Feminist Practice and Solidarity in Secular Societies: Case Studies on Feminists Crossing Religious–Secular Divides in Politics and Practice in Antwerp, Belgium

Abstract

In west European countries, public debates on migration, integration, and diversity are informed by particular understandings of secularism and the secular society. In our increasingly diverse societies, so the story goes, it is needed to implement a certain type of secularism and/or support particular types of secular standpoints in order to maintain a certain status quo that guarantees security, democracy, and equality for all. Religion is often perceived and simultaneously constructed in opposition to the emancipation and equal rights of women. This dominant logic, in which secularism and religion are opposites, makes it difficult for women of diverse religious–cultural backgrounds to cooperate on an equal footing for a shared feminist cause. However, feminist politics and practices that cross religious–secular divides can and do take place. Feminist research has so far paid little attention to the actualities of this feminist border-crossing and the transformations it may engender in our current sociopolitical context. In this article, I aim to offer a consideration of feminist politics and solidarity crossing religious–secular divides in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern region of Belgium. Through two case studies, I explore how cooperation and solidarity across religious–secular boundaries are developed and being talked about by activists. I argue that such feminist coalitions can and do directly and indirectly affect the public debates and inspire feminist thinking on issues regarding religion, secularism, and feminism in the multicultural society.

Keywords::

• Feminist politics
• transversalism
• decolonial feminism
• solidarity
• religious–secular differences

Acknowledgements

Draft versions of this paper were presented in the Utrecht research seminar on religion, gender and (post) secularities, convened by Anne-Marie Korte, and at the 2012 Feminist Conference in Budapest, Hungary. The author wishes to thank the participants, particularly Kathrine van de Bogert, for their helpful questions and comments. Many thanks go to the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their insightful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1.http://www.baasovereigenhoofd.be.

^2.http://www.motief.org.

^3. Claudia Brunner proposed the phrase ‘strategic liberalism’ in response to my paper at the 8th Feminist Conference in Budapest, 2012.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Special Research Fund (Bijzonder Onderzoek Fonds – BOF) of Ghent University [grant number BOF10/STA/080].

Notes on contributors

Nella van den Brandt

Nella van den Brandt (1983) defended her dissertation entitled Religion, Secularity and Feminism in a West-European Context: A Qualitative Study of Organisations and Activism in Flanders at the 15th of December at Ghent University, Belgium. She has published in international and national academic journals such as Women's Studies International Forum, Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies, and Historica. She holds a Master degree in Comparative Women's Studies in Culture and Politics from Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She is Assistant Editor of the online journal Religion and Gender (http://www.religionandgender.org) and a Junior Member of the international research and networking project ‘Interdisciplinary Innovations in the study of religion and gender: Postcolonial, Post-secular and Queer Perspectives' (http://projectreligionandgender.org/).