LBJ Students Host Gender Conference
LBJ students are blazing trails by bringing a diverse group of students, faculty from different disciplines, researchers, government and non-governmental officials together to discuss gender issues.
The Conference on Gender, Globalization, and Governance will be held on April 12-13, 2007. It is being organized by students from the LBJ School, the Center for Women's and Gender Studies, the College of Communications, the Department of Sociology and the School of Law.
"We are so thrilled by the support we've received from multiple departments across the university. The response to this initiative has been overwhelmingly positive, and really just emphasizes the relevance of this subject matter," said Lindsey Ford, an LBJ Student and a conference organizer. This initiative has also caught the attention of a number of local organizations, which have offered their assistance for the conference.
The purpose of the conference is to explore the ways in which governance has changed over the last century and examine the implications this had had for women and for gender policies. "Governance is no longer just about governments and nation-states. Globalization has created global-local, and public-private connections that provide multiple players with a role in the governance process. For women and other marginalized social groups, these changes offer real opportunities for substantive change and meaningful participation," Ford noted.
Jacqueline Carton, a fellow LBJ student and organizer, emphasized the contradictory nature of these changes. "Any process that involves multiple players is going to have complications. When you look at the myriad of international women's initiatives that have been signed in the last couple of decades and you see the giant gaps between what's on paper and what's been implemented, you can't deny that we desperately need better coordination and accountability mechanisms," Carton said.
Over the course of the conference, panelists will discuss these policy hurdles and identify the greatest opportunities and obstacles for future regulatory change. Each panel will address a policy issue, particularly salient for women in the global era, which transcends national boundaries and demonstrates the difficulties of coordinating state and non-state actors.
The conference is being headlined by an exciting keynote discussion between Arvonne S. Fraser, former U.S. Ambassador to the UN's Commission on the Status of Women; Dr. Irene Tinker, co-founder of the International Center for Research on Women; and Sissy Farenthold, two-term Texas House Representative and co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus. Pioneers of the international women's rights movement, they will discuss their own experiences as well as the changes they have witnessed over the last 30 years.
The first panel will discuss the complexities of the international criminalization of violence against women, particularly looking at the International Criminal Court's recognition of rape as a form of genocide. Other conference panels include discussions on the challenges of the feminization of migration, women in the informal labor market, and the gendered nature of the HIV/AIDS crisis. The conference will end with a panel discussion synthesizing the central questions raised throughout the conference and looking toward the future.
The conference organizers hope to motivate future generations of university students to engage in this project and to continue coordinating forthcoming conferences.
"It's important that academic researchers, policymakers, and advocates collaborate and work together on these issues. Hopefully, this conference will help build a network of collaboration that students can engage in and take with them into the workforce," said Carton.
All conference events are free and open to the public. For more information, or to register, visit the conference website at http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/genderglobalization/.
