Consortium Speaker Series
The Consortium's Speaker Series brings an international roster of frontline practitioners, reflective activists and engaged scholars to University of Massachusetts Boston's campus. Their talks address the complex realities of women’s and men’s lives and livelihoods in conflict-affected areas, the challenges of trying to bring feminist commitments into security policy and humanitarian practice, and the ways in which gender analysis can and must transform resolutely “gender-blind” paradigms of conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Information about Upcoming Speaker Events, Events Earlier This Year, and Past Speaker Events is available here. You can find videos or transcripts of these events, when available, under Consortium Lectures.
Upcoming Speaker Events
Trade, Gender and Post-War Recovery, Part Two: Visioning Feminist Trade Alternatives for Sustainable Peace
Nancy Kachingwe
South Feminist Futures
Nandini Chami
IT for Change
Diyana Yahaya
Independent Feminist Activist
April 27, 2022
Description:
This second webinar examined the world as it could be, exploring how feminist thinkers have envisioned alternatives for post-war recovery and sustainable peace, including: Feminist approaches to growing economies after war require different instruments; the social and physical infrastructure that is centered in feminist thinking; feminist state and budget planning to center and nurture women; and the violence of neoliberal economic models in rebuilding egalitarian post war societies.
A video recording of the event can be found here and below:
Webinar Series Background:
Trade is often posited as an important instrument for successful post-war recovery and reconstruction. More recently, trade liberalization has also gained currency as a contributor to regional stability, with the dogma suggesting that free trade acts as an arbiter of cooperation between and within nations. But the phrase “trade is war” is also a common one, and free trade theory itself acknowledges the inherent existence of “winners and losers” within its model, suggesting that sustainable recovery and reconstruction are far from given.
In this two-part webinar series, we examine the kind of trading paradigms currently being pursued in post-war contexts, and ask what relationships these have – if any – with sustainable peace? A feminist analysis is critical to this exploration, as it is not only the realm of war/peace/security, but also the realm of trade, that have deeply gendered dynamics, and the successes and failures of recovery and reconstruction are felt disproportionately by women. The unequal gendered impacts of trade liberalization and the international free trade architecture that promote it have been well-documented by feminist scholars and activists in recent decades. More recently, the connections between climate justice, digital justice, and trade justice have also been highlighted. These analyses have been successful at illuminating the unequal global dynamics of power that exist between the north and south and the extractive relationship that underpins it.
However, the intersections of gender, trade and post-war recovery remain a relatively unexplored area.
This webinar series allowed for an initial exploration of this terrain and will engage with a series of interrelated questions, including:
1. How has trade been used at national and international levels to engage with post-war recovery contexts? What have been the outcomes of this?
2. What further concerns arise relating to the neo-colonial and extractive nature of trade liberalization and free trade agreements, particularly within post-war contexts? How much/what kinds of power do post-war states have in negotiating the terms of their relationship with the international trade system? And what are the gender implications? In building back better from the pandemic, how can we address the unequal geographies of digitalization, platformization and Big Tech capture of value chains?
3. How has trade been a contributor to conflict, and what have been the gendered consequences?
4. What challenges arise when attempting to identify “post-war” as a definite moment in time, given the fluidity of the conflict context? How can this be exploited by trade regimes?
5. What kind of visioning is needed to deliver post-war recovery and reconstruction from a gender justice perspective?
6. What kind of a trade paradigm is needed to enable human flourishing in post-war recovery so as to guarantee a sustainable peace? What shifts are needed, and where? Which actors bring these shifts into being?
This webinar series is co-sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Boston's Anthropology Department; Asian Studies Department; Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance; Economics Department; History Department; The Honors College; Latino Studies Program; School for Global Inclusion and Social Development; School for the Environment; Sociology Department; and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department and Human Rights Minor.
Trade, Gender and Post-War Recovery, Part One: Exploring the Intersections
Dr. Michelle Maziwisa
African Women's Development & Communications Network
Liepollo Lebohang Pheko
Trade Collective, and Women in Migration Network
Fatimah Kelleher
Nawi - Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective
Dr. Azra Talat Sayeed
Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law & Development
April 20, 2022
Description:
This first webinar explored the fundamentals of Gender and Trade, as well as the ways that trade has been used at national and international levels to engage with post-war recovery contexts. Case studies explored how the intersections have impacted the prospects for building gender-just peace that is both politically and environmentally sustainable.
A video recording of the event can be found here and below:
Webinar Series Background:
Trade is often posited as an important instrument for successful post-war recovery and reconstruction. More recently, trade liberalization has also gained currency as a contributor to regional stability, with the dogma suggesting that free trade acts as an arbiter of cooperation between and within nations. But the phrase “trade is war” is also a common one, and free trade theory itself acknowledges the inherent existence of “winners and losers” within its model, suggesting that sustainable recovery and reconstruction are far from given.
In this two-part webinar series, we examine the kind of trading paradigms currently being pursued in post-war contexts, and ask what relationships these have – if any – with sustainable peace? A feminist analysis is critical to this exploration, as it is not only the realm of war/peace/security, but also the realm of trade, that have deeply gendered dynamics, and the successes and failures of recovery and reconstruction are felt disproportionately by women. The unequal gendered impacts of trade liberalization and the international free trade architecture that promote it have been well-documented by feminist scholars and activists in recent decades. More recently, the connections between climate justice, digital justice, and trade justice have also been highlighted. These analyses have been successful at illuminating the unequal global dynamics of power that exist between the north and south and the extractive relationship that underpins it.
However, the intersections of gender, trade and post-war recovery remain a relatively unexplored area.
This webinar series allowed for an initial exploration of this terrain and will engage with a series of interrelated questions, including:
1. How has trade been used at national and international levels to engage with post-war recovery contexts? What have been the outcomes of this?
2. What further concerns arise relating to the neo-colonial and extractive nature of trade liberalization and free trade agreements, particularly within post-war contexts? How much/what kinds of power do post-war states have in negotiating the terms of their relationship with the international trade system? And what are the gender implications? In building back better from the pandemic, how can we address the unequal geographies of digitalization, platformization and Big Tech capture of value chains?
3. How has trade been a contributor to conflict, and what have been the gendered consequences?
4. What challenges arise when attempting to identify “post-war” as a definite moment in time, given the fluidity of the conflict context? How can this be exploited by trade regimes?
5. What kind of visioning is needed to deliver post-war recovery and reconstruction from a gender justice perspective?
6. What kind of a trade paradigm is needed to enable human flourishing in post-war recovery so as to guarantee a sustainable peace? What shifts are needed, and where? Which actors bring these shifts into being?
This webinar series is co-sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Boston's Anthropology Department; Asian Studies Department; Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance; Economics Department; History Department; The Honors College; Latino Studies Program; School for Global Inclusion and Social Development; School for the Environment; Sociology Department; and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department and Human Rights Minor.
(De)Militarization, Gender and Climate Justice: Connecting the Dots
Neta Crawford
Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Boston University
Claire Duncanson
Senior Research Scholar, Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights, and member of the WILPF Academic Network
Carol Cohn
Director, Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights, and member of the WILPF Academic Network
March 23, 2022
What role do militaries and militarization play in creating the climate crisis? What are the links between militarization and environmental injustice? And why is it crucial to understand gender in order to connect the dots?
On March, 23 2022, the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom held a panel and workshop at the NGO CSW66 Forum to delve into these questions, and to explore ways that demilitarization could serve multiple goals: climate justice, gender justice, and inclusive and sustainable peace. The panel featured:
Neta Crawford, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, Boston University
Claire Duncanson, Senior Research Scholar, Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights, and member of the WILPF Academic Network
Carol Cohn, Director, Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights, and member of the WILPF Academic Network
After the panel, workshop participants collaborated in small working groups, developing ways that demilitarization could be linked to finding sustainable and gender-just solutions to the climate crisis; they then returned to present their ideas in a plenary session.
A video of the panelists’ presentations can be found here and below.
To see the Miro boards created by the working groups, click here.
If you are interested in learning more about the connections between (De)Militarization, Gender and Climate Justice, you may want to explore this list of selected projects and resources.
Extractive Industries, Violence, and Corporate Criminality: Is There a Pathway to Global Justice?
Anna Zalik
Associate Professor of Environmental and Urban Change, York University
Catherine Coumans
Ph.D. Research Coordinator and Asia-Pacific Program Coordinator, MiningWatch Canada
Marta Ruedas
Former Deputy Special Representative, United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq; Former UN Resident Coordinator, Humanitarian Coordinator & Resident Representative, UNDP Iraq
December 2, 2021
This was the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights' second Fall 2021 Webinar. You can watch a recording of the event below or on our YouTube channel here.
Toxic Extraction and Corporate Criminality
Anna Zalik
Inspired by the work of critical scholars of corporate crime, as well as broader calls for both reparations to colonized and racialized peoples and abolition of carceral systems, Zalik's presentation considers the contradictory forms in which criminality and violence have been interpreted in the context of extractive industry operations. A number of historical and contemporary global examples will be considered: in the longer term, questions of colonial state control over land and its appropriation from Indigenous peoples; in the medium term, the toxic legacy of oil, gas and other extractive industries - particularly in regions where BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) reside; and in the immediate term, the role of the policing and criminal justice system in disputes between corporations and communities negatively affected by extraction. Substantive solutions will be considered, including those specific to: a) extractive firm governance, including public ownership of energy and industrial infrastructure, an end to firm subsidies and restriction of hydrocarbon production; and b) the criminal justice system - ranging from the development of a substantive transnational system for corporate criminal prosecution to the more categorical change proposed by the prison abolition movement.
Exposing Mines as Sites of Crime Against Women
Catherine Coumans
Coumans’s presentation draws on studies that expose violence experienced by community women and female workers at mine sites, as well as on her own work with victims of rape by police and security at mines in Papua New Guinea and Tanzania. She discusses resistance strategies and agency of the women themselves, as well as recommendations emerging out of joint work by victims of violence, researchers, and corporate accountability activists. These recommendations address persistent impunity in regard to corporate criminality, weak responses by governments and international bodies, such as the United Nations, and corporate strategies that deflect policy focus and resources from efforts to establish binding mechanisms in home countries of multinationals to strengthen prevention of harm and create pathways to legal remedy.
Commentary from the Field Perspective
Marta Ruedas
Ruedas will comment on the presentations from the perspective of a practitioner, reflecting on the real-life feasibility of using the ideas and recommendations made by Zalik and Coumans in a recovery or peace-building context. She will use examples from specific crisis contexts to illustrate elements that might need to be taken into account, as well as how government, international community and NGO actors might play into different scenarios.
This event was co-sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Boston's Africana Studies Department; Anthropology Department; Asian Studies Department; Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance; Economics Department; History Department; The Honors College; Political Science Department; School for Global Inclusion and Social Development; Sociology Department; and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department and Human Rights Minor.
In a World of Interlinked Crises, is the Green New Deal Enough? How a Feminist & Decolonial Global Green New Deal Can Transform Systemic Inequalities
Bhumika Muchhala
Senior Policy Analyst on Global Economic Governance & Justice - Third World Network
Anne Marie Goetz
Clinical Professor - Center for Global Affairs, New York University
November 9, 2021
Over the last few years there have been several Green New Deals emerging across the developed world. There have also been responses, critiques and alternative formulations, particularly from the Global South, centered on global economic and social justice and on the need for Green New Deals to address systemic inequalities and still-persisting colonial dynamics. What does a feminist and decolonial global Green New Deal look like? What would be its key principles and provisions? And could it serve as a viable, intersectional framework for building sustainable peace in worn-torn countries?
Bhumika Muchhala is a political economist and critical theorist engaged in research, writing, advocacy, activism and public education on the international financial architecture, feminist economics and decolonial futures. She has 20 years of experience in global economic and social justice advocacy, and is a movement leader in global civil society who has advised developing country governments in UN conference negotiations and in the Human Rights Council. Since 2009, she has led Third World Network's programme on global economic governance, carrying out advocacy, research and campaign initiatives on fiscal justice, economic governance reforms for recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, the role of the IMF in the debt and fiscal crises generated by the pandemic, systemic inequalities and Special Drawing Rights, as well as the systemic transformations and paradigm shifts required for a decolonial and feminist global green new deal. Muchhala has a Masters of Science in Development Economics from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature and Political Science from Carnegie Mellon University. She is of Indian origin, grew up in Jakarta and is now based in New York.
Anne Marie Goetz is Clinical Professor at the Center for Global Affairs, New York University, and former Chief Advisor on Peace and Security at UN Women. As a political scientist, she has focused on studying how development policies in fragile states promote the interests of marginalized social groups, particularly poor women. She has researched democratization and good governance reforms in South Asia and East Africa, including research on pro-poor and gender-sensitive approaches to public sector reforms, anti-corruption initiatives, and decentralization, as well as political liberalization and state building in fragile states and post-conflict situations. She has published widely, including seven books on the subjects of gender, politics and policy in developing countries. Goetz holds a PhD from University of Cambridge, UK, a Masters of Science from the London School of Economics, and Bachelor of Arts from Queen's University, Canada. She is a Canadian who was brought up in Venezuela, Brazil, Trinidad, France, Australia, and Singapore, and currently lives in Connecticut, USA.
Moderated by Carol Cohn, Director, Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights; and Claire Duncanson, Senior Research Scholar and Co-Investigator, Feminist Roadmap for Sustainable Peace and Planet Project, Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights
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This event was co-sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Boston's Africana Studies Department; Anthropology Department; Asian Studies Department; Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance; Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs; Economics Department; History Department; The Honors College; Political Science Department; School for Global Inclusion and Social Development; Sociology Department; and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department and Human Rights Minor.
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