„Women buried alive into the depth of the history” – So they call the women, about feelings, dreams, aspirations and accomplishments of which are written by others – often by man writers or historians. Dubbing women’s voices often cause the real, lively stories experienced by women – stories unique to them – to disappear or become distorted. Women whose voices you’re going to hear every day, get to speak up themselves courageously of their own lives and dreams. The stories aren’t going to be spiced up as are told by real people whom you may have never heard about though. These are the stories of women of Georgia – unique, unknown to date and invisible; these are the voices of unseen, motley majority.
The platform was introduced on October 31 in 2016 and have rapidly gained trust among readers within the country, as well as living abroad, also among present or potential respondents.
Firstly, the platform facilitates providing society with more information about how distinct and specific needs the group of women may have. Women’s group, of course, is not homogenous and consists of several sub-groups with their particular needs and woes. For example, problems of the middle and high-class women living in a city differ utterly from those of the women from ethnic minorities in villages. Through the platform, it is possible to illustrate well the factors of how diverse the experiences and problems of women are.
Secondly, women must be given room for talking about their experience, particularly within the traditional, patriarchal society where you can hardly ever hear the voices of ordinary women.
Through Women of Georgia platform in the name of individuals, we air the problems within our society that aren’t often highlighted and properly addressed. Women are ready to speak up. The platform tries its best to deliver the stories of its respondents to the readers as accurately as possible.
To date, there are stories of more than 200 women accumulated within the platform that has also laid the foundation of general political struggle. Taboo subjects made public through the platform would often become the subject of interest of the officials/executive institutions and, consequently, prompted political and social changes.
© 2018 The project is implemented by Women of Georgia initiative group (Authors: Maiko Chitaia, Ida Bakhturidze, Nino Gamisonia; Photographers: Nino Baidauri, Salome Tsophurashvili, Sopho Aphtsiauri). The platform has been created with the support of National Democratic Institute (NDI) and financial assistance from Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). Currently, new interviews and part of the articles have been prepared as the part of East-West Management Institute’s ACCESS project with the financial support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Responsibility for the content of the articles lies entirely with the women’s initiative group Women of Georgia and do not necessarily reflects views of USAID, the government of the US, EWMI, NDI and Sida.
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