The World Social Forum, initiated in 2000, is a world historic development welcomed by progressive women and men world-wide. However, despite the presence of large numbers of women and significant feminist networks, feminism as both discourse and global movement remains marginal to the culture and politics of the WSF.

As both an annual event and a world-wide process, the WSF has gathered social movements and non-governmental organizations from every continent in Porto Alegre, Brazil for each of the last three years. Originally conceived as an alternative to the World Economic Forum held annually in Davos, Switzerland, the World Social Forum is a free space half a world away, where alternative imaginations are fired and activist spirits are nourished. The WSF is helping birth a new kind of world-wide left &#0151 democratic, diverse, pluralistic and broadly convergent in its desire for a world marked by equality, justice and democracy, and its opposition to neoliberal globalization.

The annual WSF has grown from 15,000 to 100,000 participants. Those numbers continue to rise as Social Forum processes take shape on all continents, inspired by the WSF but autonomous from its International Council and Brazil-based International Secretariat.

In each of the WSFs, women have been well represented among the participants, comprising more than half (52 per cent) in the first year. The huge and diverse Brazilian women&#0146s movement has been in evidence in numerous Portuguese-language events each year, but notably not in the large-scale events where translation was provided into the four langauges of the WSF. In 2002, women comprised an impressive 43 per cent of participants but continued to be woefully under-represented in the major panels and conferences.

By the 2003 WSF, in response to pressure and protest, there were signs of improvement in women&#0146s representation in the major events and efforts to incorporate a gender perspective throughout the program. However, many feminists remain concerned over the marginalization of women and feminism in this important and otherwise hopeful and inspiring movement.

There are two major streams of organized feminist participation in the WSF: The World March of Women and The Articulación Feminista Marcosur. Both are represented on the WSF&#0146s International Council and, in 2003, they assumed the organizing of two of the five program themes. There are six other women&#0146s and/or feminist networks on the International Council.

The World March of Women originated as an initiative of the Québec women&#0146s movement in the early 1990s. It was so successful, both as a grassroots mobilization and as a pressure campaign, that Québec feminists introduced the idea of a world march at the UN Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Since then, 5500 women&#0146s groups from 163 countries and territories have participated, mobilizing at every scale, and supporting the demands of the World March&#0146s platform.

The World March of Women has publicly committed to participation in the anti-globalization movement through processes like the WSF. In the 2002 WSF, the World March contingent included women from 20 countries. Their lavender flags and T-shirts were everywhere, especially in the massive street manifestations of the WSF. In the caucus meetings of the &#0147social movements of the WSF&#0148 the March has been a visible and vocal feminist presence and has ensured some feminist content in final declarations. Their slogan, &#0147The world will not change without feminism; and feminists cannot change women&#0146s lives unless we change the world,&#0148 met with roars of approval at the closing ceremonies at the 2002 WSF.

In 2003, the World March was even more visible, with a large booth and a whole program of gender-related events, including a major event in the youth camp on &#0147feminism and a new political generation.&#0148

The Articulación Feminista Marcosur spearheaded a major campaign at the WSF against fundamentalisms, linking the economic fundamentalism of neoliberalism with rising ethnic and religious fundamentalisms. Cardboard masks depicting giant lips were sported by thousands of participants in the WSF&#0146s many street demonstrations. The accompanying slogan was, &#0147your mouth is fundamental against fundamentalisms.&#0148 In a single symbol, the masks captured the realities of people silenced by fundamentalisms, people who can speak but are afraid to, and those who raise their voices in protest.

Another important feminist presence, although largely in Portuguese only, was Planeta FLmea or Female Planet. In each of the WSFs, Planeta FLmea has mounted its own tent, with food, cultural activities, and live radio broadcasts.

There is ample evidence of feminists finding each other at the WSF and networking as feminists, but for those feminists who are connected primarily with other activist networks and movements, the organized feminist presence is difficult to access. The entry points to the explicitly feminist networks and discussions at the WSF remain opaque. Part of the problem of finding one another at the WSF is our dependence either on the official programme (which in 2003, was late, chaotic, and unclear in terms of language translation) or on pre-existing connections and knowledge of the meetings.

But the other question is about feminists engaging as feminists in other progressive but largely non-feminist movements. In 2003, 120 feminists from a dozen networks primarily from Latin America convened a pre-WSF strategy meeting. A growing chorus of feminist voices, including from networks like the Women&#0146s International Coalition for Economic Justice (WICEJ) and the Association for Women in Development (AWID), is arguing for the importance of feminists carrying feminist perspectives into global movements for social change and assuming greater leadership roles, particularly at the WSF. These feminists see feminist analyses on the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, nation and so on, as critical contributions to global social justice movements, including the movement against neoliberalism. Likewise, in their foregrounding of fundamentalism, militarism, and patriarchy, feminist analyses and politics have much to contribute to the discourses of more narrowly economic justice movements.

It is an open secret that the pluralism, diversity, and participation that characterize the World Social Forum, coupled with its exponential growth, are also producing chaos and frustration. Some political tendencies at the WSF are anxious about the seeming lack of direction. This year, there were troubling signs of a resurgent old left politics stressing the need for unity and strategy. Totalizing critiques of capitalism and imperialism seem to logically demand a global counter-project. Perhaps inebriated by Lula&#0146s victory, too many voices at the WSF this year displayed a renewed fascination with the need to contest state power.

These perspectives have their feminist expressions as well, especially among socialist and marxist feminists. Meanwhile, indigenous, ecological, and grassroots feminist perspectives on strategies for social change grounded in civil society, local communities, and socialized markets were all but submerged. While states and state power must remain referents for social movement strategies, it is critical to recall that participatory budgeting, the solidarity economy, and autonomous social movements are the pillars of the Brazilian PT&#0146s democratic national project.

The central claim of the WSF is that another world is possible. As important is the WSF&#0146s resistance to the hegemony of any single way of thinking, its valuing of diversity and participation. Among the most promising developments in feminism has been its growing recognition of the irreducible diversity of women&#0146s lives, identities, and political perspectives combined with its successful construction of feminist networks and coalitions at every scale. In the process, we are knitting a world-wide movement premised on the values of solidarity and dialogue in the midst of infinite diversity.The World Social Forum needs feminism and feminists need initiatives like the World Social Forum to make another world possible.