to what Rana said, because I think your work is so beautiful and so interesting and, you know, so fascinating. And I think that a lot of the refugee studies kind of very much underline what your findings are in the kind of more in anthropology and sociology, that how much this kind of trauma can actually mean a new kind of agency and innovation. You are, okay, forced, but there seems to be also something else in that we have in the world. Like so many innovations and ideas have come exactly through these moments of disruption and trauma. So it's really interesting.
Sanam Second question or around the same issue of radical ideas. Have you all become more radical with age? Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
Rana Dajani Definitely. I mean, the older I get, the more like I think there's no limits. Everything is possible. Nothing is impossible. The crazier the idea, the better. And I think it's also about finding like minded people who are willing to indulge in these crazy ideas. But by the way, it's not just us getting older. I think the young are also getting bolder.
Kavita Ramdas Yes.
Rana Dajani So we are having our, we're testing the boundaries and the young are coming with us. And I think it's a circle where we're all learning from each other, encouraging each other, inspiring each other. And that makes me optimistic. Yeah.
Farhana Yamin I just turned 60. So I have been reflecting a lot on my younger self. I was here in Berlin in 1995 at the first ever climate summit hosted by Angela Merkel, who was the president then. And so now we're on what's called COP30. That was COP1 in 1995. We're now in COP30. So I really am in a reflective mode. But on this issue, yes, absolutely. In the last five or six years, I've realized the model I was also wedded to a lawyer and use my law, you know, to create a better world. Yes, for sure. I did some of that. Absolutely. We did some of that. But I realize also that actually the world needs more than just law. It needs people and sensitivity and care and a fundamental rehaul of the global economic system, including, you know, now being able to say that capitalism sucks. And that, you know, that I was a big part of that. I accepted the benefits that came my way. And I'm very mindful that I have reached a status in life financially, psychologically, professionally, where I can also afford to say more radical and bold things that I wasn't maybe prepared or able to say when I was still trying to make it up in terms of status. So I think that's really the case and actually honoring also the fact that I've had to unlearn. There's a lot of unlearning that I feel I've had to do. And a lot of it in my case has come from very activist children, you know, ranging from 30 to 18, who've taught me actually that what does an intersectional caring world really look like? And I think that, you know, we need to make space for that and that it requires more than just the traditional machinery of law that I was thinking would fix it. Law and science and diplomacy, I thought, would fix it.
Sanam Well, culture comes in big time. Culture comes in and resources come in and economics come in big time. Let me come to Kamita and Rita. Just in terms of the radical, you become more radical as time has gone by.
Kavita Ramdas Oh, I definitely think so. I think in my case, perhaps I did not have the same sense of having to be at a certain place or achieving a certain amount of financial security to be radical. I think I was already fairly radical in some ways. I think in some ways, interestingly, one of the ways in which we first begin to think about the limitations of nation state is when you fall in love with someone who is not from your nation state. And I think I actually think all from your ethnic background or from your linguistic background or from your religious background. And I think that for me, falling in love with a young communist Pakistani Muslim man at the age of 20, I had just turned 21 and had come to the United States, was a fundamental shift in my understanding also of the limitations of nationalism. And realizing that I was seeing and hearing from someone who was born and raised in Pakistan that was not at all what the national, you know, narrative about Pakistanis was. My father had fought in two wars against Pakistan. So I think your radicalization as a human being to see the world differently can happen at any point. And I very much echo Farhana's sense that we have much to learn from young people. I was just saying to someone these last two years, I spent a lot of time in the encampments for Gaza. I have been so moved by young people. I have been so humbled by the manifestation in their encampments of what a more equal, a more respectful, a more caring society could actually look like. What communal cooking could look like. What the fact that men and women share responsibilities equally look like. What a community that welcomes people with disabilities, that welcomes trans people, that welcomes people who believe in religious practices, as well as atheists. So I do think I've become more radical, but mainly radical in the sense of more confidence in myself. Not in terms of just the things that I'm questioning, but in terms of my ability to say what I want to say.
Reetta Toivanen I also think that I have been always quite a fearless child even to annoy my parents. But I also come from a family where the first feminist that I've ever met was my own father. So I think that kind of makes a difference that you grow up in that kind of atmosphere. //S04: Yes.// But I would say that somebody already mentioned this, that you find these alliances that kind of give you the space and coming from a European country. So there may be also issues that you are shy to talk about. So you need really people from all over the world to come to the conclusions that are needed and to be, you know, brave enough to also say them in spaces where nobody else is saying them.
Rana Dajani I want to comment on radical. What occurred to me as an example of how I've learned from the young generation about being radical. And what scares me from what prevents us from being radical is that many of us, especially those coming from the global south, have kind of drank the Kool-Aid in the sense that we don't realize that we have been colonized culturally. And we have lost confidence in ourselves. And I'll give an example. You know, as a social innovator, we were always told that you have to get grants and you have to get funding. And the dangling fruits were USA, DFID at that time and all that. And we thought we were successful. We got those grants or we had a table to be a place at the table to be invited. Correct. And it was my children, actually, who told me, mama, they're using you. And I said, no, they're not. This is my program. I designed it. They said, no, they have your face. And they're saying, look, we are, we're good people. Yeah. We're helping the world when they're spending billions in military to bomb us. And then they give us a drop in the bucket and we feel good about ourselves. So I think also that's what prevents us from being radical because then we're not following the norm or not performing in the way that people like us. And that's when I learned from them that I'm not taking any money from anybody. I'm going to be creative and innovative and develop our own sustainable funding mechanisms from our own culture to go forward. And that's the first step towards freedom, liberation and being an exemplar for others. And I learned that from my kids.
Kavita Ramdas Rana, can I tell you a story of in Nepal, the first women's fund in Nepal was started in 1996 by Rita Thapa, who is a mentor to me and was on the board of the Global Fund for Women when I was a young CEO. And she came back from the Beijing conference and she went and she said, you know, we Nepali women need a fund of our own, you know, to support rural women, to support all of the amazing work they do in forests and protecting water sources. And the women were like, oh, how can we ever start? I mean, no, our husbands are never going to write a check for this. And she took off her gold bangle and she put it on the table and she said, we all have in South Asia, all of us have one piece of gold and it was given to us either by our fathers or our mothers or when we got married. But it's ours. We don't have to ask anyone. And her five friends put their gold bangles on the table and the Nepali Women's Fund started with those five gold bangles. And it was a reminder that we have our own cultural traditions of giving and of savings. And I think it is amazing to date the Nepali Women's Fund has the most self-reliance, not on foreign donors. 70% of their funds come from Nepalese. And it's one of the poorest countries in the world. What is poor? //S00: What is poverty?//
Farhana Yamin Exactly. I think returning to this question of caring and where and who we learn from and what are radical proposals now. And, you know, so my mother also in Pakistan and when she came to the UK, she always had these things called committees, committees, you know, which then I realized as an English sort of speaking were committees, you know. I didn't know. I honestly did not know what this word was because the way she says it, I did not know. And it was committee and they would be committees. And every month, the women, these were women led women only committees that they would give 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 50 pounds into a fund. And in essence, they were doing micro grants and giving to each person. If there were 10 of them, then, you know, they would get a thousand pounds or 500 pounds. And that's what they needed for savings, expenditures and so forth. These reliance mechanisms, our own banks, and this is how banking systems started anyway. So all of these things are there. I think I want to just pick up on this question of, you know, whether I'm more radical or less radical now, because I'm sort of reflecting on this a lot. And I'm having a lot of debates also sometimes with my children about why haven't you, why didn't we do this or that or whatever. And I think, listen, in my lifetime, you know, I came to the UK in the 70s. There were radical movements based on street protests, nonviolent civil disobedience that led to the Gender Equality Act, that led to race, what we call Race Relations Racial Equality Act, that ended discrimination on ethnicity, you know, age, religion. And all of those came in the 70s and 80s in many European countries. That's also the trajectory. We, as a global movement, of course, the activists in South Africa were preeminent. We ended apartheid globally as a global movement as a result of the boycotts and sanctions that also helped the online struggle. We had gay rights, we had gay marriage, we got transgender justice, we were creating a more disability friendly world. Even now, I don't use that term anymore. I use less differently abled or disabled by society, because these are the better words. It's a societal conditions. So I feel in feminism also, you know, there's a huge advance in the opportunities available to women and including the redefinition of who counts as a woman and whether you need to choose a gender and try and achieve equality between them. And I guess where I am sitting right now as a six-year-old thinking, what is the next third, the last third of my life, actually, is actually we did a lot. We did a lot. And we've won a lot. And I feel that this is where the backlash now has arrived, big time. Because the young and the old, the old social movements and the new ones are uniting and obviously climate change, you know, we have not yet reached the Paris goal, but we've unleashed an economy in which renewables are driving investment and make sense and are cheaper, far cheaper. So I feel like there's a lot of learning happening between intergenerational learning. I have a lot of intergenerational dialogues. I hope this podcast can contribute to that. And I think that this is very important to recognize that we've made so much progress in having a diverse, more equal, more caring, more environmentally friendly, more kinder world. That essentially, those who feel uncomfortable and threatened by that are now taking forcible military action using coercion and corruption and violence to try and overturn that. And that's where we are right now. So I don't want to diminish in any way what we have already achieved, you know, us with gray hairs, alongside with the younger movements and to make sure that they and we all work together, including globally across borders, which are nonsensical, as we said. To complete what we need to do.
Sanam I agree with you. I think when you take the long view and the backlash is a sign of success, right? The first 10 miles you go, nobody cares. It's only when you're really beginning to make a dent that, of course, you're going to get the backlash. So I think that from a, in terms of our generation, we have to keep fighting the fight and being radical. (.) The word radical in itself is challenging for me. But being in places and saying the things that need to be said and doing the things that for us cost less, but for the younger generation might cost more. So when I see the pensioners in the UK sitting outside of parliament protesting the genocide, I'm in awe of them. I love them. Because basically they're saying we've lived our lives. We have our pensions. We're not paying a heavy price for standing up for our rights. And we're doing it as a proxy for the younger generation who may have to pay a price. But it's in solidarity. So I think that intergenerational issue is great. Question on AI and what it means to all of us in our various fields. And are we scared of it? Do we understand it?
Farhana Yamin I think the most important issue is data and digital data and who owns and has control and access of data. Because AI is only able to function as a result of being able to mine and extract and use lots and lots of data, which we ourselves don't have access to or don't know what is out there. So I think that issue has to go hand in hand with a new form of governance and ownership and regulation of our own data, of then the industries that are using that data, which is the media, but also now AI. So these things go together. And again, what's scary right now is that a handful of billionaires who are very closely aligned, literally 10 billionaires are very closely aligned and they own our data. They own the social media. They increasingly own the traditional media and they own AI. And that is the big worry right now that we're not organized enough as movements and fragmented to control and regulate that.
Reetta Toivanen Anyone else on this? So I just wanted to say that in the field of kind of migration in Europe, AI has also provided a lot of good solutions. For example, automatic decisions in housing and many other kind of automatic decisions in a sense that they cannot be a human being being a racist or in a bad attitude. But it's a machine that makes the decisions for loans or housing and so on and so forth. So the kind of human negative element is removed from this process. That is, of course, good. But I totally with you on the data owning of the data, that's a worrisome issue. And now recently we got a request for a book that we have written if that book could be used to teach AI on multilingualism and multiculturalism. And it's a kind of weird question because you could say no, but they will most probably use it anyway. So it's a kind of new kind development that is also to the EU laws that are requesting from these companies that they have to, you know, show contracts with authors and so on. So they, but it's a kind of double bind that you give or you don't give, they use it anyway.
Sanam So Kavita, just looking at it from a feminist lens. So we know that most of the work being done in AI in terms of algorithms and so forth is done by men. But if we had feminists involved in these discussions, both from a policy level in terms of issues around human rights, but also in terms of, you know, the algorithms, can you, what would be the difference?
Kavita Ramdas Well, first we'd call it a we, which is what we talked about in our recent envisioning for 2040, that really the notion of the commons has completely disappeared in our capitalist framework. And I think that is especially true in this area of technology and data. And so I think part of the reason we have to envision something that is profoundly different and where I think we can lean on both feminist movements globally, but also on indigenous movements globally, honestly, is that we can learn from that tradition of honoring the commons. And why have we come to a place where our collection of knowledge has become the individual property of a few people on the planet, as Farhana said, we must instead be thinking about a way in which we can make this what another amazing feminist economist, Eleanor Olmström, talked about, which was the economy of the commons. And if we can think, and if we can create, that is also a care economy. That's what we mean by an economy of care. So, yes, I think it's very much possible, but we actually need that. And I think on the algorithms, I would just say, Ray, that I think on the one hand, yes, you can say machines take out some of the biases, but what we know, and having spent 16 years in Silicon Valley myself running a feminist organization, I can tell you that the algorithms have internalized because men and disproportionately white men, and more recently brown men and Chinese men, mainly from South Asia and China, are the engineers, patriarchy is baked into algorithms, racism is baked into algorithms, European centric assumptions are based into the algorithms. So, even on the notion of, well, in some ways, it takes away human fallibility. I think we have to understand that we've actually baked in some human biases into AI, and that's the thing that, you know, I think we...
Rana Dajani Actually, that's what I was going to say, that we cannot trust them, we must never trust AI 100%. We have the biases that are internalized in the algorithms and the data sets that they are trained on, that are majority European populations. So, that's one. So, that's one. But also, second, we need to control the ethics of using AI. When do we use it? For what purpose do we use it? And how do we ethically control it? And thirdly, there's hallucinations in AI. So, not everything that AI produces should be trusted.
Kavita Ramdas Correct.
Rana Dajani And I'll give a very simple example since we're in Berlin. When I was in Berlin two years ago, there was a big exhibit for art and AI. And they had this camera that would identify who you are and give you what your profession is just by looking at you. And this was the latest technology, like the latest. So, I stood in front of it. I'm a Muslim, and therefore, I cover my hair out of my own choice. And I was standing in front of it waiting for it to give a prediction. Like for others, they were dressed in different garments. So, one predicted, oh, she's a scientist or she's a businesswoman. So, when I stood up, the algorithm said I was a nun. And I, you know, and I moved around, changed my clothing a little bit, went back, still a nun. So, I was thinking, this is a trained algorithm, AI. There's, I was calculating, how many Muslims in the world? Two billion. Let's say 50% are women, one billion women. Let's say the ones who would put a scarf at the age range would be a quarter of those. So, a quarter billion. Say half of them don't wear a scarf. And how many nuns are there in the world? And, but it immediately identified me as a nun. So, you could just extrapolate on the mistakes that AI can make. //S01: The perfect example.// And what are the implications of that?
Sanam So, okay, last question before we close. Would the world be a better place, a safer place, a more honest and calmer place, if women were in charge?
Reetta Toivanen I would say yes.
Kavita Ramdas For me, it is not about women in charge. //S01: Exactly.// For me, it is about people who have, for me, that's why I use the term feminists. For me, feminists can come in any gender. And humanists can come in any gender. And I think the reason we called it feminism is that what was going for human rights, the reason we had to say human rights are women's rights, is because they were saying human rights are for all, but they're not treating a whole group of people like humans. And we've just seen that with the genocide in Gaza. It's the same thing. If you dehumanize people, it's not helpful. So, hence, for me, it's not about women or men or people of multiple genders, whether they are in charge or not in charge. I think it is a question of, are people who value a care economy in charge? Are people who value generosity and abundance and solidarity are in charge? And also, I would say, are we in charge with the notion of shared power? Because the idea that I never want to be the person who is like sitting like an emperor on top of any decision making table, I would like to be making those decisions in collaboration, in cooperation, and in solidarity with others.
Reetta Toivanen Yeah, for me, also, feminism is very much about equality. And I don't think that it's about genders or sexes, but I totally see that if we would have more feminist leadership, feminist politics, the world would be in so much better place. And it's so sad to see how some of the countries like Sweden and then later also Germany started calling their foreign policy feminist. But what they did... Far from it. Far from it. Far from feminist.
Rana Dajani I want to draw from biology about this concept and building and agreeing with my fellows. In biology, every human being that is born has a purpose. This is part of being surviving. Evolution survives because of diversity. And therefore, to choose one gender, one trait to be the, or even a couple, to describe a particular kind of person to lead is very anti-natural. And because you exist and you have a purpose and you contribute to society. So, and this will allow us, the radical idea is to reimagine what does that leadership look like? Right? So you're with the collective leaders. //S04: Yes. (.)//
Farhana Yamin Absolutely. And I think some of the insights that we've learned from science are that actually animals from which a lot of the behaviors that are supposed to be masculine or feminine or leadership worthy or not leadership worthy, you know, all of these stereotypes that have been baked into a very gendered world that we have today. I think that those are being thrown wide and open and more collaborative forms of leadership and of living are emerging. And I guess I want to also say that, you know, I have four children and they are mixed genders and all of them actually want to move beyond a feminist, what has been, they see as a feminist world. They want to see a non-binary, intersectionist world. They do not want to be labeled particularly as women or men. You know, they feel that that's a very old fashioned sense of possibility. They want far more possibilities than that. And I think we need to accept that in some ways, a very liberal, lightweight version of feminism has created a lot of problems. And has reinforced some of the extractivism, has reinforced some of the colonial, a very colonial form of feminism. And it's the same thing which is also happening now is that black faces in high places ain't gonna fix racism. And the same is true of patriarchy. Women alone are not going to fix things. In many cases, they make the problem perhaps slightly less visible, but more worse. As Rita said, the first feminist she got to know was her dad. Yes, and we need every gender, every person to be in the fight for liberation. And that involves taking on the caring roles as well as what was described as the leadership roles. You know, I think we should all be in charge. But there we go.
Sanam And to a more radical idea. //S04: More radical idea.// And to lunch. And to lunch. Lovely. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sandra.
Farhana Yamin Thank you so much. (...)
Sanam This was If You Were In Charge, a podcast brought to you by ICANN, the International Civil Society Action Network. Get in touch and tell us what you think at info at icanpeacework.org. And follow our newsletter. Like and subscribe. And please tell everybody else who might like the show. My thanks to ADA Productions for making the show possible. To Little Monster Media for our music. And of course, to my amazing co-host, Kavita Nandini Ramdas. And finally, to all of you for listening. We'll be back soon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.