Events Calendar

Preview of the panels of Rutgers 2014 Women's World Congress Scholars
Thursday, May 01, 2014, 04:00pm - 06:30pm
Hits : 219

Nine Rutgers undergraduate students have received grants to attend and participate in the 12th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, Women's Worlds in Hyderabad, India (August 17-21, 2014).
Working with faculty advisors, students have developed papers and organized two panels that will be presented at an interdisciplinary forum in the department of Women's and Gender Studies.

I. Empowering Women and Girls: Tactics of the Millennial Generation

Feminist efforts to empower women have contributed to multiple forms of advocacy and activism, which situate various harms women face within systems of raced-gendered oppression. Drawing insights from women’s individual and collective experiences, feminist empowerment strategies seek social change to produce more equitable social relations. This panel explores young women’s activism and advocacy to contribute to women’s economic, social, educational, and sexual empowerment and to help girls develop skills essential to successful life. The papers explore diverse tactics of social change that range from agricultural practices, business management, and microfinance to the visual and performing arts, creative writing and blogging, and consciousness-raising programs on campus and in community.

Chair: Lisa Hetfield, Associate Director, Institute for Women’s Leadership, Rutgers University, USA

Panelists:

Shamama Siddiqui, Rutgers University, USA
“Women's Economic Empowerment: Evaluating the Impact of Microcredit Programs on Women in Pakistan”
Microfinance has been praised by many as the panacea for poverty in the developing world. This unique technology of development claims to bring about social and economic empowerment for poor women by giving them small loans to start businesses. Some claim that giving women access to capital, microfinance programs also challenge patriarchal gender norms, especially in South Asian countries. Yet some recent studies show that microfinance programs are not as effective in empowering women as they claim to be. This paper examines a range of microcredit programs for women in Pakistan, exploring the meaning of social and economic empowerment in various models, comparing their effectiveness in reaching these goals, and analyzing unintended consequences of these empowerment programs, such as domestic violence.

Cierra Kaler-Jones, Rutgers University, USA
“Visual and Performing Arts as a Strategy to Empower Economically- Disadvantaged Girls in New Jersey”
The Arts Empowerment Project seeks to use visual and performing arts to help adolescent girls hone their leadership skills. This paper examines the strategies of empowerment embedded in program workshops, which focus on cultivating the “six C’s”−−creativity, community-building, communication, cultural competency, critical thinking, and civic engagement. By using art, movement, and voice, the program addresses critical issues such as body image, school attendance, goal-setting, mental and physical health, and violence. Participants learn to use visual and performing arts not only as means for personal reflection and creativity, but as vehicles to create more productive communities. The paper will assess the efficacy of this extracurricular arts program in aiding economically-disadvantaged girls to enhance their self-confidence, agency, and cultivate skills essential to the pursuit of success.

Ashley Garner, Rutgers University, USA
“Collective Compositions: From Spaces of Silence to Empowerment”
Feminist studies have demonstrated that co-education can be disempowering for young women. From the onset of puberty, male voices gain ascendency in classrooms, clubs, and co-curricular activities. This paper explores the techniques of discursive empowerment created by Speak Out: Exploring Womanhood, a student organization at Rutgers University created to help university women develop voice and agency. The group meets weekly to discuss events that affect the lives of college-aged women.         Each meeting features a writing workshop through which members individually and collectively create poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, Emphasizing cultural production as a means to engage male/body/race privileges, Speak Out publishes a newsletter both in print and online. By analyzing a selection of these texts, I will examine how writing contributes to an “empowered” or “vocal” self, who can address race and gender-based restrictions and injustices, while reimagining and articulating her rightful place in the world.

Sarah Stern, Rutgers University, USA
“Sexual Empowerment of University Women: Mobilizing against Rape Culture”
Harassment at parties, on the street, on the bus, and even in dining halls is a common experience of women college students. From popular music and advertising images, women are surrounded by objectification. This paper explores the efforts of Women Organizing Against Harassment (WOAH) at Rutgers University, which was created to analyze and eradicate practices that contribute to “rape culture.” Though workshops in sororities and other clubs, WOAH helps university women explore differences between consensual and non-consensual sex, and between exploitive and affirming erotic encounters. Workshop exercises seek not only to sexually empower young women, but to harness the activist potential of participants to transform the campus environment to one incompatible with rape culture.

Meryem Uzumcu, Rutgers University, USA
“Suzanne's Project: Empowering Rural Women through Agriculture in Antalya, Turkey”
Male hegemony remains the norm in the business world and in political life, but it has distinctive characteristics in rural communities, where women’s literacy rates are low and access to education limited. This paper explores one program designed to challenge male domination, by recognizing and enhancing women’s crucial role in agricultural communities. Initiated in Antalya, Turkey, “Suzanne’s Project” works with Turkish women farmers to hone their business skills and improve their farming practices. Although the explicit goals of the program are to aid women farmers in sustaining their farms as a means of economic empowerment and to have their farming businesses valued as resources within Turkish economy, the project also tackles many complex social, economic and cultural problems. By focusing on strategies to call attention to and revalue women’s hard work within the home and on the far, I will assess the efficacy of the program’s efforts to challenge established gender hierarchy and contribute to greater economic equality and social inclusion in rural communities.

 

II. Globalization, Migration and the Challenges of Minority Women in Diaspora

The feminization of migration has become a hallmark of the contemporary era of globalization. More than 100 million women, drawn predominantly from poor nations, have crossed the globe in search of livelihoods. Pushed by political conflicts, economic upheaval, and war, women enter diasporas as immigrants, undocumented workers, asylum seekers and refugees. This panel examines the experiences of women in sending and receiving states, investigating challenges they confront, from cultural stereotypes and discriminatory treatment, to poverty, unemployment and underemployment, and access to educational opportunities and health care. Papers also consider how women in diaspora mobilize online and in communities to counter the oppressive practices that circumscribe their lives.

Chair: Dr. Mary Trigg, Director of Research, Institute for Women’s Leadership and Associate Professor or Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, USA

Panelists:

Juhi Farooqui, Rutgers University, USA
“Social Media for Social Change: Muslim Women Challenging the Mainstream Media Narrative in the Post-9/11 United States”
Muslim women in the post-9/11 United States exist at the intersection of sexism, Islamophobia, and cultural appropriation. News media continue to present a misleading and monolithic image of Islam, Muslims, and Muslim women, while popular media often either perpetuate misconceptions of Muslim women as voiceless, subjugated and in need of “liberation” from their faith, or appropriate and exoticize the “Muslim woman” image. Many Muslim women, however, are challenging this dominant narrative through the use of social media and the internet. These forms of media provide a platform for young Muslim women to counter prejudices and mainstream media images of themselves and their communities. Many individual Muslim women have taken their activism to such social media platforms as twitter and tumblr, while online initiatives like MuslimGirl.net and Muslimah Media Watch further unite and mobilize Muslim women against discrimination and injustice. This paper investigates these online initiatives and social media platforms, analyzing how young Muslim women create spaces to address American fear and mistrust of Muslim communities, reductive interpretations of Islam, and monolithic media representations of Muslims and Muslim women. By documenting diverse voices of Muslim women in virtual spaces of solidarity and activism, I will show how this discourse – in some ways overtly and in some ways subtly – counters the mainstream American narrative about Islam and Muslim women.

Justice Hehir, Rutgers University, USA
“Anti-poverty Interventions among Latina Migrant and Immigrant Workers in New Brunswick”
New Brunswick, New Jersey is multi-cultural community, rich with cultural and linguistic diversity. According to the 2010 Census, 38.3% of New Brunswick’s population was born outside of the United States and 55.5% of the New Brunswick population speaks a language other than English at home. Although New Jersey has a reputation as a “progressive” state, immigrants in New Brunswick (and New Jersey as a whole) face numerous challenges, including poverty, wage theft, workplace abuses, obtaining citizenship, and legal issues. This paper investigates the complex ways that gender shapes the experiences of Latina migrants/immigrants living in New Brunswick, particularly with regards to poverty. Through an examination of various anti-poverty interventions that target migrant and immigrant populations, I will document unique challenges confronting Latinas as well as their individual and collective responses to those challenges.

Eden Mesfun, Rutgers University, USA
Envisioning the Consequences of Armed Conflict: Images of Congolese Women in Social and Print Media
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been the site of recurring armed conflict since 1996. Estimates of war-related deaths have ranged from 350,000 to 5.4 million. As the fighting escalated in the Central African Conflict, Congolese women figured prominently in print and social media, which reported more than 100,000 women raped in the Kivu region of DRC in 2006 alone. In the absence of detailed information about the parties to the conflict and the causes of armed violence, photojournalism becomes an important source of information. This paper investigates images of Congolese women circulating online and in print media between 2000 and 2013. Through a comparison of photos featured in African, European, and U. S. newspapers, I will examine the construction and circulation of stereotypes of Congolese women and consider how the circulation of these images distorts understanding of complex dimensions of conflict and its relationship to identity-based and regional politics.

Srutika Sabu, Rutgers University, USA
“From Local Culture to Imperial Morality: Sexual and Reproductive Health Challenges of South Asian Women Immigrants in the USA”
As the South Asian population in the United States has increased in recent decades, many immigrant women encounter considerable obstacles in their attempts to access sexual and reproductive health care. This paper will explore diverse barriers to sexual and reproductive health care, comparing the constraining effects of South Asian women’s cultural attitudes towards gender roles, gender scripts, sexual behavior, and sexual orientation with obstacles rooted in U.S. stereotypes about “third world women.” By probing the multiple forces that shape South Asian immigrant women’s perceptions of romantic relationships and sexual activity, I will analyze the comparative effects colonial legacies, imperial morality, religious commitments, migration, language barriers, economic obstacles, and discrimination on South Asian immigrant women’s use of contraceptives, HPV vaccine, Pap smears, and reproductive and sexual health care services in general.

 

Location Ruth Dill Johnson Crockett Building, First Floor Conference Room, 162 Ryders Lane, 08901 New Brunswick, NJ