DEALING WITH INEQUALITY Gender discrimination and inequality do not disappear automatically. Proactive measures can change the landscape – or as a reggae artist, Jimmy Cliff sang in the mid-1970s, “action speaks louder than words/don't be deceived by all those fancy talkers.” 34 There are positive examples of art training activities for “women and non-binaries only” as they “take place in a safe space” aiming “to create a space of encouragement and mutual respect(…) without feeling the pressure to perform or to behave in a certain way.” 35 Several film festivals36 focus entirely on productions made by women, or on women’s perspectives and women’s rights. As a cultural producer, you may consider how aware you are of equality when you organize an exhibition, a concert, or a literary discussion. As a cultural activist or consumer, you may analyze representations in public performances, exhibitions, and request your local or national cultural agencies to strategize gender politics in regard to training, funding and representation. The former UN Special Rapporteur, Farida Shaheed in her 2012 report “The enjoyment of cultural rights by women on an equal basis”37 called on states to address stereotypes that restrict women's full enjoyment of their cultural rights and provided a list of issues to help states assess their level of implementation of women's cultural rights on a basis of equality, such as, • Abolishing laws that sustain harmful gender stereotypes; • Adopting measures that recognize women's contributions to culture; • Taking action against institutions that threaten women who claim their right to participate in cultural life; • Ensuring girls and women get an equal share of state support for the arts, sports, and sciences. Those recommendations continue to be valid. It is outside the scope of this compact manual to provide an overview of all kinds of cultural rights. As we are now moving away from rights, which are specifically monitored by the 2005 Convention we will focus on a couple of topics, which network partners have specifically wanted to deal with. 34 35 36 37 32 The phrase was first used Abraham Lincoln in 1856. https://www.futurefemalesounds.org/dj-workshops https://www.wmm.com/resources/film-festivals/ https://undocs.org/en/A/67/287