Annual Conference 2003: Borders, Babies, and Bombs

Civil liberties are being curtailed, national borders tightened, and militarization is on the rise - all in the name of ensuring security. The National Council for Research on Women’s (NCRW) 2003 Annual Conference takes place at a critical moment of escalating military insecurities and deepening economic disparities, as well as shortly before the US presidential primary season. Recognizing the extraordinary challenges that women and girls - and all people - are facing in the US and around the world, the Conference will provide alternate visions and strategies by shifting the focus of security from the safety of territory and states to human security - the safety of individuals, their freedom from fear, and their social, economic, and physical well-being - and reframing security to incorporate the experiences and concerns of women and girls, their families and communities.

The Conference will address such questions as: What institutions can be held accountable for ensuring human security at local and global levels? How are private and public violence, as well as power inequities, institutionalized along lines of nation, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and ability? How can we ensure that the gendered components of human security, and women’s perspectives and voices, are represented in policy debates and public discussion?

Janet L. Holmgren (President, Mills College)
Margo Okazawa-Rey (Director, Women’s Leadership Institute, Mills College)
Linda Basch (Executive Director, NCRW)

An International Commission headed by world leaders has just issued a Report calling for the implementation of a Human Security framework that goes far beyond freedom from fear and want for the world’s populations, calling for global attention to the immense impacts of conflict and perpetual underdevelopment on peoples, the critical importance of social and economic rights in today’s world, and the imperative for strategic coalitions that can strengthen architectures of intervention. What is the potential of such a framework, its feasibility as well as its challenges? What are its policy and programmatic implications? And does it bring an adequate gender lens to issues of security and rights?

Keynote Speaker:
Sadako Ogata (former UN High Commissioner for Refugees; Co-Chair, Commission on Human Security)
Respondents:
Charlotte Bunch (Executive Director, Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Rutgers University)
Cynthia Enloe (Professor and Director, Women’s Studies Program, Clark University)
Andrew Mack (Director, Centre for Human Security, University of British Columbia; former Director of Strategic Planning, Executive Office of UN Secretary-General)
Moderator:
Linda Basch (Executive Director, National Council for Research on Women)

The Commission on Human Security’s Report argues that the critical and pervasive threats and crises peoples throughout the world currently face must be addressed: impoverishment and arrested or reversed development, disease, lack of access to and the withholding of knowledge, violence, displacement, and the denial of rights. But how is this to be done, and what institutions - global, national, and local - can be held accountable? How can issues of racism, classism, and sexism be incorporated into this framework?

Panelists:
Rabab Abdulhadi (Assistant Professor, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, New York University)
Linda Burnham (Executive Director, Women of Color Resource Center)
Myra Strober (Professor of Education, founding Director, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Stanford University)
Deborah Rhode (Professor, Stanford Law School)
Moderator:
Margo Okazawa-Rey (Director, Women’s Leadership Institute, Mills College)

We are witnessing an increased militarization of US life, culture, and political economy. Funds are being redistributed into military budgets; a stereotyped masculinity and “war mentality” are being privileged which have implications for domestic and state violence; high schools serve as military training sites for junior ROTC programs and mercenaries of everyday life; immigrants are subject to heightened exclusions; citizenship is manipulated; military representations are infiltrating popular culture; and people’s rights are curtailed in the name of security. This panel will address the economic, social, political, legal and cultural dimensions of these situations, and ways to challenge them.

Speakers:
Norma Alarcon (Professor, Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley)
Ruthie Gilmore (Assistant Professor, Geography, UC Berkeley)
Sandra Morgen (Director, Center for the Study of Women in Society, University of Oregon)
Simona Sharoni (Executive Director, Peace and Justice Studies Association)
Moderator:
Kathy Rodgers (President, NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund)

Speakers:
Catherine Marshall (CEO, CAMEO)
Kaaryn Gustafson (Coordinator, Welfare Research, Education and Advocacy Program, Women of Color Resource Center)
Moderator:
Sandra Morgen (Director, Center for the Study of Women in Society, University of Oregon)

Speakers:
Julia Curry-Rodriguez (Professor, Mexican American Studies Department, San José State University)
Felicity Hill (Program Specialist, United Nations Development Fund for Women)
Amelia Wu (Vice President, Programs and Evaluations, The Global Fund for Women)
Moderator:
Christine Grumm (Executive Director, Women’s Funding Network)

Speakers:
Margaret Mills (Professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Ohio State University)
Maliha Zulfacar (Professor, Sociology, California Polytechnic State University)
Moderator:
Sally Kitch (Professor, Women’s Studies, Ohio State University)

Speakers:
Susan McGee Bailey (Executive Director, Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley College)
Megan Ryan (Program Manager, Partners for Democratic Change)
Margaret Byrne Swain (Assistant Professor, Anthropology, UC Davis)
Moderator:
Heather Johnston Nicholson (Director of Research, Girls Incorporated National Resource Center)

Speakers:
Barbara Berliner (Senior Vice President, Global Diversity, Lehman Brothers)
Samantha Brown (Vice President, Goldman, Sachs & Co.)
Ebele Okobi-Harris (Catalyst)
Kris Klein (Credit Suisse First Boston)
Laura Liswood (Senior Advisor, Goldman Sachs)
Deborah Merrill-Sands (Associate Dean, MBA Program, Simmons College School of Management)
Loren Walsh (Right Management)
Moderator:
Anna Lloyd (Committee of 200)

Speakers:
Patricia Clough (Director, Center for the Study of Women and Society, CUNY Graduate Center)
Judith Ann Tickner (Director, Center for International Studies, University of Southern California)
Moderator:
Anne S. Runyan (Director, Center for Women’s Studies, The University of Cincinnati)

Indai Sajor (former Executive Director, Asian Centre for Women’s Human Rights, the Philippines)
Bina Srinivasan (founding member and coordinator of Swashraya, a women’s group in Gujarat, India)

Speakers:
Silvia Henriquez (Executive Director, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health)
Beth Parker (Co-Chair, Women’s Leadership Alliance)*
Jane Roberts and Lois Abraham (34 Million Friends Campaign, UNFPA)
Eveline Shen (Co-Director, Asians and Pacific Islanders for Reproductive Health)*

Speakers:
Renee Bird (Student, Mills College)
Mary McGowan Davis (Visiting Attorney, NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund)
Krishanti Dharmaraj (Executive Director, Women’s Institute for Leadership Development for Human Rights)
Marilyn Fowler (State Coordinator, The California Women's Agenda)
Aileen C. Hernandez (State Chair, The California Women’s Agenda)
Jackie Leavitt (School of Public Policy and Social Research, UCLA)
Moderator:
June Zeitlin (Executive Director, Women’s Environment & Development Organization)

Speakers:
Christine Gailey (Chair, Women’s Studies, UC Riverside)
Angela Ginorio (Associate Professor, Women Studies, University of Washington)
Anne S. Runyan (Director, Center for Women’s Studies, The University of Cincinnati)
Debra Shultz (Deputy Director, Network Women’s Program, Open Society Institute)

Speakers:
Gwyn Kirk (Visiting Scholar, Women’s Leadership Institute, Mills College)
Christina Leano (Founding Member/Director, Filipino/American Coalition for Environmental Solutions)
Aiko Ogoshi (Professor, Philosophy, Kinki University, Japan)
Suzuyo Takazato (Co-Chair, Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence)

Speakers:
Rabab Abdulhadi (Assistant Professor, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, New York University)
Sondra Hale (Professor, Anthropology, UCLA)
Zeina Zaatari (Anthropology, UC-Davis)

Small Tribute to Patsy Mink, Yayori Matsui, June Jordan

Speakers:
Krishanti Dharmaraj (Executive Director, Women’s Institute for Leadership Development for Human Rights)
Barbara Nelson (Dean, School of Public Policy and Social Research, UCLA)
Saskia Sassen (Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago)
Eleanor Smeal (President, Feminist Majority Foundation)
Moderator:
Gertrude J. Fraser (Program Officer, Ford Foundation)

Panelists:
Gloria Bonder (Director, The Latin American Post Graduate Institute of Social Sciences, Argentina)
Jenn Sturm and Dana Luciano (Kirkland Project, Hamilton College)

Presenters:
Linda Basch, Heather Johnston Nicholson, Janet L. Holmgren