Space

The power of Romani women.

ROMIZOR means “the power of Romani women”. A name that expresses the idea this space is born from: to recognise Romani women not only through the inequalities and violence that have run through our lives, but also through our knowledge, our memory, our capacity for resistance, our creation and our power to transform.

Romani women have sustained families, communities, struggles, knowledge and forms of resistance for generations. They have written, researched, created, organised, cared, questioned and transformed. And yet their experiences still take up far too little space in research, in archives, in institutions and in the stories told about the Romani people.

Espacio ROMIZOR is born to help change that.

ROMIZOR is the programme of CHANIPEN: Research, Memory and Justice devoted to Romani women and Romani feminism. A space from which to research, produce knowledge, recover memory, create resources, build networks and generate encounters around the experiences, rights, struggles and contributions of Romani women.

A space of our own

Talking about Romani women does not mean adding a section on gender to a history already written. It also means asking who wrote that history, which experiences were left out and from where the knowledge was produced.

Espacio ROMIZOR starts from the need to create places where Romani women can be present not only as subjects that are spoken about, but as researchers, authors, creators, professionals, activists and producers of knowledge.

A space for our voices. But also for our questions, our ideas and our power.

Romani feminism

The experiences of Romani women are shaped by power relations that cannot be understood in isolation. Anti-Roma racism interacts with gender, social class, migration status, age, sexuality, territory and other forms of inequality.

ROMIZOR therefore approaches the experiences of Romani women from a feminist, Romani and intersectional perspective, paying attention both to violence and inequalities and to the strategies of resistance, knowledge and transformation built by the women themselves.

We do not want to talk only about what happens to us. We also want to research how we respond, what we build and what we can transform.

Research

ROMIZOR will be a space for producing research on the realities of Romani women. We want to generate data and knowledge on questions that remain insufficiently studied, and to do so by including the experiences and perspectives of the women themselves.

But also leadership, resistance, creation, networks, knowledge and strategies of transformation.

Because whatever we do not produce knowledge about risks remaining invisible.

Remember

Memory has a gender too. The experiences of Romani women are part of our collective history, even if too often they have been left out of the archives and the official accounts.

ROMIZOR wants to help recover, document and pass on those memories. Individual and collective stories. Experiences of persecution and survival, but also of organising, care, resistance, creation and cultural transmission.

Listening to those voices does not only mean looking back. It also means deciding what memory we want to leave to those who come after.

Meeting one another

ROMIZOR also wants to be a meeting place. A space able to connect Romani women of different generations, territories, disciplines and experiences, as well as researchers, creators, professionals and organisations working for the rights of Romani women.

We want new questions, research, collaborations, resources and networks to grow out of those encounters.

Because producing knowledge matters. Building collective power out of that knowledge matters too.

Create and share

Research should not stay only in reports or academic publications. From Espacio ROMIZOR we want to turn knowledge into accessible resources, publications, audiovisual materials, encounters, conversations, training and tools that can be used inside and outside our communities.

• Research that can be read.
• Memory that can be kept.
• Resources that can be used.
• Conversations that can continue.
• Knowledge that can become action.

A space under construction

Espacio ROMIZOR is growing. We are currently working on its structure, its first lines of research and the projects that will be part of the programme.

We want to build it with time and with a clear idea: that it be a useful, rigorous and sustainable space from which to contribute to the knowledge, the memory, the rights and the power of Romani women.

Very soon we will share the first initiatives, research and ways to take part. This is only the beginning.

A space to produce our own knowledge, recover our histories, build networks and transform our realities.

ROMIZOR — The power of Romani women · Coming soon