ISA Research Committee on Women in Society
Mundos de Mujeres/Women’s Worlds 2008
The 10th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women
Madrid, Spain
July 3-9, 2008
Submissions: September 30, 2007

Theme: New Frontiers: Dares and Advancements
A major objective of Research Committee on Women in Society (RC32) is to advance the development of theory, methods, and practice concerning women in society and the gendered nature of social institutions. RC 32 is also committed to improve research, organize meetings, and promote other means of communication, cooperation, and collaboration among researchers at the national, regional, and international levels. One of the ways that RC 32 achieves these objectives is by organizing multiple independent and/or joint sessions as a small component of other large sociology/ women’s conferences.

Mundos de Mujeres/Women’s Worlds 2008 (http://www.mmww08.org) is “the most important congress on academic research on gender and women and feminist social movements.” This major international event will bring together people from all over the world – researchers, specialist, activist and major international public figures to discuss the key issues that impact women. A key goal is to fight against social injustices and gender inequalities. The 2008 interdisciplinary Congress has selected three concepts: frontiers, dares and advancements to address a spectrum of themes and issues that can help us understand the world we live in.

For RC 32 members, participation in this conference provides a great opportunity to inform our work, particularly in addressing social injustices and gender inequality, help build research partnerships, and promote research, activism, and policy concerning women's rights throughout the world. The MMWW08 conference will provide an important forum to hear a diversity of voices, interrogate theoretical paradigms, discuss current research, and inspire collective action to empower women as well as men, locally and globally. For the WW2008 conference, RC 32 will submit 5 panel proposals organized by RC 32 members and 2 panel proposals jointly sponsored/organized by members of Research Committee on Women in Society (RC32) and the Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS).

If you are interested in participating in these panels, please submit your paper abstract (approximately 250 hundred words) by email to the organizer or the co-organizers of the respective proposed panels with a cc of your submission to RC 32 to the conference co-coordinators: Margaret Abraham: margaret.abraham@hofstra.edu and Esther Ngan-ling Chow: echow@american.edu .
The deadline for submitting your paper abstract is: September 30th 2007.

PANEL PROPOSALS (SPONSORED BY RC 32, ISA)

Panel 1
From Marginalization to Participation: Gender, Education and Empowerment in the Middle East
Co-organizers: Suaad Zayed Al-Oraimi (UAE), UAE University: zayedal@aol.com and Nazanin Shahrokni (Iran), University of Berkeley: nazanin@berkeley.edu
The focus of this session is on gender and education in the Middle East. In many of the Middle Eastern countries the academia has become feminized whereby more female students are enrolled in universities than men. This session primarily aims at examining how and why this is the case? What are the implications of having a feminized academia? Has this contributed to the reproduction or to the transformation of traditional gender roles in both private and public domains? The session also aims to address the reasons behind why some states tend to invest in women’s education in the Middle East and the ways in which women’s movements have utilized this as a tool for empowerment. Papers can be submitted that include topics such as: feminization of higher education and its implications; education as a tool of empowerment; education of women as a state project; education and its effects on gender roles in society; and the role of education in building feminist networks. This panel also welcomes papers which help further our understanding of the effects of traditions, state policies and global politics on women’s education in the Middle East.

Panel 2
Women and the Environment 
Co- organizers: Oluyemi Fayomi (Nigeria), Convenant University: olu_fayomi@yahoo.com and Lotsmart Fonjong (Cameroon), Buea University: lotsmart@yahoo.cm
The critical relationship between women and natural resources draws its strength not from the fact that women are born female, but from gender and socially created roles and the responsibilities which continue to fall to women in households, communities and ecosystems throughout the world. As poverty deepens in many parts of the world, women's income from hazardous economic activities becomes crucial to family survival thereby reinforcing the importance of the environment on women's lives. This panel seeks papers that address topics such as: mainstreaming women in natural resource management - particularly water and forest; women, poverty and environmental degradation; the roles of NGOs in promoting women participation in biodiversity conservation in Africa. We welcome papers that draw attention to some of the challenges, frontiers, dares and advancements within the context of women and the environment.

Panel 3
Femininities, Masculinities and Inter-Ethnic Conflict in Post-Colonial Plantation Societies.
Co-organizers: Rhoda.Reddock (Trinidad and Tobago), University of the West Indies: rreddock@cgds.uwi.tt and Margaret Abraham (USA), Hofstra University: margaret.abraham@hofstra.edu
While a great deal of recent emphasis has been placed on the situation of new migrants to metropolitan centres, there are continuing stories of the impacts of older migrations which occurred in earlier phases of capitalist colonial expansion. This panel will explore specifically post-colonial multi-ethnic plantation societies which trace their population diversity to the labour demands of an expanding trade in plantation products especially through British colonial and capitalist expansion. Countries such as Fiji, Guyana, Sri Lanka, South Africa Malaysia, Singapore and the entire Caribbean share this history and legacy of British colonialism, forced labour systems, large-scale labour transportation and immigration, multi-ethnicity and the plantation. Contestations over ethnicity, identity and citizenship characterise many of these societies and many are the site of ongoing or recent violent conflict. How are these societies located in the emerging scholarship on intersectionality and post-coloniality, and what new insights can gender analysis bring to our understanding of the history, current context and future of these societies. As feminists how can we learn from each other in addressing this problematic legacy?

Panel 4
Migrant Women in the Global Economy: Labour, Identities and Diasporas
Co-organizers: Evangelia Tastsoglou (Canada), Saint Mary's University: Evie.Tastsoglou@smu.ca and Cynthia Joseph (Australia), Monash University: cynthia.joseph@education.monash.edu.au
Contemporary migrant women negotiate the traditional in the midst of the global and vice-versa. These gendered and ethnicized / racialised migrant women are located within the larger structural and institutional processes at the global, national and local levels, and the micro-politics of displacement, marginalization but also contestation and empowerment. Migrant women contribute in different ways to labour in the global economy amidst social exclusion and inclusion. The processes of maneuvering and contestations they unavoidably engage in, complicate the interplay between traditional/global, identity/difference and national/transnational.

This panel discusses conceptual and methodological frameworks in understanding migrant women in the global economy. Special attention is paid however to the cultural, historical and institutional specificities of Diasporas, as they shape the labour experiences and identity-formation of migrant women encountering these Diasporas at specific times and sites. As a result, the discussion is expected to take place around case studies of diasporic communities in specific country sites and/or transnationally. The three major foci are gendered labour, transnational/ethnic identities and diasporic communities. The notions of difference and sameness in the experiences of these women between and within diasporic communities and across nations provide useful analytical tools in problematizing gendered labour and diasporic identities in present globalising times. A “multiscalar focus on connections, relations and processes across cultures” and “connecting women’s struggles in different places” (Nagar et al, 2002, p.259) adds on to important body of research that focuses on “new forms of cross-border solidarity and experiences of membership and identity formation that represent new subjectivities…” (Sassen, 2000, p.509).

Panel 5
Women’s Movement and Gender Mainstreaming in Transitional States
Co-organizers: Tan Lin (People’s Republic of China), Women’s Studies Institute of China: tanlin@wsic.ac.cn and Cai Yiping (People’s Republic of China), Women’s Studies Institute of China: caiyiping@wsic.ac.cn
Gender mainstreaming is the process of assessing the implications for women and men of all kinds of actions, including legislation, policies, programmes and projects. Formally featured in 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, the concept has been endorsed by international world as strategic guidelines for promoting gender equality. Many governments signed the Beijing Declaration and endorsed the Platform for Action at the 1995 UN World Conference and therefore committed to gender equality goals. In the transitional states like in China, the commitments have been shown in the State’s Basic Policy on Equality Between Men and Women and the Programmes for the Development of Chinese Women (1995-2000) & (2001-2010).

However, the enormous and complex challenges are still facing gender mainstreaming in many transitional states. Particularly, with the background of globalization, the problems confronted by transitional states in their economic and social development also bring about obstacles and challenges to women’s development. Generally speaking, the mainstreaming of gender consideration in policies and laws are still lacking. Therefore, a lot of efforts need to be devoted to systematic efforts to integrate gender considerations into legislation.

Worldwide, women's movements have deepened understanding, expanded recognition, and broadened definitions, perspectives and strategies for women's rights and gender equality, as well as for transnational networking and solidarity. What roles has the women’s movement played in the process of gender mainstreaming in the policy, projects and programs in the transitional states? For example, how did the women’s movement promote the introduction and translation of gender into the states? How did the women’s movement initiate research to bring gender concerns into the policy agenda? How did the women’s movement advocate and negotiate gender concerns in policy change? And how did the women’s movement act as a “watch dog” to monitor the implementation of the relevant policies and laws that concerned equal rights between men and women? The exploration of these issues will not only generate new knowledge on gender studies, but also contribute to activism for gender equity. Thus this panel will bring together feminist scholars and activists from China and other transitional states to explore the dynamics between women’s movement and gender mainstreaming.

Joint Proposed Panels for WW2008--RC32 “Women in Society” of International Sociological Association and SWS (Sociologist Women for Society) of USA

Panel 6
“Dangerous Liaison?: Feminism and Corporate Globalization”
Organizer: Manisha Desai (USA) University of Connecticut: manisha.desai@uconn.edu
This is the title of an article by Hester Eisenstein in which she discusses how feminism, particularly liberal feminism in the US and the UN, has become an unwitting partner in the neo-liberal agenda.  The session starts from the premise that feminist strategies, including the global gender equality regime articulated by the UN system in the last two decades, in the era of corporate globalization often end up reproducing neo-liberal governmentalities.  Hence, the aim of the panel is to explore critical alternatives to this political quagmire.   Is it time to take a break from feminism as Janet Halley suggests in her book Split Decisions?  Or how can we recoup the feminist agenda of social and political transformation in the age of corporate globalization?  

Panel 7
Gendered Bodies: Physical, Symbolic, Political
Organizer: Judith Lorber (USA) Brooklyn College & Graduate School, CUNY: jlorber@rcn.com
This panel will focus on the political feminist aspects of bodies – e.g. torture, economic exploitation, violence in wartime, how bodies get honored and dishonored. However other gendered body topics will be considered as well. I have accepted presentations on the following topics: abortion, racial ethnic aspects of beauty, Muslim veiling, genital mutilation, and political engagements. I would like to form two panels. If you are interested, please reply with a title, a 100-word abstract, and your complete affiliation and contact information.