International Organizations

International organizations and multilateral financial institutions play important roles in advancing the status of women and girls worldwide. The United Nations and its agencies, such as the UN Development Program, UNICEF, WHO, UNFPA and others, have made strides in efforts to “mainstream” gender initiatives throughout their policies and programs. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution in September 2009 to unify the four main organizations for gender equality into one unified entity. The new agency will unite UNIFEM, the DESA Division for the Advancement of Women, the Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues, and INSTRAW under one roof. This move aims to strengthen international support for gender equality, reduce bureaucratic redundancies and inefficiencies as well as improve accountability a and oversight . There is also a call for increased participation by civil society in monitoring governments and international organizations to ensure that their respective programs are actually improving the lives of women and girls.

Earthquake in Haiti: Time for Seismic and Systemic Change

Submitted by Kyla Bender-Baird on Tue, 01/26/2010 - 4:49pm

January 15, 2010 posted by Linda Basch

As reports filter in from Haiti in the aftermath of Wednesday's catastrophic earthquake, it is difficult to process the sheer immensity of this tragedy. My thoughts go to the tens of thousands of grieving and displaced who are struggling with unimaginable loss. I am also thinking about the hundreds, maybe thousands of colleagues, advocates and humanitarian workers who have sacrificed their lives while trying to rebuild a nation ravaged by hurricane, poverty and continuing mismanagement. The UN mission in Port au Prince is still missing more than 100 staff members and countless schools, clinics and businesses have been destroyed.

I won't go into the long and turbulent history of Haiti's past: revolt against slavery, independence, colonialism, dictatorship, fragile democracy and the US's troubling role in this tested nation's myriad challenges.


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Where Do We Stand After 30 Years of CEDAW?

Submitted by Kyla Bender-Baird on Mon, 01/25/2010 - 6:09pm

December 4, 2009 posted by Kyla Bender-Baird

Yesterday, three fabulous NCRW interns* and I journeyed down to the concrete maze that is the United Nations to participate in a commemorative event celebrating CEDAW’s 30th birthday. The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, often referred to as the international bill of women’s human rights, was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979. The Convention defines discrimination as


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Institute for Research on Women and Gender

Contact

204 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1290
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http://www.umich.edu/~irwg/
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The Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) at the University of Michigan was established to promote and support gender-related research endeavors by faculty at the university. Specifically, IRWG aims to facilitate and monitor ongoing interdisciplinary research efforts, to offer support and coordination for these projects, and to heighten the presence and impact of the University of Michigan in the field of gender scholarship. The institute also supports study groups centered on topics of interest to a self-defined community of scholars.

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Principal Staff

Carol Boyd, Director
E-mail: caroboyd@umich.edu

Deborah Keller-Cohen, Senior Associate Director
E-mail: dkc@umich.edu

Janet Malley, Associate Director
E-mail: jmalley@umich.edu

Debra M. Schwartz, Public Relations
E-mail: schwarde@umich.edu

Beverly Kissel, Financial & HR Specialist
E-mail: bkissel@umich.edu

Lisa Parker, Research Administrator
E-mail: wooliver@umich.edu

Patricia Smith, Business Administrator
E-mail: pssmith@umich.edu

Terri Torkko, Event Coordinator
E-mail: torkko@umich.edu

Tammy Culler, Computer Support Specialist
E-mail: tammy@umich.edu

Nicole Perry, Secretary to the Director
E-mail: msnicole@umich.edu






Areas of Expertise:

Access & Disparities, Advancing Women's Leadership, Body Image & Wellness, Globalization, Arts & Activism, Barriers & Opportunities, Diversity & Inclusion, Communications, Media & Gender, Culture & Identity, Educational Leadership of Women & People of Color, HIV/AIDS, International Organizations, Diversity & Inclusion, Higher Education, Mental Health, Older Women, Globalization, Sexuality & Gender, Women in History, Communications, Culture & Society, Globalization, Human Rights & Security, Health, Reproductive Rights & Sexuality

Member Experts:


Projects & Campaigns

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Reports & Resources

Adolescents and Girls

Children's Time with Fathers in Intact Families, Pamela Davis-Kearn.

Gender, Puberty, and Objectification, Karin Martin.

 

Arts

Tharp, Feminism, and Postmodern Dance, Sally Banes.

Art/Girl: Graffiti, Femininity, and the Career of Lady Pink, Kristina Milnor.

No Place for a Woman? Critical Narratives and Erotic Graffiti from Pompeii, Kristina Milnor.

Family Stories/Family Pictures: Mothers With Cameras, Joanne Leonard.

Representation of Women in Art History: An Overview, Patricia Simons.

 

Censorship

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Law, Abigail Carter.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Sociology, Susannah Dolance.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Literature, Leslie Dorfman Davis.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Feminist Theory and Philosophy, Troy Gordon.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Education, Edwina Hansbrough.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in the Mass Media, Edwina Hansbrough.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Psychology, Zaje Harrell.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Visual and Performing Arts, Libby Otto.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Economics, Lucie Schmidt.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in American History, Chris Talbot.

 

 

 

Feminist Thought and Scholarship

Objectification Theory: Emotional Consequences of Sexual, Barbara Fredrickson.

Feminist Foundations: Practicing Feminism in the Community. A transcript of a panel at the conference, Feminists at Work: Multicultural, Feminist Influences on Practice, sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Program in Feminist Practice, The University of Michigan, October 16-17, 1998.

Giving It Up: Disrupting White 'Innocence,' Re-Educating White Feminism, Gail Griffin.

 

International Issues - Religion

The Home and Garden are a Small Paradise for Women: Men and Women Gendering Bosnjak Nationalism in Muslim Bosnia-Hercegovina, Elissa Helms (1997).

 

Health and Health Care

Dual Autobiography and AIDS Witnessing, Ross Chambers.

Improving Pregnancy Outcomes during Imprisonment

Initial Exposure to Nicotine in College-age Women smokers and Never-smokers, Cynthia Pomerlau.

Mental Illness and Substance abuse: Implications for Women's Health and Health Care Access, Beth Glover Reed and Carol Mowbray.

Representations of Women's Bodies and Birthing, Carolyn Sampselle.

Women and Stress, Elizabeth Young.

 

Mental Health

Rumination and Depression in Women, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema.

Serious Mental Illness: Women and Parenting, Carol Mowbray.

 

History

Telling An Untellable Story: White "Daughter" Black "Mother" After the Cuban Revolution, Ruth Behar.

Prison Discipline, Reform and Debate: Negotiating the Female Prisoner in Nineteenth-Century England, Susanna Calkins.

The Figure of the Adulteress in the Construction of the "Cult of True Womanhood" in the19th-Century American Moral Reform Literature, Lisa Cochran.

Remembering a Forgotten Past, or Why Have We Only Heard of Ballerinas, Lynn Garafola.

The Pasha's Prostitutes: Rethinking Women, the State, and Female Prostitution in Nineteenth Century Egypt, Mario Ruiz.

 

International Issues - Prostitution

Making A Spectacle: The Nightly Transformations of Egyptian Nightclub Performers in a Conservative Age, Katherine Zirbel.

Contraband Women, Immigration Tricks of the Sex Trade, and State Visions of Migrant Women Workers' Rights? The 1997 Toronto Massage Parlour Raids, Cheryl Harrison.

 

Politics

Institutional Gender Analysis: Running for the Russian Duma, Janet Johnson.

Visions of Citizenship: Questioning the Liberal Promise of Equality, Elizabeth Wingrove.

 

Reproductive Rights

Informed Consent Issues in Assisted Reproduction, Nancy Reame.

Recent Trends in Abortion Legislation in Central Europe, Eleonora Zielinska.

Rural Women - International Issues

The (Wo)man in the Cashew: Gender and Development in Rural Belize, Melissa Johnson.

 

Sexuality

Images of Fashion: Constructing the Visible Body, Olga Vainshtein.

 

Sports and Fitness

Your Hair is Caked, Your Limbs are Sore: Gender, "Roughing It," and Class in Early Yosemite Tourism, Stephanie Palmer.

Violence Against Women

Assessing Sexual Harassment among Latinas, Lilia Cortina.

Domestic Violence Against Women in Serbia, Zorica Mrsevic.

Offender Interventions to End Violence Against Women, Daniel Saunders.

 

Women of Color

Dis/Arming the Black Champ: Joe Louis and the Legacy of Racial Uplift in the Post-Civil Rights Movement, Marlon Ross.

 

Violence

Seng, Julia, and Mickey Sperlich. 2008. Survivor Moms: Women’s Stories of Birthing, Mothering, and Healing after Sexual Abuse.

 

IRWG Newsletter 

Click here to download the latest newsletter.

 

Center News

Opportunities, Grants & Fellowships

Visiting Scholar Program

The Institute for Research on Women and Gender invites applications for Visiting Scholar positions from post-doctoral scholars and researchers whose work focuses on women or gender. The goal of the Visiting Scholar program is to enhance disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship on women and gender at the University of Michigan. Visiting Scholars will have full access to the Institute’s community, and will be automatically affiliated with the Women’s Studies
Program.
 
 
The Institute encourages new scholarship by offering seed money for new research ventures, housing visiting scholars and encouraging the work of graduate students. Developing relations with the media contributes to the public discourse on important issues affecting women and gender.

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Impact of War and Militarization on Women

Submitted by ncrw on Sun, 05/24/2009 - 3:11pm

May 24, 2009 posted by admin

Last year’s UN Security Council Resolution 1820 recognized sexual violence as a war crime. Its passage is often cited as a milestone.  Given so many conflicts around the globe, however, what was this resolution’s real impact? If your heart drops every time you think about the continuing rape in the Congo, you are not alone! For NCRW’s upcoming Annual Conference we have assembled a special panel featuring experts on women, war and security. 


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Who Cares?

Submitted by ncrw on Mon, 03/02/2009 - 10:02am

March 2, 2009 posted by admin The 53rd Commission on the Status of Women meetings start today at UN Headquarters in New York and will run until the 13th of March.  This year, the theme of the CSW is “The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS.” During this year’s events, I will have the privilege of working with the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development’s (UNRISD) Gender and Development Programme. The Gender and Development Programme at UNRISD has been working on the Political and Social Economy of Care as one of its main research themes for several years now. [One of my favorite gender and development researchers, Maxine Molyneux, wrote the first paper in the series, titled Mothers at the Service of the State.]  As part of the project, UNRISD led gender experts from around the world in an exploration of care issues, with research conducted in eight countries drawn from four different regions.  Within its comparative approach, the project focused on the gender composition and dynamics of the multiple institutions of care – households and families, states, markets, and the not-for-profit sector – and their effects on poverty and social rights of citizenship.


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THE GLOBAL TRACK: India--Land of Malls and Ragpickers

Submitted by ncrw on Wed, 02/11/2009 - 4:25pm

February 11, 2009 posted by Shyama Venkateswar

 
 

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="298" caption="Photograph: Deshakalyan Chowdhury"]Photograph: Deshakalyan Chowdhury[/caption]

I was recently in Calcutta, India, my place of birth, home to where my mother, a sibling, old friends, and sweet memories still reside. This is my other “home” where I try to get to every year to renew and regenerate myself, and recharge from the stresses of a running a two working parents’ nuclear household in frenetic New York City. My trip last month came after a two year gap; I felt the familiar overwhelming desire to be there, to be a part of the sights and sounds of an India that were at once familiar and yet distant to me. Having left almost 23 years ago to move to the US, I have a unique insider-outsider vantage point. I was born and brought up there; I know things instinctively – all the cultural puzzles, contradictions, nuances of language, wordplay and verbal cues, body language, subtle things - that only a native-born can ever know. But, having been away long enough, and trained in and working in a field where critical inquiry is required, I can no longer accept without questioning the status and daily conditions of millions of people living in absolute poverty, what Collier refers to as The Bottom Billion. Even as India’s economy grows steadily at about 8% a year, there are entire communities of people, some 300 million of them, who live under a $1 a day without regular access to food, water, housing, livelihoods, reproductive healthcare or education. Malnutrition in children under five is at a staggering 45%.

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SECRETARY OF STATE FORUM--Abigail Disney on HRC’s Projected Ascent

Submitted by ncrw on Tue, 12/02/2008 - 8:18pm

December 2, 2008 posted by admin "Senator Clinton's accession to Secretary of State will be an unprecedented opportunity for women at long last to take their rightful place shoulder-to-shoulder in the  international community as leaders, as peers, and as beings whose human rights are as important, valued and 'inalienable' as those of men.  Too long the human rights community has dismissed women's rights as important, but not  'human rights' and therefore not important enough to be addressed by their gigantic and well-funded organizations.


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