We should not overlook the dangers of power relations and of building up hierarchical relations in our exchange. On the other hand feminist and women's organizations of Eastern and Central Europe have been able to cooperate, to build mutual projects and find access to their developmental resources with an indispensable help, support and shared experience of Western feminist groups and individuals. It is crucial for us as women to reach a level of political representation in the state and in international governing structures through direct influence, through lobbying and promotion of our best leaders to power positions. We should not be too idealistic about such global structures as United Nations and Council of Europe. UN structures have not been responsive to people, because they have been absorbed in relations with governments.
Large entities are too inflexible and less mobile.
They have to absorb, generalize, include and, by nature, overlook the little species. Preparatory meetings were organized according to such regional division, where the transition countries were lost in the huge trans-atlantic conglomerate that included USA and Western Europe. Still that was a good lesson to learn. With this knowledge in our baggage, with existing networks and future cooperation projects we may hope that our daughters' generation would be able to use all the positive aspects of globalization processes in order to overcome the negative ones. Olga Lipovskaya, born in 1954, is journalist, translator, interpreter, chairperson of Petersburg Center for Gender Issues and full-time feminist.