INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
GENDER RELATIONS AND INCREASING INEQUALITIES
UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
6-8 JULY 2015
PANELS AND CONVENORS
1. Migration, Status and multi/trans-national relations
Convenors: Emma Gilberthorpe (e.gilberthorpe@uea.ac.uk) and Maria Abranches
(m.abranches@uea.ac.uk)
a) Gender, Migration & Multinationals: Inequalities in the Extractive
Industries
Convenor: Emma Gilberthorpe (e.gilberthorpe@uea.ac.uk)
This panel will examine how extractive industries operating in middle and low
income countries deal with issues of gender and equality in their approach to
employability, social responsibility and community development. The panel will
focus on some of the key issues that are typical of the extractive industries
sector: male-dominated migration, limited mobility and accessibility issues,
inequalities of expertise, inequalities of opportunity, and the effect of cultural
norms (hierarchies, labour division, concepts of pollution, and access to
education). We will also examine issues concerning the gender stereotypes
associated with multinational corporations and the barriers these present,
incorporating perceptions of multinationals at the local, indigenous level.
b) Migration and “the status paradox”: gender and kinship relations
across borders
Convenor: Maria Abranches (m.abranches@uea.ac.uk)
The movement of people, things and ideas around the world are central
processes in the making of contemporary identities and in reinforcing or
challenging gender inequalities. Although women represent about half of the
world migrant population nowadays and they no longer move for family
reunification purposes only, but also autonomously to work, gender identities
and inequalities are influenced not only by this increasing trend in
international migration, but also by the continuing migration of men and the
way both contribute to transform kinship and gender relations across borders
(for example through the way financial and social remittances are managed on
both ends). Although the “status paradox of migration” (Nieswand 2011) – the
transnational dynamic of losing social status in the destination country whilst
gaining it in the sending country – has been more widely documented, the
differences between men and women’s experiences within this paradox
(whether they actually move or are influenced by their relatives’ movement)
still need to be better understood. This panel therefore seeks to look at both
contexts of origin and destination, exploring gender inequalities not just
relating to migrants’ experiences abroad, but also those that arise or are
challenged when kinship relations are maintained across borders.
2. Social Reproduction, Generations and Educational Aspirations
Convenors: Catherine Locke (c.locke@uea.ac.uk) and Sheila Aikman
(s.aikman@uea.ac.uk)
a) Social Reproduction, Generations and Entitlements to Social Security
Convenors: Catherine Locke (c.locke@uea.ac.uk), Laura Camfield
(l.camfield@uea.ac.uk)
Economic crisis and the rolling back of social provisioning by states worldwide
have severely constrained and undermined entitlements of many to
give/receive care and social security, with heavy consequences for gender
and social justice. The simultaneous process of globalisation, increased
international and internal migration, and demographic transition has led to
both the extensive commoditisation of care within and beyond households as
well as to significant renegotiations of generational and inter-generational
entitlements and gendered responsibilities for them. This is increasingly well
documented, for instance with respect to migration, including global ‘chains
of care’, to youth experiences and transitions, and with respect to social
protection. The concept of social reproduction enables us to pose important
gender questions about the shifting relation between generations and the restructuring of entitlements which have importance for understanding social
change and inequality. Therefore, this panel would like to ask: “How can
future research and policy engage the feminist concept of social reproduction
with the gendered challenges around changing generations and their
entitlements?”
b) Education/learning and changing aspirations
Convenors: Sheila Aikman (s.aikman@uea.ac.uk) and Anna Robinson-Pant
(a.robinson-pant@uea.ac.uk)
This panel will examine gender relations and gendered aspirations for
education in the current national and international policy context of intense
student testing and assessment and the production of league tables.
Expectations for education (usually meaning schooling) to promote national
economic development, lead to access to the job market and increase
individual productivity, has today translated into a focus on how to achieve
improved learning, measured in terms of testing through a narrow curriculum
of mathematics and language/literacy (World Bank 2010; UNESCO 2014). In
this Panel we will consider the gap experienced by many girls and young
women between their aspirations and expectations of education/schooling
and the lives and opportunities outside of school. A policy focus on ‘girls’ as a
marginalised group is still strong, but there is increasing recognition of ways
in which girls’ educational opportunities, aspirations and experiences are
influenced by the interplay of structural conditions and inequalities linked to
their ethnicity, ability or economic situation. The Panel will also ask about the
ways in which gendered relations and identities are constructed in and
through educational discourses and practices, and how structural inequalities
can be maintained and challenged considering curriculum design and
implementation, pedagogical practices and relationships.
3. “Gender Equality” norms, mobilisation and policy change
Convenors: Ben Jones (B.W.Jones@uea.ac.uk) and Nitya Rao (n.rao@uea.ac.uk)
a) “Gender equality” as a global norms among different donors
Convenor: Ben Jones (B.W.Jones@uea.ac.uk)
The proposed panel looks at how different aid donors, old and new, each
with different institutional histories, approach the issue of gender
equality. The papers in the panel are organised around the following
premises:
1.
That international development cooperation is increasingly
characterized by heterogeneous development organizations.
2.
That international development aid is subject to increasing attempts
to organize, align, and coordinate the ways in which ‘development’ is
conceived and practiced.
3.
That gender equality, as part of the Millennium Development Goals
and beyond, is particularly affected by the heterogeneous nature of
development organizations.
The panel brings together new comparative research on gender activities in
very different old and new donor organizations, including the World Bank,
the Gates Foundation, OXFAM and Islamic Relief. These organizations
have publicly endorsed or supported the Millennium Development Goals,
at least in theory declaring adherence to global norms of gender equality
and women’s empowerment. At the same time, they also reflect the
diversity of development cooperation, and as such present different ‘local’
interpretations of global norms.
b) Feminist mobilisation and Policy Change
Convenors: Nitya Rao (n.rao@uea.ac.uk) and Paola Cagna
(cagna@unrisd.org)
The past two decades have seen the rise of gender equality as policy and
advocacy priority across the world, at national and international levels:
violence against women, domestic workers’ rights, access to land and
property, women’s political participation, SRHRs and many other issues
have been widely advocated and often states have responded to such
claims with new policies and laws. However, women’s advocacy and
mobilisation has often focused on certain issues, while there is little
advocacy on others, despite their centrality to women’s lives and well-being.
Again, some countries may be leaders in some areas of gender equality, but
laggards in others. For instance, in some cases, it has been easier to adopt
quotas systems in national assemblies than to challenge customary
practices and laws governing marriage, divorce, property rights and
inheritance.
The road to achieve the adoption of new legal frameworks sees state actors
– parties, politicians, ministers, femocrats, government officers - negotiating
over the content of new policies. It also involves non-state actors such as
women’s movements and other civil society organisations, as well as social
media, in a long process of negotiation and articulation of the key claims to
be advocated in the policy arena. Little, however, is known about such
processes of claims-making. This panel aims at exploring some of these
processes and negotiations: how are claims articulated? Why are certain
issues left out from the policy agenda of movements and states, while
others become priorities? What are the factors and conditions under which
non-state actors, including social media, can effectively trigger and influence
policy change?
4. Gender Inequality, Consumption and Changing Identities
a)
Consuming gender
Convenor: Cecile Jackson (cecile.jackson@uea.ac.uk)
Gender analysis frameworks have prioritised relations of production and
reproduction in approaching gender inequalities. This panel however
considers relations of consumption and how these reflect and influence
gender inequalities.
In anthropology, consumption is analysed through the manner in which
goods speak of identities and social orders, and things express social
relations, whilst the processes and entailments of commoditisation are
problematized. How then are gender identities and hierarchies expressed
through goods? How are gender relations experienced and manifested
through goods? How do money and markets refigure gender relations?
Where people are increasingly familiar with the consumption of global others,
are goods a principal means through which exclusion is now experienced,
and how does this vary with gender identities?
Contributions are sought which investigate the changing character of
consumption in developing countries and analyse the implications of this for
gender identities, relations and well-being outcomes.
b)
Intersectionality and inequalities
Convenors: Cecile Jackson (cecile.jackson@uea.ac.uk) and Nitya Rao
(n.rao@uea.ac.uk)
How gender identities interact with those of class, age, religion and ethnicity
in polarising worlds is the focus of this panel. We are interested in the
fragmentations of gender categories by other identities, and the solidarities
built across them. And we wonder about how the experiences and
perceptions of women and men navigating inequalities, finding opportunities
for social mobility and building well-being are refiguring these multiple
identities and their relative salience in everyday lives. The old class-gender
studies of the 1980s have diversified to include other intersecting identities,
and these how interactions shape the experience of inequality feels
increasingly relevant, and challenging to policy.
5. Labour markets, microfinance and women’s empowerment
Convenors: Sara Connolly (sara.connolly@uea.ac.uk) and Maren Duvendack
(m.duvendack@uea.ac.uk)
a) Gender and inequality in a (post) crisis global economy
Convenors: Sara Connolly (sara.connolly@uea.ac.uk) and Ruth Pearson
(r.pearson@leeds.ac.uk)
The contradictions between post crisis economic growth and the rise in
income and class inequality has important implications for the
(de)reconstitution of gender relations. Whilst the IFIs focus on increasing
women's labour force participation as a route to economic empowerment for
women and generating economic growth, it is clear that other factors
including labour market (de)regulation, migration, employment insecurity, the
withdrawal of the state's role in social security and protection, the rise of selfemployment and the increasing challenges of child and elderly care offer
substantial challenges to the achievement of gender equality as national
economies and international economic relations are transformed in response
to the recent "credit - crunch" and subsequent austerity policies. Papers are
invited which address any aspect of this topic.
b) Microfinance, women’s empowerment and poverty reduction
Convenor: Maren Duvendack (m.duvendack@uea.ac.uk)
Microfinance has often been heralded as a silver bullet to reduce poverty and
empower women. More than a hundred million people living in poverty, mainly
women, have been given access to loans, savings, insurances, remittances
and other financial services. Given the explosive growth of the sector over the
last two decades numerous critics have risen to prominence debating the
impact of microfinance on poverty reduction as well as the extent to which
targeted financial services can empower women. In recent years the
emphasis of microfinance has moved away from its main development
rationale of reducing poverty and empowering women to a more inclusive
finance agenda. This panel will discuss the implications of this changing
environment microfinance now operates in regarding gender relations and its
renewed potential for poverty reduction.
6. Environmental/climatic change and gendered inequalities
Convenor: Geraldine Terry (g.terry@uea.ac.uk)
On multiple levels, gendered inequalities permeate the social dynamics which
shape responsibilities, vulnerability and adaptive capacity in relation to
environmental/climatic change. We are interested in empirical studies, from a
range of disciplines, which enhance understanding of the complex interactions
among gendered inequalities and environmental/climatic change in development
contexts. They could address the following questions: In what ways are gendered
economic and social inequalities implicated in environmental/climatic change at
different scales? How do they shape household and community-level coping and
adaptation choices in low-income settings, and who are the winners and losers?
Does the impact of environmental/climate change inevitably deepen existing
inequalities, or are there any examples of transformational responses involving
reduced inequality? What parts do gender ideologies and contestations,
subjective gendered identities and the social institutions that inform everyday
practices play in these processes? Papers which concentrate on developing,
strengthening or challenging theoretical frameworks are also invited.
7. Gender and Violence
Convenor: Colette Harriss (collette.harris@soas.ac.uk)
Today’s increasing inequalities appear to produce attitudes and encourage
behaviour, particularly among men, that facilitate participation in violence. This
has been shown to be strongly tied to masculinities. The most unequal settings
tend to privilege the most aggressive forms of masculinity and the inequalities
manifest themselves further in a significant tendency to impose harsh penalties
for belonging to a minority racial/ethnic/religious/sexual group as well as strong
class barriers. While women commit violence at a much lower level than men,
studies suggest that inequalities also play a role here although not in the same
way; to date insufficient research on gender and women’s violence has been
carried out to draw any conclusions about the relationship of femininity and
violence.
Contributions are sought that – from a range of disciplinary perspectives –
investigate the influence of the global increase in inequalities on the relationship
of violence to masculinities and femininities in public/street and/or
private/domestic settings and analyse the implications of this for gender
identities and relations.