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Annual Conferences:
2004 Conference: Women's Voices Matter
2003 Conference: Borders, Babies, and Bombs
2002 Conference: Women Define Human Security
1999 Conference: Choosing to Lead
1998 Conference: Transforming Knowledge
1997 Conference: Claiming Women's Political Power
Women Who Make a Difference Awards Dinners:
2005 |
2004 |
2003 |
2002 |
2000 |
1999 |
1998
Other Events:
Beijing + 5 Symposia
Facing Global and National Crises:
Women Define Human Security
The National Council for Research on WomenAnnual Conference 2002
Thursday, May 30 - Saturday, June 1, 2002
The Roosevelt Hotel, New York City
PROCEEDINGS
The Conference was organized to address the growing crises that characterize the beginning of the 21st century - deepening disparities in wealth across the globe; the eruption of violence and terror in the name of ethnic, nationalist, and religious identities and differences; the economic and social dislocation of whole populations; the increased trafficking of drugs, arms, and people - especially women and children. Researchers, activists, policy analysts, educators, business leaders, funders, and the media gathered to assess global and national ramifications of these forces and the complex tensions they create, and to define an “architecture of interventions” to achieve greater human security for women, girls, their families and communities.
Program highlights included a two-part opening plenary that addressed the ways that the expanding military activities and unregulated movements of global capital are threatening the human security of peoples - and particularly women and children - throughout the world. Panelists demonstrated the imperative of applying a feminist perspective to situations of violence, terror, and war, and of having these perspectives strongly represented at decision-making tables and in peace-building efforts. Friday, May 31st, began with a morning plenary that examined the implications of the U.S. war on terrorism for the homefront. The Plenary conversations stimulated a series of topic-specific participatory sessions ranging from religion and violence, global poverty as a domestic issue, to militarization, globalization, and violence. Several booksignings, featured speakers such as Helen Caldicott, Eve Ensler, and Alison Bernstein, and multi-media presentations rounded out the two-and-a-half day Conference.
OPENING POETRY READING:
Meena Alexander: Illiterate Heart
2:00 - 2:15 p.m.
Linda Basch, Executive Director of NCRW, provided the introductory framework for the Conference with her welcoming remarks. She briefly explained the Conference’s theme as emerging from the Council’s (in partnership with the CUNY Center for the Study of Women in Society) Rockefeller Humanities funded project on human security, globalization, and gender. In examining these complex and interconnected issues, she emphasized that it will become clear that feminist perspectives and solutions are different. She voiced the urgent need to bring this perspective to decision-making tables and the role of informed activism in doing so. Indeed, one of the goals of the Conference was to provide analyses and critiques that can inform this activism.
Following these remarks, Meena Alexander, offered a selection of readings from her text Illiterate Heart, composed in the aftermath of the events of September 11th. Poems included “Hungriest Heart,” a reflection on a girl-child and the perils of growing up female; “In a City of Burning Towers, Kabir Songs” giving voice to the fear created by the embodiment of difference on September 11th; and works in progress including “Aftermath” and “Petroglyph.”
OPENING PLENARY:
Part I: Violence, Terror, and Accountability: Global Implications
2:15 - 3:45 p.m.
Panelists:
Charlotte Bunch (Rutgers University)
Cynthia Enloe (Clark University)
Sima Wali (Refugee Women in Development)
Moderator: Kristin Booth Glen (CUNY School of Law)
Charlotte Bunch began her presentation with a challenge and urgent call for feminists to focus on the role of the U.S. government in perpetuating violence, militarism, and terror worldwide, and to have women’s voices heard nationally and internationally. This was a call for feminist analysis and activism surrounding U.S. foreign policy, which she identified as military and corporate driven. Bunch underscored the imperative of doing so at this critical juncture, with a U.S. government administration that lacks a long-term vision of global sustainable security in its efforts to address global terrorism. Moreover, while 9/11 was a terrible event, it is not the defining moment of the 21st century or for many in the rest of the world who have long survived under terrorism, death, and violence. Her talk then concentrated on defining the development and usage of the term human security. While she acknowledged a positive shift away from a state-centered concept of national security and the military security defense paradigm, she argued that the concept was lacking feminist analyses and since 9/11 has been increasingly resistant to a human rights perspective. Bunch concluded by asserting that we must build on the strength of the international women’s movement and harness the clarity of feminist critique and action. U.S. women must also study and asses U.S. foreign policy and its impact on women nationally and internationally in order to change global structures of inequality.
Cynthia Enloe focused on the insidious militarization of daily life and the ways in which we are all complicit. Her presentation concentrated on mapping the blocks on the road to institutional accountability which ultimately contribute to women’s insecurity globally. Enloe identified seven blocks to accountability for creating women’s security-noting that this list was just a beginning-via a feminist analytical reading. First, the “Culture of Secrecy” is a cloak that covers organizational practices. Second, the “Culture of Imminent Danger” employs a discourse of “not now, later” when the “danger” is behind us, but ultimately evades women’s security. Third, the “Culture of Solidarity” provides a mask of unity that can undermine the strength of heterogeneity. Fourth is the “Presumption of Normalcy,” which feminists have been deconstructing for decades, such as the ‘normalcy’ of prostitution that accompanies the operations of U.S. military bases. Fifth, the “Presumption of Triviality” emphasizes the enormous challenge of finding spaces of accountability when an issue is not deemed of enough importance; this is evidenced in the hard battle to make violence against women in refugee camps a visible concern. Sixth, the “Culture of Technical Expertise” highlights how expertise is constructed in masculinist form and feminist perspectives dismissed. Seventh, the “Institutionalized Short-term Attention Span” marks the difficulty of holding agencies or institutions accountable when we have short-term outlooks. Enloe rhetorically asked the audience: “who’s now watching what’s going on in Rwanda…or in Kosovo?” Indeed, she admonished “a short attention span makes it almost impossible to use a feminist understanding to hold people genuinely accountable.” However, like Bunch, Enloe concluded with a call for action in the struggle for accountability:
- “I want a feminist analysis of Enron. I want a feminist analysis of the WTO… I want a feminist analysis of the FBI. I want a feminist analysis of NATO. I want a feminist analysis of Deutschebank. I want a feminist analysis of the UN Security Council.”
Sima Wali’s presentation focused on women in conflict and post-conflict reintegration and specifically documented the case of Afghanistan. She contextualized the importance of this work with the following figures: there are 20 million refugees worldwide and an equivalent number of internally displaced people-a majority of which are women and their children. She argued that in the post-Cold War moment this is a forgotten population because the United Nation’s High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) has been unable to meet the needs and locally based and internationally supported NGOs have been forced to attempt to fill in the gap. She quickly summarized the decades of conflict in Afghanistan, terming it a holocaust, and located the role the U.S. has played over time since the 1979 Soviet invasion and the U.S. military assistance that fed arms to Islamic extremists. She described a situation of gender apartheid and a culture of violence in which women bear the brunt of warfare in terms of poverty, literacy, and maternal mortality-a situation which has not ended with the Taliban defeat. Wali suggested solutions for building peace which include both short and long term strategies to incorporate women at all levels of social, economic, and political participation-to restructure the armed forces, rebuild the educational system, and strengthen civil society where women at the grassroots have organized for human rights. She urged the release of promised international funds to rebuild Afghanistan, stating that only 5% of the money pledged has been sent. Wali too emphasized the potential for collaboration of feminists across national borders. She critiqued however, the emphasis placed on the burqa that elided the underlying causes of the problem. Like Bunch and Enloe, she suggested a feminist mobilizing to influence U.S. foreign policy to create sustainable and long term solutions.
DISCUSSION
As moderator, Kristin Booth Glen underscored the importance of disseminating the diverse feminist perspectives and analyses articulated by the presenters. She opened up the discussion by asking the panelists to discuss issues of institutional accountability.
Sima Wali responded regarding the complex situation of rebuilding war-torn Afghanistan. She suggested that the United Nations system is in need of reform in order to meet the needs of an expanding refugee population and to ensure people’s human security. She illustrated the contradictions in financial terms, juxtaposing the 2 billion dollars spent per month to wage a war against terrorism and less than 1 million dollars released to wage peace and rebuilding in Afghanistan. Charlotte Bunch shifted the conversation to the ways in which the women’s movement must intervene, building from the richness of local knowledge to influence national and international policy-through institutions such as the National Council for Research on Women. Hers was a call for directing feminist research toward answering specific questions and as a vehicle for creating public intellectuals. She also emphasized the importance of women’s studies in educating undergraduates. In addition, Bunch stated that women’s global organizations such as women’s human rights groups are producing critical information that is not reaching women in university and policy centers. Finally, she discussed the right-wing agenda that is trying to dismantle the UN through systematic underfunding.
With these first comments the floor was opened up for audience participation. Questions concentrated on the often contradictory relationship between U.S. military intervention and U.S. support for rebuilding in places such as Afghanistan. The discussion concentrated on ways in which feminist political analysis is not reaching the mainstream media. Cynthia Enloe emphasized that feminist scholars must learn to present and write their work in accessible ways-no less nuanced or acute in their analysis-to policy makers and the media. For example, institutions such as NCRW could organize workshops on how to write Op-Ed pieces, to learn how to present feminist research in ways that are mind-changing to the lay public. Others asked the panelists to address the relationship between feminist analysis and activism and the global capital that at times funds this work. Enloe agreed that this is an important topic, one that is perhaps easiest in smaller and private discussions, but that indeed many in the room were engaged in work precisely because of the generosity of board members and trustees with access to global capitalism and that ultimately the ways in which many have to frame the issues their organizations address must gel with the perspectives of these donors, to the “donor’s nervousness.” Charlotte Bunch added that currently there is a wealth of feminist critique of global capitalism but the problem is where to take this critique politically. What alternatives are there in this historic moment? Demie Kurz (Alice Paul Center for the Study of Women) described her recent pedagogical attempts to denaturalize the workings of the U.S. version of capitalism versus other nations such as Sweden. The conversation concluded with a return to the issue of accountability where Enloe suggested that critical on-the-ground grassroots work of monitoring, counting, describing, and providing information on what actually happens is a powerful tool.
OPENING PLENARY:
Part II: Violence, Terror, and Accountability: Reports from the Field
4:15 - 6:00 p.m.
Panelists:
Rosalind Petchesky (CUNY)
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (World Bank)
Rabab Abdulhadi (New York University)
Virginia Vargas (Flora Tristán, Peru)
Moderator: Domna Stanton (CUNY)
Domna Stanton framed Part II of the Opening Plenary by briefly quoting article 134 of the Beijing Plus Five meeting which called for women’s full participation in creating peace and security in situations of conflict worldwide. In invoking this quote she laid a foundation for critiquing and questioning the multiple meanings of security. Like the preceding panelists she emphasized an action agenda in order to transform the public discourse, the need to place and disseminate this developing and important feminist critique within a media that is typically driven by international relations and political science analyses. In introducing the speakers, Stanton articulated the importance of local or case studies as the “constitutive force of the global.”
Rosalind Petchesky presented a critique of the concept of human security arguing that despite the addition of “human,” in adopting this term we are reduced to a militarized language of security that is “minimalist, retrograde, and defensive.” She began with a feminist analysis of post 9/11 U.S. foreign policy - a militarized and masculinist agenda modeled on Reagan era policy. Citing EP Thompson’s work on habits of speech and thought, how nuclear war became thinkable, she stated “We have to ask whether Human Security discourse, even in feminist dress, is a good enough answer to the militarization of people’s minds that’s rapidly becoming ‘normal thought.’” Hers was a call for action for feminist ethics and politics to make the ‘thinkable unthinkable again” not only in academia but to publicly challenge militarized, gendered language. She followed with a deconstruction and gender analysis of how masculinist militarism subverts human rights approaches and peaceful, multilateral methods of conflict resolution. Her example was the Israeli atrocities and humanitarian abuses of the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin.
After a brief synopsis of the May 2002 event where despite UN pressure, a fact finding mission was prevented from investigating the scene, Petchesky explored the language of this political negotiation and unraveling of accountability for human rights abuses. She located the ways in which U.S. administration officials, through statements such as “It just wasn’t a ‘die-on-your-sword’ issue for us,” employ romantic images of hand-to-hand combat and in doing so merge diplomacy and war. She also illustrated how in negotiating the Jenin tragedy civilians were expendable in the rescue of a patriarchal leader-Arafat. Hers was an analysis of the masculinization of violent conflict personified in the male leader: “the struggle for a free Palestine and a secure Israel becomes a personal contest between the two old warriors, Sharon and Araft, and Sharon’s imperial sponsor, Bush II.” She furthered her analysis by stating that the 21st century is still marked by struggles over resources such as oil, land, and water, and quoted a recent UN report that documents ongoing environmental damage. Petchesky concluded the analysis of Jenin by pointing to the ways in which the UN’s retreat from the fact-finding mission was an “immeasurable loss of credibility for peaceful, multilateral measures, the kinds of measures that women’s groups have been at the forefront of securing in the international criminal court, in resolution 1325, in the security council.”
Like Bunch and Enloe, Petchesky offered feminist proposals to contest mainstreamed masculinst power. She suggested three actions to bring a feminist vision to the concept of human security. First, publicize women’s peace movements that exist worldwide and the nonviolent methods of conflict resolution they enact. Second, women’s movements must work alongside and inform the global justice movement with a feminist perspective on matters such as trade, finance, privatization etc. Third, build on the strength of local and grassroots activism to create a movement within the U.S. that combats its “imperial arrogance and selfishness.”
Questions following Petchesky’s presentation concerned specific instances of women’s organized resistance and an alternative paradigm that pushes beyond the militaristic aspect of human security. Petchesky referred to her last three points and reiterated her fear that security references “mere life” rather than “good life.”
The second speaker, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, self-identified as a Nigerian woman and economist, explained that she had no formal background in gender or feminism. While a long-time official at the World Bank, she added that her participation was not as a representative of the World Bank but rather as an African woman. Okonjo-Iweala opened her discussion by situating Africa as the forgotten continent in terms of violence and conflict. She graphically juxtaposed the media attention placed on violence against women in Kosovo and Bosnia by asserting that “when women were dying and being raped and killed, and their limbs chopped off in Sierra Leone, there was not one word about it.” While she agreed with Petchesky that the militaristic component of security must be exploded, the experiences in Africa evidenced that there still is an urgent need to talk about women’s security from the violence generated in the many civil wars-over half of the countries that are in conflict worldwide are in sub-Saharan Africa.
Okonjo-Iweala’s approach called for a need to quantify the impact of these conflicts on the economies and on women in Africa. She asserted that although a good deal of human rights research has been conducted, without concrete numbers, a convincing argument could not be made. For example, she cited a colleague’s estimate that about 8% of the GDP of each African country is lost during conflict-a figure that only takes into account money spent on arms and on the military. She called for research and challenged young scholars who are working with a gender lens to engage in this type of impact analysis in order to inform policy makers. For example, she suggested that alongside the important research on the effects of war on women’s health (i.e. the spread of AIDS from soldiers involved in conflict to women through rape), other less researched areas of economic impact must be addressed such as the effects of conflict on food production and disruption, as 66% of food production across Africa is conducted by women.
With this research challenge, Okonjo-Iweala added that along with the horror of civil war, new opportunities have emerged for African women. With the tragic death of a large number of men, women have been forced into the position of economic decision-makers and actors, in command of farming and owning land. She suggested that this has the potential to create positive and transformative long-term economic prospects by giving women legal rights.
She ended with an agenda that called for locating the root causes of civil wars not only in ethnic, religious, or cultural differences but also in economics. She referenced Paul Collier’s recent work at the World Bank that argues that poverty and weak economic performance in Africa are the best predictors of conflict and that there are four economic variables at play at the root of these conflicts. These are 1) slow GDP growth; 2) lower per capita incomes than the rest of the developing world; 3) rapid population growth; 4) single commodity dependence (i.e., on such raw materials as oil, diamonds, and timber). Thus, she argued that in order to end conflicts, policy makers must address poverty and stimulate economic growth and employment. Like the preceding panelists, Okonjo-Iweala addressed the issue of accountability, arguing that activism should concentrate on holding global systems accountable, restrict international trade from regions in conflict such as the emerging activism surrounding diamonds and timber for instance. She closed with a critique that the U.S. lags behind in this activism compared to movements in Europe.
Audience participation following Okonjo-Iweala’s presentation focused on the impact of violence on women in Africa. Specific questions addressed the increasing proliferation and circulation from the West into Africa of small arms and light weapons whose victims are women and children. Others (CUNY Graduate Center/Queens College-Hester Eisenstein) raised questions about Okonjo-Iweala’s description of the World Bank model for eliding the ramifications of structural adjustment programs and conditionalities that have forced countries to put all their resources into debt payment. In response, Okonjo-Iweala voiced the errors of the 1980s models and briefly discussed the ways in which the World Bank has been addressing both economic reforms and the need to create social safety nets.
Rabab Abdulhadi opened her presentation on the violence in Palestine by addressing the need to ground the conversation so that both the suffering and pain as well as the resistance of gendered and sexualized people become alive. This must be matched by a conceptual framework that illuminates the structures of domination in order to draw lessons and strategies that challenge this power and hold those responsible accountable. She located her own positioning as a feminist, gender and sexuality scholar and activist, and person of color from the global south aware of the expectation that she must break down gendered stereotypes by presenting a different face of womanhood and take hold of her fleeting moment in the spotlight. Like Petchesky, Abdulhadi concentrated on questions of discourse and the production of knowledge across diverse contexts and argued that we must “challenge ourselves to account for the complexity and diversity of the human experience, without falling back on things seen as ‘natural’ and ‘normal.’”
To illuminate her discussion she began by contrasting two stories in the New York Times. The first article reported that the last steel column from ground zero had come down. The second article covered the Palestinian suicide bombing and death of a Jewish grandmother and her infant granddaughter in Nablus. Abdulhadi spoke from the silences between these stories, underscoring the history and present destruction and occupation of Palestine-destruction of homes, of religious sites, of industry, of education. She asked:
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“As we mourn the loss of human life, and we should, do we also mourn the loss of Palestinian life? Do the victims of the Israeli bombardment by US-made F16 planes, Apache and Cobra helicopters earn a front page on the New York Times…even a line on the second, third, tenth page? Do we care?”
She poignantly narrated the tragic deaths of civilians, of an entire family of 8 bulldozed by the Israeli military in the city of Nablis-among the photographs and documents that she has not been able to bring across the Israeli border. Abdulhadi raised the question of how to address and advance women’s rights when the situation is in the hands of leaders such as Bush, Sharon, CIA director Tenet and Arafat? She asked
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“when human dignity is completely destroyed I wonder how we can save feminist integrity? What do we do? How do we deal…when water…is not allowed for people to drink and people in the refugee camp in Jenin boil sewage water to give to thirsty children and the [Jewish] settlements have green grass which requires so much water?”
Theoretically, Abdulhadi argued that we must look beyond a gender analysis that “atomizes” individuals. We must be attentive to structural hierarchies that shape lives and action: race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, ability, age, and so on, in order to begin to understand the complex and rich experiences of Palestinian women.
Abdulhadi identified a number of strategies. First, she suggested that everyone is complicit-and she included herself as a U.S. citizen whose taxes pay for the war industry that kill the very people from her place of origin. As a result, we must hold our representatives accountable, even feminist legislators who we want to keep in office-they too must be held accountable as they embrace militarism and conservatism. Second, we must join the many peace activists in Palestine and Israel who refuse to have atrocities committed in their name in order to build “another Middle East” with justice and peace and disrupt national and ethnic boundaries, militarism, sexism and aggression.
In the question and answer period, audience members addressed the question of retrieving Abdulhadi’s documentation of human rights abuses. Abdulhadi discussed the danger of losing this material in border crossing and did not have an answer. Sima Wali raised the important question of problematic resource distribution that occurs in rebuilding-most going to powerful political institutions and very little to the “women-led, civil society sector” that holds power accountable. She added that feminists living in the U.S. must also be much more connected with grassroots organizations in different countries in ways that do not silence their perspectives. While Abdulhadi agreed that the matter of resource distribution is critical, she emphasized that women are not the only ones seeking accountability as she remarked on the struggles of civil society groups in their attempts to bring an end to prison violence in Palestine, for example. She was cautious and questioned a romance of resistance, that U.S. funding would enable women’s grassroots activism.
Virginia Vargas discussed the role and potential of gender budgeting in Latin America. Speaking as both a representative of UNIFEM and a feminist involved in multiple feminist networks, she underscored the importance of global feminism. In her presentation, Vargas moved from discussing the impact of years of terrorist conflict, corrupt authoritarian regime, and a decade of neoliberal politics on Peruvian civil society to addressing corruption, authoritarianism, militarism, lack of credibility and legitimacy of political parties, and the weakness of democratic institutions across Latin America-a “democratic deficit.” She also highlighted three decades of Latin American feminist activism but voiced the many challenges that populations and activists continually confront as rights are thwarted in the face of ongoing neoliberalism and authoritarianism.
In light of these challenges, Vargas described the feminist and global justice movements’ (i.e., the World Social Forum) struggles against the IMF, the World Bank, and the Free Trade Agreements currently being debated for the region. Central to this struggle has been a focus on the redistribution of resources, political democratization, and accountability. A key strategy involves gender budgeting. Invoking Okonjo-Iweala’s call for “numbers not discourse,” Vargas suggested that budget analyses provide concrete understanding of women’s rights and democracy because budgets express not only the political culture of a country and their priorities, but also the degree of authoritarian or democratic openness to constitutive citizenry. Thus gender budget analyses are important tools for generating accountability and transparency.
Vargas then provided a brief history of UNIFEM’s two-year municipal gender budget program that has concentrated in the Andean Region (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia). She outlined the research paradigm for assessing how budgets are redistributed at the municipal level: focus on how much money is allocated for women’s issues (always very little) and how this compares to where the money is spent (i.e., in infrastructure) and how much of the budget supports women’s unpaid work. Several actors are involved in these studies. They include 1. local officials - most of whom are not sensitive to gender issues ; 2. elected women officials, who ultimately use gender budgeting as a tool; 3. women’s organizations that have a long history of mobilizing for women’s rights and demanding transparency and accountability, though who most recently are targets for government cooptation; and 4. community organizations. Vargas described this confluence of actors as a social movement and a political process that builds citizenship and enlarges the very content of citizenship across Latin America. Indeed, she described the global multi-directional flow of information that has made possible connections between places such as South Africa and Peru.
Vargas ended her presentation by returning to the theme of global feminist activism and solidarity in the 21st century. Here she discussed the social justice movements of the World Social Forum as a space from which to build and fight against neoliberal “economic fundamentalism” as well as political, religious, and state fundamentalisms.
DISCUSSION
The plenary session ended with an open discussion. Enloe asked Vargas to address more explicitly her work with political parties, something she said most have not focused on. In response, Vargas stated that this work is quite hard as political parties throughout Latin America are in crisis, not democratizing; but she mentioned the success of feminist courses for women in political parties. Vargas responded to more specific questions on gender budgeting in Ecuador with indigenous groups. In moderating the discussion, Stanton suggested that the conversation attempt to forge connections between the specificities and power the case studies presented to the larger discussion on security generated in Part I of the Opening Plenary. Participants raised questions on how to define accountability, how to hold state and non-state actors accountable as human rights violators within justice systems that are not friendly to women, and how to complicate a feminist analysis of U.S. foreign policy and bring this activism to the grassroots. Others voiced a critique of U.S. feminism as exporters of solutions by reflecting that the plenary illuminated the many ways in which U.S. feminists can learn and build from women’s experiences around the world. During the ensuing discussion, Abdulhadi suggested that we think of the world as structured by different systems of domination in our critiques of globalization. Specifically she addressed how in Palestine under the present situation professors cannot even cross borders and enter campuses to teach. In response to the question of accountability she argued that as activists, as scholars, as people who believe in justice we must utilize all available structures to lodge our resistance, and as educators we have the classrooms to help students “sift through the dominant discourses that colonize our minds.” Okonjo-Iweala also addressed the question of accountability and argued that it must begin from within a country’s structures and systems and then turn to international mechanisms. Vargas offered a definition of accountability that addressed enlarging citizenship rights and pointed to the power of truth commissions in Latin America. Stanton, in wrapping up the conversation, suggested that we look to replicable models for making change, such as the gender budgeting Vargas highlighted. She voiced a cautious optimism as she invoked her students’ activism, a new generation of feminists who do not separate their feminism from issues such as social justice, environmentalism, and peace.
MORNING PLENARY:
The “New War Against Terrorism”: Implications for the U.S.
9:00 - 10:15 a.m.
Panelists:
Leith Mullings (CUNY)
U.S. Representative Carolyn Maloney
Eleanor Smeal (Feminist Majority Foundation)
Moderator: Kathy Rodgers (NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund)
Day two of the Annual Conference began with a complementary shift from an emphasis on the global implications of human security to a focus on domestic issues. As moderator, Kathy Rodgers introduced the larger theme of the morning plenary with a few words on the ways in which a conservative U.S. administration is currently carrying out a pre 9/11 agenda that limits civil and human rights of all Americans under the guise of combating global terrorism. As she introduced the speakers, Rodgers reaffirmed the Conference’s goal of bolstering informed activism, emphasizing that research and activist agendas must stimulate the social, economic, and political reforms necessary to ensure social justice and security.
Leith Mullings began her presentation with a quick review of the shifting role of government in civil society within 20th century U.S. history. President Roosevelt’s New Deal, characterized by the vision of a government active in supporting labor and rural development, and tackling unemployment became a foundation for Johnson’s Great Society during the civil rights movement. In contrast, the present historical moment is characterized by a neoliberal politics and ideology that envisions the best government as one that governs least. She stated,
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National priorities have shifted away from investing in human capital, towards the notion of the Hobbesian state, where life is nasty, short, and brutish, where the Sate has no obligation to its citizens.
She furthered this argument by suggesting that this militarization rationalizes the ideology that people should fend for themselves, and thus normalizes the current situation in which those that “don’t make it” end up in prison. From this point on, Mullings emphasized the relationship between the prison industrial complex and its complicated ties with the militarization of society. Her numbers were staggering: 2 million U.S. citizens in prisons or jail, and 5.5 million U.S. citizens in the criminal justice system. She discussed the ways in which the U.S. “War on Drugs” and its blatant racial discrimination have been critical factors in increasing the prison population and the disproportionate representation of people of color. While African-Americans constitute approximately 13% of all monthly drug users, they are 35% of those arrested for drug possession, 55% of those convicted for drug possession, and 75% of those incarcerated for drug possession. Like Vargas, Mullings also addressed the subject of budgets illustrating New York’s decreased support for public education, cutting CUNY and SUNY by $615 million while increasing the Department of Correctional Services by $761 million between 1988 and 1998.
In her concluding remarks, Mullings drew a connection between the ways police abuse and the suspension of rights during the war on drugs were tolerated, and the potential suspension of all rights for citizens as articulated in the Patriot Act. She stated, “most dangerous, I think, is the blurring of boundaries between dissent and what is labeled as crime.” Like preceding plenary speakers, Mullings ended on a positive note. She pointed to the emerging grassroots movements around shelter, heath, education, and a living wage that continue to be based on the work of women. She emphasized the contribution scholars can make through a) participatory research as evidenced by the “Photo Voice” exhibit, created by Mullings and her students in which women community residents documented with cameras and text what the welfare reforms meant to them in their daily lives; b) revealing the hidden structures of oppression; and c) bringing research to the emerging social movements for change - a globalization from below.
Eleanor Smeal concentrated on issues of civil liberties and the backlash from the right wing, but from the perspective of her activism for women's human rights in Afghanistan. She summarized the pre-9/11 four-year feminist struggle in the United States to bring attention to the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban and to increase humanitarian assistance within Afghanistan and to refugee areas in Pakistan. Though there was consensus among the UN, government, and feminist activists that the situation was terrible, nothing was happening. She also underscored the ways in which the events of 9/11 have shifted the discourse. After 9/11, the Taliban's oppression of women gained worldwide attention.
Smeal illustrated how the Bush administration seized on the feminist movement's concern with the treatment of women in Afghanistan, appropriating this cause in their war against the Taliban. Smeal argued that a motivation behind this appropriation was a vision toward the 2004 elections: it is clear that the administration will need to win women's votes - it did not in 2000. She also discussed the need to hold the Administration accountable for its promises to Afghan women, and urged action to mobilize support for the expansion of international peace keeping troops in Afhganistan and for the commitment of substantial resources for Afghanistan's reconstruction. Without security and resources, restoration of women's rights in Afghanistan will not be possible, said Smeal.
At the same time, the events of 9/11 limited the possibility for critique of attacks on civil liberties in the U.S., thereby enacting a longtime conservative agenda.
As Smeal concluded her presentation, she urged researchers to explore the connection and relationship between oil politics and the status of women, and the economic interests that oppose women's rights measures such as an equal rights amendment in the United States.
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney began her presentation with solemn words regarding the attacks on September 11th, emphasizing the sense of community this invoked along with a determination to rebuild in New York City and across the nation. She referenced the work of Dr. Putnam, author of “Bowling Alone,” and his research on the importance of civic engagement. Maloney indexed NCRW as an organization critical in helping to build this sense of community and as a site to disseminate and direct future research.
Maloney voiced her great concern with recent research that indicates that women across the board are losing ground. She cited studies such as the Annenberg Study on Women in the Media; the American Bar Association’s research illustrating that despite record numbers of women entering the legal field, very few are breaking barriers and becoming partners; and Catalyst’s study of women in corporate America that documented how women constitute 40-50% of the workforce, yet only 13% reach management or leadership positions. Maloney summarized her own study, conducted with the Census Bureau, on the status of women in management across ten different occupational categories that employ 72% of women workers. This study documented the ways in which women continue to be underpaid (76 cents to the dollar) and are losing ground across the board, but particularly in the private sector, despite the economic boom during the 1995-2000 period. For example, her study documented that although women may enter employment at the same wage as their male counterparts, the disparity begins at five years and continues across their management career lifecycle. In Maloney’s words, “we don’t have a glass ceiling, we have a Plexiglas ceiling. It’s durable, it doesn’t break, and it’s in place.”
Maloney argued that this is not only a “woman’s issue” but rather that it runs deep into family economy and thus has implications for the well-being of children and all family members: most married women work out of a need to contribute to the household economy. While identifying these challenges, Maloney indexed the great progress women have made: Title VII, Title IX, reproductive rights. She stated, “I think we need to go back to the basics … we need to go back to what is fundamental and achieve equality of treatment in the constitution … only then will we have true equality for women in this country.” Her goal is to pass the Women’s Equality Amendment by 2020.
DISCUSSION
After the three presentations, Rodgers opened the floor for discussion. Smeal received questions asking her to further explain her work on behalf of Afghan women. Representatives from Girls Incorporated of NYC requested further clarification on the status of Title IX and the risk of its erosion, which would be a terrible loss for girls’ educational advancement. Maloney responded by underscoring the connection between giving young women access to sports in educational settings and the transformative power of Title IX not only in building girls’ self confidence, but in opening opportunities for women to attend college via sports scholarships. She closed by stating that Title IX is a legislative battle. Rodgers added that NOW LDEF has been a supporter of Title IX since its inception. She reminded the audience of Title IX’s 30th Anniversary and that the struggle should be emphasized on college campuses this Fall. She stated, “We have to show what Title IX has done for women. And the enemy is not oil in this case. The enemy is football.”
Bonnie Thornton Dill (Consortium on Race, Gender, Ethnicity-U of MD) followed with a question for Mullings on the challenges of linking global processes with domestic or local processes as she referenced Mullings’s discussion on the prison industrial complex. Mullings responded with a brief synopsis of her experience at the UN Conference on Racism, Xenophobia, and Other Forms of Intolerance in Durban, South Africa in August 2001. She described this as an exciting meeting that discussed cross-national forms of discrimination, and where the concept of global apartheid emerged. She then explained how the United States walked out of this international conference, refusing to sign on to documents that characterized slavery as an inhuman act, and ultimately how, in leaving the conference, the U.S. “showed total contempt and disregard for the entire world, including Europe, and everybody else.” Mullings arrived back to NYC just days before 9/11. She stated:
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The connection between those events is forever seared in my mind-the role of the U.S. globally and at home. Americans can never be safe until we really begin to deal with some of the basic issues of inequality and intolerance.
Linda Basch closed the plenary session by forecasting the day’s schedule and formally introducing two global scholars from Eastern Europe and Central Asia funded by the Open Society Institute: Daša Duhacek (Belgrade Center for Gender Studies) and Elmira Shishkaraeva (Soros Foundation - Kyrgyzstan).
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