When Lara, a co-founder and co-director of the Women’s Resource Center with whom we started the Center in 2003, moved to Armenia from Canada, we were just beginning to brainstorm what we wanted the Center to look like. We didn’t have a place to gather. We used to meet either at Lara’s apartment in an old Soviet building or at cafes. I lived with my already ailing parents, and it wasn’t the nicest ambiance to host gatherings at my apartment. So, we used to meet at the Artbridge café, brainstorming for hours, writing ideas, deleting them, drawing them, imagining them. It was one of the happiest times of my life—a feeling of starting something meaningful and important and giving life to it. Passion, drive, sleepless nights, hard work, anticipation of something big. Experiences that you might never have in life anymore. Doing something for your own personal growth, and at the same time knowing that many more women can benefit from it.
We also discussed our own problems a lot; it felt more like a self-help group, I believe, for all of us. Personally, it was also a way to escape endless questions, like “When are you going to marry?” “Do you have a boyfriend?” “Why not?” “Do you have any ‘news’?” “Why not?” The questions began around when I was 18, and with each passing year, they grew louder, and the looks became increasingly condemning. We talked about social pressure, stereotypes trying to mold us, roles attempting to define us, and expectations trying to suppress our ambitions and aspirations. It was very psychotherapeutic and seductive; I couldn’t wait for our meetings filled with dreams, plans, and released emotions. One of the main tools used was undervaluing emotions, suppressing thoughts that might threaten a higher authority. So, our meetings and conversations about feminism, women’s rights, equality were like a secret place to challenge a patriarchal order that we couldn’t even articulate very well back then. To me, our meetings represented a symbolic protest and an act of resistance and pushback.
One of the projects that emerged from our café brainstorming sessions was the initiative for girls from orphanages and boarding schools in Armenia. We aimed to talk to them about their rights and prepare them for life after leaving the orphanage. After several revisions, our project was approved, and we were thrilled to start a new project that we had designed and advocated for. However, our excitement was dampened when we went to sign the agreement and discussed the budget. Mr. R, a short and bold man, peered at us over his large glasses and remarked with a hint of irony in his voice: “300 USD? Monthly salary? Don’t you remember, guys, what color your passport is?” He was referring to me and another colleague from Armenia, insinuating that the color of our passports determined our worth. Meanwhile, Lara, with her Canadian passport, was seemingly still qualified for the $300 monthly salary. We left the office feeling deeply unjustly treated. It was our first encounter with the power dynamics inherent in donor relationships—the politics of passport color. And that sense of injustice and unfairness has stayed with us ever since.
So many times, we have been asked to reach out to 100 women in 2 months, change their lives so drastically that they can start their own businesses and moreover become agents of change in their communities. And the cost of the project can’t be more than let’s say 5000 USD. 5000 USD perhaps a monthly salary for someone sitting in a comfortable office in Brussels/New York/London, writing the guideline for a hypothetical theory of change for a hypothetical woman living somewhere far away, women that they never met and most probably will never meet in their lives.
It is intriguing how postcolonial feminism seldom discusses postcolonialism in countries like Armenia. Even more rarely do we delve into postcolonialism concerning women’s rights within the post-socialist context and the dynamics of donor-grantee relationships. A post-Soviet woman defies categorization as either a “typical Third World woman” through Western lenses—religious, family-oriented, illiterate, and domestic—or a “typical Western woman”—sexually liberated, economically independent, well-traveled, and free from parental or spousal control. She embodies a hybrid identity, encompassing diverse qualities alongside internal conflicts and dilemmas. Unlike a “typical woman from a Third World” solely viewed through a “Western eye,” a post-Soviet woman constantly negotiates between Western and Eastern patriarchal and colonial influences. During our weekly staff meetings, feminist lectures, and retreats, we consistently examine our perceptions of colonialism, oppression, and power dynamics. Personally, I view the very dichotomy of family-oriented versus sexually liberated as a perpetuation of colonial discourse and an extension of ongoing patriarchal narratives of “moral” versus “immoral” women. While sexual, economic, and psychological liberation remains a core feminist objective, the pressure to choose between Eastern and Western perspectives perpetuates a patriarchal trap. We strive to challenge these divisive constructs, rejecting frameworks that coerce women into navigating the “morality-immorality” continuum and upholding patriarchal structures.
But we kept going- brainstorming, designing, getting numerous rejections, but still implementing project after project. “Project”, how many times we debated about this word and the concept in the light of women’s movement building. Shall we implement projects and therefore take money from donors, and at the same time have a space, some resources and more opportunities to help more women, or we should put ourselves out of this “neoliberal game” completely? By the way we have been accused so many times by those who never started any organization, never had a pressure to sustain it and never felt a huge responsibility not to stop, because stopping might mean literally a lethal end for some women. We have been accused of feeding neoliberalism and serving donors to push their agenda, on the one hand, and for being “Soros’s adherents” and “grant eaters”, on the other. At some point attacks on us and especially Lara became so horrifying that in my mind I often referred to that absurd, yet scary situation as a “modernized Salem witch trial”.
However, as Lara often says, the most hurtful were always attacks from feminist allies and colleagues, who kept repeating those memorized Western textbooks about neoliberalism, NGOization and feminist movement, and indirectly or directly kept accusing us of being a part of a big neoliberal game.
In general, this is an interesting discussion – how relevant is it to use terms and concepts of neoliberalism, radicalism, and even Marxism in our context? What do we mean by neoliberalism when we refer to a small women’s organization in Armenia? Neoliberal feminism is certainly on the rise in the US and is very well articulated in neoliberal feminist manifestos, such as Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In and Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Why Women Still Can’t Have it All. But do we- an organization with a $200 000 yearly budget, 15 employees and 2 offices really fit into a neoliberal agenda of “work-life balance” or “MeToo movement”? And do people accusing us of being neoliberals really understand how socioeconomic and cultural domains shape lives of women from various social, economic, educational backgrounds?
As Elisabeth Prugl argues in her article Neoliberalising Feminism “the neoliberalization of feminism took a form of women’s empowerment project which is run by transnational consumer products companies, typically in partnership with public development actors. Under the label of “corporate social responsibility, these companies invest in women in their supply and marketing chains, seeking to empower them within a neoliberality or government”. But, we never advocated for the main concepts of neoliberalism, such as rationalism, heteronormativity or hyper-individualism. And most importantly, we never put the responsibility for “having it all” on an individual woman living in a low-middle class household in a small city of Armenia with abusive partner, two underaged kids, parents that think “whatever happens in family should stay in family” and a boss that can take advantage of her situation any time. If anything, we have always stressed the importance of providing a safe space and a voice to women from vulnerable and underprivileged groups. If anything, we tried to redefine the neoliberal notion of success and “having it all” in our own cultural, socio-economic and geopolitical context. If anything, we tried to advocate for a critical understanding of a power dynamic, intersectionality and social pressure.
It was never an easy choice, but one thing was clear for us- we always choose to work with donors that have feminist values and understanding of justice. And it turned out that it’s possible to do despite the color of your passport.
Fast forward 15 years… we became that feminist donor that we dreamed about. We actually do ask what is the color of your passport or a registration number of your organization, because we are firmly committed to support organizations and individuals from Armenia only. However, no longer, time consuming and emotionally draining applications and reports are asked from our partners. In fact, in some cases a video application or your personal story and reflections on what it means to be a woman in Armenian society is enough. No longer, paternalized gazes questioning your salary and wondering where your “in kind contribution”. In fact, we insist that our partners allocate 10% of their budget for collective healing and wellbeing or their teams. No longer, traditional monitoring visits and audits, often in an atmosphere of interrogation. Just the opposite; we encourage our partners to spend a day in each other’s spaces, learn from each other, share experiences and jointly find solutions that will help them in their difficult work with marginalized communities of women and girls in Armenia.
For me personally, and I am sure for the entire staff of WFA, relationships based on trust and care are crucial. We try to practice love and care in our daily work, and reproduce that model in our relationships with our partners. We believe that it’s transformative on individual, interpersonal and institutional levels. Only through our own personal transformations and intentional practice of what we are preaching, we can bring changes in the feminist movement and the institutional practices of donors. When you operate from a place of love, care and solidarity you are no longer tolerant to quite often oppressive and colonized language of funding infrastructure.
And, you want to build a new type of relationships in the philanthropic world; relationships nurtured by mutual recognition of each other’s struggles, fears, hopes and vulnerabilities. It’s not an easy path, but the only one to disrupt and challenge centuries old status quo of traditional anti-feminist philanthropy.
Author: Gohar Shahnazaryan
