Gender, Rights, and
Representation
October
14-17, 1999
Feminist political theorists have long debated
-- on an abstract plane -- the problems and possibilities posed for
women's political participation by the democratic traditions born in
Western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Such research has enabled
an acute understanding of the operation of gender inclusion and exclusion
in the past, and of how such practices bear upon present efforts to
achieve gender equity in the political sphere. What this discussion
has been less successful at providing, however, is a concrete account
of the varieties of women's political participation, from grassroots
to religious organizations, the academy, and formal political participation.
Such omissions indicate a lacuna in our understanding of women's political
rights and representation, and raise timely questions about the dynamics
of women's political participation at the present time. How do women
perceive their political role in the late 20th century, and what are
the conditions governing women's participation or non-participation
in the contemporary political sphere?
Our first Midwest Faculty Seminar of 1999-2000,
co-sponsored with The University of Chicago's Committee on Gender Studies,
will pursue that reflection and debate more concretely, discussing the
varying places of women in three principal democratic regimes -- the
United States, South Africa, and France -- of the late 20th century.
Our seminar will ask questions relevant to these individual countries
as well as to feminism considered comparatively and globally. How do
political structures limit or enable women's participation, and how
and when do such structures change as a result of women's participation?
To what extent has concentrated international attention (and pressure)
in politics and the media influenced the gendering of politics abroad?
And what is the relationship between the different ways gender issues
are brought to bear on governments -- through grass roots movements,
diplomacy, religious organizations, and the academy itself -- throughout
the world?
We have selected these polities for particular
focus both for the saliency and urgency of the issues they raise individually,
and because their histories and practices of gender equity, inclusion,
and exclusion differ and coincide in interesting and important ways.
A discussion of women's political participation in America, for instance,
will give us the opportunity to explore several pressing issues at the
century's end, including the relative weakness of women's formal political
power given the historical strength of both feminist movements and feminist
interventions in the university. The relation of racial to gender justice
will be a topic of consideration in several of our national cases, both
that of America and of South Africa, where, since the end of the regime
of apartheid, the primary concern has been quite obviously racial justice
rather than gender parity.
Our discussion of gender in relation to other
under-represented groups will be extended to France as well, where despite
the fact that affirmative action in any domain has been vociferously
opposed by politicians of whatever stripe, there is now strong movement
to mandate that one-half of all elected positions be occupied by women.
Outbursts in France over the right of Muslim girls to wear head-coverings
to school will raise additional issues of religion, gender, and politics,
and thus pose an interesting parallel case to that of America, where
women have long used religious organizations to further their political
goals. Central to our inquiry throughout will be the relations of grass-roots,
academic, and formal political participation, both locally and on the
international stage.
Calling on a distinguished group of feminist
scholars and activists, our seminar will investigate the forces behind
women's political participation and non-participation at the end of
the millennium. Speakers include: Thenjiwe Mntinso (Deputy Secretary
of the ANC), Jane Masbridge (Harvard University), Karen Bird (McMaster
University), Brent Bauer (Universite de Montreal), Linda Kirber (University
of Iowa), Cathi Albertyn speaking on the South African constitution,
Todd Shepard (Rutgers University), Georgia Duerst-Lahti (Beloit College),
Audrey Ducoulombier (Nottingham Trent University), Sean Cahill (NGLTF
Policy Institute), Shireen Hassim (University of the Witwatersrand),
Gay Seidman (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Barbara Burrell (University
of Wisconsin-Madison), Robert Bailey (Rutgers University), Elaine Salo
(Emory University/Western Cape), Andrea Simpson (University of Washington),
Miriam Ticktin (Stanford University), Chris Riddiough (Democratic Socialists
of America), Cathy Cohen (Yale University), Andrea Simpson (University
of Washington), Virginia Sapiro (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Michael
Selmi (George Washington University Law School), Sheila Meintjes (University
of the Witwatersrand), Anne-Maria Boitumelo Makhulu (University of Chicago),
and Melissa Williams (University of Toronto).
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