Kala Peiries

Dr Kala Peiries is the director of the Centre for Women’s Research (CENWOR), Sri Lanka. As part of the Feminist Development Justice (FDJ) programme, she has been involved in APWLD’s activities since 2018.

APWLD interviewed Kala in February 2021 and below is her story.

Becoming a feminist

I am a lawyer with a doctorate in business administration. Born into a family of school principals, I was read poetry by my mother when I was a child. One poem described how a girl, who was kept at home, stood at the fence to watch other boys and girls go to school. The girl wished that she could go to school. Eventually, only the boys went. In another poem, poor people collected milk and curd from the hill so rich men could drink it. Another poem was about a wife beaten by her drunken husband in the evening. In these short stories and poems, one can find reflections on capitalism and social fragmentation, as well as patriarchy. 

My background has made me view men and women and power relationships differently. I understand what harmony is and value interconnectedness after being taught that there should be space for my neighbours and other people at home and in primary school. I would say the ideological understanding of empowerment is not rooted in training, which comes later. It comes through your upbringing and the hardships you face. Reflecting on our lives makes us stronger women. My involvement with the feminist movement comes from my background. 

When I was very young, I became a fellow of Peace House and Freedom House in Washington DC, the US, working closely with Amnesty International. I also studied Third World Development, International Development and Legal Rights at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Netherlands. My international exposure has helped me look at the world differently, not just as an activist working with the community but also as a policy-level planner. 

With my experience in project planning, I worked for different international organisations and as a gender expert and social equity consultant in Sri Lanka. I was trained to take up leadership through the work I did in a small organisation called Siyath Foundation, where I was a social mobiliser at the field level. We used to work with rural women and bring their products in lorries to the market. Siyath produced a black-and-white documentary entitled The Wrong End of the Rope: Women Coir Workers in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, doormats are made from the fibre of coconut husks. The workers, usually very poor women, take the husk out of the coconut, wet it on riverbanks, separate the fibre, beat it with a pole, and then make rope and doormats. 

In 2000, I became a board member of Centre for Women’s Research (CENWOR). We are confronted with policy-related challenges in our work in Sri Lanka. We need to understand where the stakeholders and focal points are in the women’s movement, fully implement Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) so that it exists both in reality and in policy, and demystify political rhetoric—reveal what is hidden within objectives, explain what is considered as political will, and identify how equality is diluted in dialogue.

Feminist theory is inculcated in my thinking from these interventions.

Growing together with APWLD

My contact with APWLD began when CENWOR applied to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Monitoring & Review project. 

Collaborating with APWLD has enabled us to become active participants in the monitoring of national and global agendas as we monitor SDG Goal 5 (Gender Equality), and integrate it with all other 16 goals. For this, we were able to interact with the SDGs Council of Sri Lanka and regional and international networks such as the Asia-Pacific People’s Forum on Sustainable Development (APPFSD).

APWLD invited us to present at the voluntary national reviews (VNR) in New York, which was a memorable intervention, gave us a lot of exposure, and introduced us to a system that we would not even have considered. We met our own Sri Lankan delegation ministers, and with the opportunity of face-to-face interaction, we offered to contribute as a civil society organisation to the national mechanisms.

APWLD taught us a lot about empowerment and mechanisms. We love the voice and the power in women’s major groups and different groups. We treasure this membership and want to see what more we could do for the women’s movement in Sri Lanka with the support of APWLD and collaboration with CENWOR.

Hopefully, we can join Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) in the future. We have eminent researchers, connecting research to implementation through advocacy. It is a different ballgame, so we want to do FPAR. As part of our proposal, we want to work with a rural community that is now affected by COVID-19 and also to introduce sex workers to FPAR.

Ways moving forward

I would propose or encourage members or partners to take advantage of more opportunities to work with each other. Mongolia and Sri Lanka, for example, could have a partnership and work together on advocacy projects, or we could invite someone from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to share their viewpoints and undertake collaborative efforts as partners. 

Organisations that have worked with APWLD for a certain duration may become pools for trainers or resources. Exchange projects can take place in other organisations and their communities to organise women. With a broad Asia-and-the-Pacific context, the women in the exchange projects will make rapid progress.