Transcending national boundaries, the Feminist Dialogues (FD) organised within the World Social Forum since 2003, is a project towards strengthening the feminist movements' strategies to organise and resist, or even reverse the blows of globalisation.

For 2007, the objective of the Feminist Dialogues was to develop a deep and profound critique of democracy that will enable its transformation and radicalisation, in collaboration and partnership with other social movements. The meeting articulated a plural and radical conception of democracy that recovers the diversity of experiences and conceptions of democracy which are located outside the neo-liberal hegemonic model (2).

Implicit in these conceptions and proposals is the democratisation of feminist and social movements themselves.

Even if the understanding of movements is more fluid, and is full of diversities and contradictions, the FD project is a critical juncture of re-thinking, re-invigorating, alliance building and solidarity building. This self-reflexive space has provided us, feminists, an opportunity to work on a transnational movements level and creatively and radically address the backlash and challenges to feminisms that have also grown exponentially with the rise and dominance of neo-liberal capitalism and the consolidation of ethnic nationalist, and of religious fundamentalist movements and nation-states.

In this issue of WLA, we bring you the feminist proposals on radicalising democracy that were presented at the FD 2007 meeting. …