Unknown Speaker  00:00
I'm very pleased to welcome you to the scholar and the feminist conference. As I think most of you know, this annual conference is sponsored by the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Since its inception in 1971, the Women's Center has been a vital link between the college and scholars from all over the world who are working for the advancement of women in society. This, however, is a special year for Barnard, as we hoped you noticed as you came through our gates and looked above them, we're celebrating a birthday. And not just any birthday, our 100th this conference provides a perfect vehicle for Barnard's centennial celebration. As women, we have come a long way in the 100 years since Barnard's founding, but the next 100 years will be ones with new challenges and solutions. The topic of today's conference, Women in Public Policy Making a difference, will educate and inspire us to think creatively about the advancement of women in the years ahead. For all the strides that women have made. We are underrepresented in many areas, government and politics, certainly among them. There is much work that remains ahead. I look forward to hearing today's discussion of those issues. While I am not now the one who has the privilege of introducing judge Kay, I can't sit down without saying how pleased I am that Judas que a Barnet alumna, because I think you know, the highest ranking woman judge in New York State, a colleague and a friend is here with us today. And now I'll turn over the formal elements of this to Timur Kaplan.

Unknown Speaker  01:47
Thank you very much, and it's very nice to see you all here. In this centennial year of Barnard College, we at the Center for Research on Women welcome you to what we believe is a working conference and when women like us Jane Addams, Rosa Schwimmer of Hungary and Aleta Jacobs of the Netherlands founded the Women's International League for peace and freedom in 1915. In the vain attempt to end World War One, they claim that their domain was everything that concerns survival and decency and human life. We follow them in our belief that the major issues of public policy in our time are women's issues, and the we have a right and even an obligation to direct them to goals we deem appropriate. Today's conference is our attempt to redefine public policy. Many of us do not like the direction this country has taken lightly. We planned as a white today as a wide ranging discussion of how we can shape public policy in the future, and how we can undo many of the wrongs that have been done in the 80s. We the flotsam and jetsam of the Reagan Revolution. Know that human decency and support for women children, workers in the poor take low priority with many of the world's leaders, but we plan to regain the initiative. The speakers you hear today differ in their views about what should be done and how it should be accomplished. Several are have been elected officials. Some have been appointed to high office, many have worked and continued to work in grassroots movements. But whatever our individual histories we have, we share a desire to improve the conditions for women, children and men throughout the world. It's easy to tick off some of the outrages of the past few years. But we must also remember that we have ideas about the solutions. Take economics for example. Instead of paying women decent wages, poor women are often blamed for being poor and for being heads of households. Yet full time women workers still earn only $64.64 on the dollar for every dollar a man makes and African American women are paid 54 cents for on for every dollar a white man makes real wages have fallen to below 1963 levels. If you feel poorer than you were you are poor than you were some form of comparable wages is clearly the only answer to poverty and sickness and racism in America. Reproductive Rights. The Supreme Court will start hearings on what on the Webster case on April 26. And the court may well reverse Roe v Wade. Before 1973 There were between 200,001 point 2 million illegal abortions a year with anywhere from 400 to 10,000 deaths Last year, approximately one death for every 100 illegal abortions. Of those who died 80% were African American and Puerto Rican women. Many of the women who lived suffered long term health consequences and mutilation as a result of these illegal abortions. Now in there, I'll expect hundreds of 1000s of us to be in Washington on April 9, a week from tomorrow, and I'm sure many of you will be there. We must fight to preserve Roe v. Wade. But that's not enough. Our original goal was free abortion on demand. And we must return to that. Even if we retain Roe, we still must fight for the reinstatement of Medicaid funds for abortion, which were cut off when the Supreme Court upheld the Hyde Amendment in 1980. Health care, the poor women are denied safe abortions right now because of the high costs. The same hospitals encourage sterilization which is now the prevalent form of birth control in the United States for women over 25 and 25% of all Native American women have been sterilized.

Unknown Speaker  06:11
But do these hospitals offer prenatal care for poor women? most do not. And therefore the birth weight and the chances for infant survival are lower in the United States than in any other industrialized nation. We must do something about universal health care, and we must do it soon. Childcare, national policy about childcare is being made but how will it be made? The Bush administration wants tax credits franchise childcare centers are popping up all over California and Oregon where there's where they think they can make them profitable. chief executives of the 100 top corporations are worried about keeping the most skilled women and they have met in October with Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense League to discuss the needs of children. James Lee Burke, Chair of Johnson and Johnson told reporters childcare quote may turn out to be the most important employee benefit we have and have quote. Yet even with the pressure of the upcoming elections, the last child care bill went down to defeat in October. caretaking leave and parental leave some form of caretaking leave including pregnancy, adoption and care for children and other relatives will also be in the cards. In the next dozen years. Approximately 65% of the entering labor force will be women and minorities. To secure the services of those with the skills industry needs. Corporations now recognize that they must make career options more flexible. We must we must reassert our need to control the work process itself. And now we see the resurgence of home industry which cannot be monitored and which are feminists predecessors fought so hard to outlaw to save the health of women and children. We must speak out about how work is organized. national emergencies housing and AIDS. AIDS is spreading and the fastest growing group is women. In the absence of any national health program, hospital emergency rooms and the streets become the havens for the ill in a very heartless world. Will we have the force to build the low income housing and develop a comprehensive health care program in the country in the face of a real national emergency? Violence against women? Violence against women is increasing throughout the world. Can we convince our allies in the human rights community that women's rights are human rights, tourism and mail order brides have recreated indentured servitude here and abroad. At home one girl and four will be raped before she is 18. And one woman in three will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. racism. Racism has been increasing throughout the world. Here in the United States. 36% of all African Americans live below the poverty level of 4 million homeless people 40% are African American. In the schools, more than 80% of all Latino students never graduate from high school. Do we have policies we want to set about housing, education and affirmative action, and on and on and on? Our speakers today will engender discussions of policy that we hope you will spread. Many of you in the audience could well be at the podium and many of you have been at the podium over the years that the scholar and the feminist, but even more important, most of you are the movers and the shakers, the women who have made the gains fought the court cases built the organizations that have thought that have brought us as far as we have come. We cannot afford to wonder why public policy is not as we wish it. We must seize the initiative and turn it around. And you were the people who must do it. Thank you

Unknown Speaker  10:23
it's a very, it's a very great pleasure for me to introduce judge Judas, Kay. I have just met her today and I've spoken to her a few times on the telephone and exchanged some zany letters. And I have to say I overheard a conversation when I was at some event at Gracie Mansion, getting my coat and somebody said, Well, Judge Kay paved the way because she had such a good sense of humor, and it made our lives a lot easier at the Legal Aid Society. So I know a little bit about her judge. Judith SK, associate judge of the court of appeals New York's highest court, graduated from Barnard and from the NYU School of Law, where she was an associate editor of the Law Review. She became a partner at the litigation firm of Owen Owen calmly Chase O'Donnell and Wyler until her appointment to the bench she had served for six years as director and vice president of the Legal Aid Society. She was one of the original seven trustees and Vice Chairperson of the client security fund of the state of New York created to reimburse victims of lawyer dishonesty. As a lawyer, judge Kay pursued her interest in the subjects of judicial selection and professional ethics. She was twice appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the United States nominating commission for judges of the Second Circuit, and she served as a member of a merit selection panel for magistrates in the Southern District. In May 1987, she was awarded the Barnard Medal of distinction, the college's highest honor. She was appointed to the bench for a 14 year term by Governor Mario Cuomo and took her oath of office on September 12 1983. It's with great pleasure that I introduce judge Judas SK.

Unknown Speaker  12:33
Good morning, and thank you all so much. Chi tema had I known that I would have brought along a joke, but I, I'm sorry, I don't, I don't have one with me today. But actually, some months ago, after tema called to invite me to this conference today. She pressed for a title for my remarks, because that brochure that you all have was in public, in process. And I immediately suggested a couple of very inspirational titles that came, jumped right into my own mind observations from the bench views from the bench, but somehow they didn't. tema didn't find them scintillating, or even satisfactory. And she continued pressing for something a little more provocative. And so together, we hammered out the title you see today, Women in the Courts as a reflection of social change. And that seemed like just the right kind of note, for a conference opening, because it hinted, both at public policy underpinnings and at women making some sort of change. But then more recently, I began preparing my remarks for today, and particularly examining this title a little more carefully. And I, for one, have begun seriously to question and wonder what it is that I've committed myself to talk about, I'm sure you must all be wondering as well, because I could think of about a dozen different important, provocative subjects that fit very comfortably under the title, Women in the Courts as a reflection of social change. And so I've decided in the end that what I really should have entitled these remarks, and what they really are, is observations from the bench. But after long deliberation, what I've decided is that rather than limit myself, or cut out any of these dozen different provocative subjects, that I would address all of them. And I even began to think that there was some sort of virtue in making several separate speeches if you could tolerate that, because I thought I might hopefully sound a few themes that would be carried forward as this. This day progressed, but all the speeches I could think of began at the same point. They all be again with the simple physical fact that suddenly, many more women have been entering the courts and by the courts, I want to refer to the law generally, which only includes, in a small way the litigation process. Within the past 20 years, there is a simple, undeniable, physical fact that women have, for the first time become a noticeable presence in the courts. Now the group that comes ready is to my mind, because of my own background, is the lawyers. Women today make up about 20% of the legal profession, which is four times the number of female lawyers only two decades ago, and we're going strong back in the 1960s, when judges might tell the occasional woman attorney who had the misfortune to appear before him, in a matter that he'd prefer to wait for the real lawyers on the case to come. All of the female Wall Street partners, all of the female law school deans, and maybe also all of the female judges of the state could have convened comfortably in a telephone booth outside Schrafft's.

Unknown Speaker  16:23
Now, the number of judges also has increased tremendously over the past 20 years. Although the percentages are minuscule, certainly nowhere near 20%. With the women judges in this state, we are still at a point where every single woman added to a court or leaving one herself changes the total percentages. And finally, there are many, many more women to be found on court staffs today and as litigants and as witnesses inside the courtrooms. Now, I don't want to paint a false picture about this the numbers of women lawyers, women judges, women courts, death numbers, men are still distressingly low, nowhere equal or near equal to the numbers of men. And women are rarely fine found in the highest positions in the law, those few who are have been carefully selected and put there by men. But for the moment, I want to stay focused on the plus side of these phenomena. The fact is, that in most courts today, one is likely to encounter several women every day, day in and day out, actively engaged in discharging the business at hand. Now we could undoubtedly devote long hours to exploring causes. why we're so we're so why for so long, we're women, not a presence in the courts, the one place in society where above all others, one could have expected to find equal opportunity and equal justice. Why has their entry been so long delayed and the courts? Why even today are women found so rarely in the positions of greatest power and prestige? And why now are there suddenly so many more women entering the courts? Part of the explanation for women's emergence in the courts, undoubtedly lies in women's recent emergence throughout society, measured against their participation in social and political affairs at the time of this nation's beginnings 200 years ago, need I remind you, when women were constitutionally non existent, even measured against Barnards beginnings, 100 years ago, when womanhood was a protected occupation, the change is striking. But when I think back to my own years as a Barnard student, it seems even more so. Little more than three decades that go, Barnard's president in an annual talk to us, those few of us who had the misfortune to be neither engaged, nor married, offered hope and consolation that our will our lives would also be full in every sense. Now the need for something like that was great, I assure you when I was here, and that talk was much appreciated by all of us, but it is unimaginable that Barnard's president would deliver such a talk today. The 70s and 80s in particular have been marked by profound change in the workforce revolution and personal relations, increased openness about differences about redefinition of the concept of family Malay, women's lives have probably changed more radically in recent decades than in any other time in history. As cultural attitudes undergo reexamination the presence of women in the courts today indeed is a reflection of social change and attitudes about women, and in women's attitudes about themselves and each other. But it's much more than that. While women have made gains in every occupation, the increase in numbers of women, lawyers and law students far outstrips the gains for example, among engineers and MBAs, female Law School enrollments today hover around 40%. And they are increasing annually. I think the increasing presence of women in the courts, and by this I'm speaking of far more than our mere numbers in the courts, I'm speaking of our presence in the courts, isn't merely reflecting social change, it's creating social change. So rather than linger on causes, I'd like to turn to effects.

Unknown Speaker  21:14
Like other human beings, women share every imaginable background, predilection and experience, which makes generalizations impossible or at least very, very dangerous. But if any generalization were possible, it would be that the Women in the Courts, particularly the lawyers, and judges, the people most familiar to me, share an interest in public policy, whether making public policy or shaping social directions, or most important of all changing social directions for older members of the group. But I think for every member of the group, the decision to become a lawyer, represented a departure from traditional paths laid out for women, a declaration of their willingness to battle stereotypes, and entry into what has been an all male preserve a privileged, powerful, all male Preserve.

Unknown Speaker  22:20
And somewhat curiously, of all occupations, the practice of law has been identified in several infamous judicial opinions as one that is especially unsuitable for women. Stay away, the courts told us both because of women's very delicate nature, and because of the particular nastiness of the law and the courts. And while not nearly so laughable today as those archaic judicial decisions, the formal and informal barriers and hostilities to women's advancement in the legal profession continue to this very day, I would guess that every woman lawyer could tell stories about their own experiences with quotas and barriers, I certainly can. But it is also apparent that the courts of justice are an important instrument of social change. And despite the barriers and despite the daunting statistics, they are therefore the natural object of people interested in making, changing, influencing social policy in order to effect justice. It is playing to all of us today, that judicial decision making is a vital process of fitting the law to society. In this process, sometimes the courts merely perpetuate the status quo and sometimes they lag a lag behind and just struggle to stay abreast of it. But the courts can also inspire change, and they can also accelerate it and hasten social change along, while not lawmakers or policymakers in the sense that the legislative and executive branches of government are the courts have demonstrated time and again, that they have a legitimate role in these functions, especially in litigation on behalf of excluded groups. We are all the beneficiaries of landmark judicial decisions, implementing this nation's guarantee of equality and respect for the integrity of the individual, as well as decisions recognizing rights not expressly set forth in the Constitution that are nonetheless essential to our concept of ordered liberty. Such judicial decisions have proved a powerful influence on our culture. Far beyond a single case, they have inspired a general rethinking about the meaning of this nation's promise and guarantee of equality under the law. Now we can mark some beginning in the change in the law affecting women. I think we can mark that change about 20 years ago, not even 20 years ago, with Supreme Court decisions, overturning laws on grounds of discrimination and sustaining programs designed to compensate women for past discrimination. These changes may be attributable to the workforce statistics to new patterns of marriage and childbearing to the skyrocketing cost of living to the civil rights movement, to our increased openness to all of these and more, but the voice of women undeniably has been a major force in these developments. Some years ago, the women's movement was described as a cause that had achieved the momentum that once belonged to the civil rights movement, that it was on the verge of mobilizing an entire generation of law students. The growing voice of women surely is not limited to lawyers or law students or people in the legal profession. Most fortunately, it claims a wide constituency of women of diverse backgrounds, but the emergence of Women in the Courts within the past two decades, and the emergence of women in the law within the past two two decades, simply cannot be written off as a mere coincidence. The changes in the law I believe, that began nearly two decades ago, must be decidedly counted among the effects of the growing presence of women in the courts. The arrival of Women in the Courts has the effect of teaching people who are in need of instruction. Regrettably, there are many, one at a time, and hopefully, more than one at a time, the danger and absurdity of stereotyping. This is not an insignificant lesson. It teaches them not to disparage be little condescend to or disadvantage women. The presence of women, moreover, is an encouragement to other women, both in terms of their own aspirations and in terms of personal identification within a courtroom, sometimes a strange and terrifying setting for me as well.

Unknown Speaker  27:48
But beyond these important facial matters, the presence of Women in the Courts unquestionably also heightens sensitivity to the problems particularly affecting women, problems of battered women abused women, juveniles, for example, women in the throes of divorce. It is incomprehensible to me, that we have awakened so slowly to thinking seriously about the very serious subject of domestic violence. As women have turned to the courts to vindicate their rights, new legal issues have emerged and inevitably, new legal issues give rise to new conflicts. The emergence of women as lawyers and litigants has brought fresh perspectives to seemingly established matters, almost routine matters, such as orders of protection, which have been shown to be seriously in need of rethinking legal defenses, the defense of justification, self defense, all of these have most recently been subject of rethinking within the courts. I believe that the growing presence of wives daughters and mothers in the courts accelerates the ongoing education process in dealing with other wives, daughters and mothers as equals, be they parties, witnesses, judges, or lawyers. In the end, all of these, all of these that I count as effects are simply human issues, but they are obviously important issues. Common sense also tells us that an established presence of Women in the Courts increases opportunity to actually effect changes in the substantive law. larger groups of vocal articulate women speaking as one to issues of discrimination against women, obviously can begin to make differences, changes in the substantive law. There's no doubt in my mind On that the growing pressures for such common goals as parity in the workplace, access to all matter and manner of restricted establishments, meaningful laws on rape and abuse effective child support mechanisms better provision for safe, affordable, accessible childcare contribute to changes in the law that bring all society closer to these objectives.

Unknown Speaker  30:29
But apart from raising a single voice on matters of common concern and common interest, I count among the really new and substantial effects of women's increasing presence in the courts, a willingness a willingness, a noticeable willingness also to express strong divergent views on legal issues affecting women. This is a genuine contribution to the development of the law, tokens can't afford to do much of it. Tokens tend to minimize rather than call attention to their differences. But what we are hearing now in the courts is more of the natural voice of a diverse group of individuals that has acquired some measure of confidence that it's common efforts won't crumble and disappear or stand even suffer. If the group begins to err it's honest disagreements about what best advances the rights of women. Just recently, a battle raged in the press principally among women, about head Nussbaum. Some women urging compassion for a victim of domestic violence there but for the grace of God go I. Other women spoke out strongly for holding HUD and headed Nussbaum to a strict standard of personal accountability for her acts. In the baby Mk. Similarly, some dedicated feminists have argued for the right of women to enter into contracts just like everybody else. But others, as strongly and passionately have urged that a woman's contract to surrender her child at birth is an entirely different matter. Pornography is viewed by some as violence against women sex discrimination, a civil rights issue. Other women again have spoken out strongly and passionately against poor as calling pornography speech which is embraced within the First Amendment. And only last month's controversy erupted over an article that appeared in the Harvard Business Review about the mommy tracks since I have it now coming out of my ears, I thought it would be appropriate to talk a little bit about it today. I'm getting rather sick of it myself. But immediately, the article and the idea were denounced by several women in the New York Times as a national tragedy. The idea of special unequal non promotional second class categories for women, was seen as antithetical to every game that has been made a retreat to the notion of womanhood, indeed as a protected occupation. But others have this passionately defended the concept of flexible work schedules, in order to permit women to remain in the workforce during certain periods in their lives. The Harvard article, just during the month of March, has been the subject of a media explosion. Now I live a very sheltered life, but this is what I've seen so far. Nightline, the MacNeil Lehrer report, a Businessweek cover story, a four part series in USA Today, a three part series in Newsday and op ed piece in The New York Times, a Wall Street Journal article, a National Public Radio feature and goodness knows how many others have addressed the subject of the mommy track. So I'd like to get into this too.

Unknown Speaker  34:25
Now for several reasons, I think the Harvard article, and especially its extraordinary sequelae are significant, and they are even relevant to my discussion today. But the first thing I would do would be to change the nomenclature. The phrase mommy track is unnecessarily pejorative demeaning. It's not it cannot be a serious option in the commercial world, because it announces to all the world, that this is something that ECE and this is something for women only. What is really at issue here, it seems to me is a gender neutral concept of parental leaves and flexible work schedules that allow both for family concerns and for career interests. Now, I know that sort of description wouldn't make any headlines in the New York Times, wouldn't make any headlines anywhere, but it does begin to make some sense. And I'd like to focus particularly on the law firms, not only because they are very conservative, traditional, predominantly male and very, very powerful institutions, but also because they are what I know best. I actually worked part time as a trial attorney when my children were very young. What strikes me as significant about the issue is that for better or worse, this is an issue which is largely the work of today's professional women, the highest credentialed Highest Paid relatively best off of all women today. Within the past few years, major law firms have moved toward the adoption of generous parental leaves and flexible work programs. Since the law firms have shown their sheepish nests and simply following along after each other, I suspect that very shortly, all of them are going to have programs like these. Now, which surely not any pressures originating with May the male gatekeepers at the law firms that is causing this city's most powerful and prestigious institutions to consider and institute these options. It is a consequence of pressure for change that has originated with the women bright, desirable candidates arriving in increasing numbers, who feel that they can begin to be more open about their lifestyle concerns with growing Law School enrollments, a law firm sensitivity to such concerns simply makes good recruitment sense. This is an issue that arises out of the needs of these women to be sure, but it also arises out of the needs of the law firms or they wouldn't do it. Now decades ago, when the entry barriers to law firms were high. The words Family and Children spelled sudden death for women lawyers. But later, things got even worse. The token women in the male structured work environment marched along single mindedly and ferociously turning up the tempo billable hour by billable hour. Law firms didn't have any policies like these, and no woman would have dared to ask for them. If she wanted to keep her job, that women in the law firms would openly seek leaves and flexible work operations. And that the firm's would listen and respond to my mind signals and important change both in these women and in these institutions. But full scale celebrations, I think, are premature just now. This is still a very experimental operation, these new programs can be cause for celebration, only, if it is ultimately ultimately proved that they are not unduly costly for the individual in terms of career development, and only if they represent

Unknown Speaker  39:04
a real step toward change, change both in the professional work environment and change in personal and societal attitudes about parental responsibilities. If this happens, if this experiment indeed produces this sort of change, then obviously it will be enormously successful and deserving of a great celebration. And it will have wide ramifications in the labor market. But apart from the practical significance of the mommy track, which I think is very important. The current controversy also has some scholarly interest, which I thought made it particularly relevant today. Because it is yet at Another example of the debate that has raged long in history among women, whether the issue is had enough spam or era or surrogacy. Some women argue that there are no value or behavioral differences attributable to gender, while others argue that there are innate differences between women and men, that simply must be taken into account before there can be equality, true equality in any real sense. Why are women in need of special programs like mommy tracks on masks, special smacks of less special means categories that call up the odious stereotypes we have so long struggle to eradicate. But I think that even this historical debate must be reevaluated today it takes on a distinctly different coloration today. Because society over these decades, more than two decades, but over the recent decades, has acquired much more experience dealing with people's differences within a framework of equality. Perhaps today, maybe this is over optimistic. But perhaps today, differences can be recognized and accepted as something positive as a contribution that women can make by reason of their diverse backgrounds and lifetime experiences. As the debate heats up over the Harvard article, which centers indeed on women's differences, there is also a tremendous outpouring in the legal literature, largely by female academics, about the impact of women lawyers and women judges, and the impact on feminist thinking of feminist thinking on the actual substance of the law. And I believe a good case is made for both. There are by now many respected women's law journals, and whole issues of long standing law reviews are being devoted to the subject of gender. These publications are seriously exploring whether the behavior of women lawyers and judges, is in any way gender to they are asking, Are there discernible differences in how women approach and resolve moral conflicts? Do women really share an ethic of caring that influences their behavior as lawyers and judges? Are women more compassionate in these roles? If indeed the law subordinates feeling to reason would women change that assuming differences that if not biological, or at least experiential, would women do anything to change the process? Or will the process simply change them?

Unknown Speaker  43:10
Now without being facetious, I would like to suggest that the mommy track is relevant even to these difficult, important, profound questions. And what I want to spend a moment on is not the issue of the mommy track itself and whether it's a good or bad thing, but the extraordinary sequelae the explosion of publicity that has followed upon the issue. I find it astounding. And given that this controversy, the Maumee track controversy is centered on a tiny sliver of the elitist women, most elite women, the most elite institutions, this explosion of interest is perhaps the most significant of all of the things that can be said about the mommy track. I spent a long time wondering why this has happened. It frankly surprised me. One possible explanation, and frankly, the most benign and optimistic possible explanation I can think of is that the explosion of interest in the Maumee track is a recognition that these issues are in fact, not just women's issues, that there is indeed a need for a very, very fundamental reexamination of existing arrangements. The dilemma of just a few J DS and NBAA struggling to stay in their very high paying jobs and manage personal responsibilities may in fact, be striking right at the heart Art of concerns that are uppermost in the minds of so many of us just now, men as well as women, about how we are going to go about ordering and organizing our lives. And the answer that emerges is some way different from the way that we are doing it now. While these issues are battled out in the media, within the courts, there are similarly pressures for reexamination and change that have been spurred by the arrival of women. As women's voices within the courts rise and gain strength, the new perspectives they bring, from a lifetime of different experience, challenge traditional thinking, not simply about the way to practice law and care for children, but much more fundamentally, about the way we administer justice, and even more fundamentally, about the meaning of justice. These issues obviously affect much broader groups

Unknown Speaker  46:19
fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, and she played a pivotal role in the organization of DC women's liberation. Some of us know her is one of the Furies or as from her articles in a journal, she helped found quest, a feminist quarterly, which was one of the most outspoken journals of early feminism. As an active leader in the UN Decade for women, and a founder of interfirm consultants. She's helped shape international feminism. She now holds the Laurie New Jersey chair in women's studies at Douglas College at Rutgers, and she wears many hats. And today, she is going to speak about global women and and the I've lost my program you she'll tell you.

Unknown Speaker  47:24
Well, the topic, Timur let me put in the program that she then forgot, is global feminism and human rights, which, as most of you know, is at least a five day discussion. So I'll see if I can touch on some of the basic aspects of that question. And I think it fits very much into the framework that both Tim and Judith have put forward here of our growing understanding that feminism is about a transformation of all of the issues and all of the public policies, and not simply about a list of separate women's issues. And I think that's the framework that is perhaps the most important aspect of global feminism. In my use of the term global I mean, many different things. But probably the most important one is the sense that we as women are a part of the globe, we are all over the globe, and we have responsibility for the whole globe. So there is no issue. That is not our issue, there is no question of public policy where I don't think we can't make a difference. So I want to affirm that spirit and starting, and I think, thinking about feminism in the 1980s, it seems to me that perhaps one of the most important and often overlooked areas of growth and change is precisely in the global character of the women's movement today, in contrast to the 1970s. And I think that it's no surprise that while the women's movement has been growing internationally, and particularly in the third world, where there's been an enormous explosion of projects and women who define their work, and what I would call a feminist framework, is the same period of time that in the United States, we've seen a growing diversification of the women's movement amongst women of color, women of different classes, women have many different working groups that previously didn't necessarily define themselves as feminists. And I think it's no surprise that while these two things are happening, the United States media in its traditional ethnocentric manner, is continually trying to tell you that the women's movement is in decline. Now I point that out because I think we in the women's movement have often also perpetuated this ethnocentric rhetoric, that there are many things I could say about why the women's movement is not in decline. But the most important one I want to say today is that when the women's movement is growing around the world, and changing in very fundamental ways within the United States that I think make it possible for to address a broader spectrum of women's lives. This could hardly be defined as decline

Unknown Speaker  50:02
What I think they do mean by decline is that we are no longer a single movement focused on a few fairly defined women's issues in which you can have sort of widespread or they think, widespread agreement. Now I happen to think to me, it was never like that. Those of us who were in the Furies didn't feel that way. Those of you who came to the women's movement out of various different strands of politics in the 60s, didn't feel that way. But nonetheless, this myth, that for a women's movement to be strong, it must be monolithic, and have a kind of single class and race and national character, which is really what they're looking for, again, is one that I think we have to end. And I think in looking at the Global character of feminism, we come to see an enormous strength precisely in the diversity that you just talked about, precisely in the fact that as a movement is more diverse, as it reflects the interests needs and experiences of a wider range of women, it is potentially much stronger, because it is precisely by recognizing those differences, and no longer dealing with difference as the basis of inequality or domination. But precisely in that question of seeing difference, as a strength as a positive factor. And as a fundamental dynamic, that we have to change in the globe, that we see the strength of what it means to be a global movement. I also think that the strength is not only in numbers and in diversity, but most importantly, it's in the way we've come to see ourselves, we've come to see ourselves as indeed a movement that has a claim on the globe, that has a claim on the issues and the problems of the globe. And in so doing, I think, to see public policy, as a central question of feminism, and all its manifestations. Now, if you want to think about this in sort of two interlocking phases, it seems to me that the first very important phase of women making a difference in public policy was focused on our defining issues that were not previously seen as political, as important political and social issues. And that meant more or less what we saw as the women's issues, reproductive rights, equal pay gay and lesbian rights, childcare, violence against women, etc. Now that work is not finished. And I'm going to come back to that work in terms of violence against women. But along with doing that establishing of public policy questions in these new areas, which I most of you are, like me, I think, old enough to remember when they weren't political. But sometimes I try to tell students what it was like to not even have the notion of rape on a political agenda, because it was such a privatized concept, oh, we have made an enormous difference. But in the very same time that we've done that the defining of these issues, what I've also seen happening is, we've realized that unless we also move to a feminist transformation of how all the issues are defined, we can only go so far with these issues, that every single one of these issues comes up against the concepts of Justice, the concepts of human rights, the concepts of democracy and power that exists in our society. And unless we also take on all of those questions, we are stopped at a certain point in every one of our women's issues. So when I say women's issues, and transformation of all the issues, I don't see these as two separate processes, I see these as two things that have to come together, and that increasingly, are coming together in the activities of women globally. Now, I want to give some examples of what do I mean by that? Oh,

Unknown Speaker  53:33
I think that Judas gave some very good examples. Let me give a few more. In talking about equal pay for women and talking about women's work conditions, we immediately have come to realize that we have to redefine the whole concept of work. Now in the United States, a lot of that focus was on the question of reproduction, and the work of reproduction. Internationally. A lot of that focuses not only on the work of reproduction, but the whole basis in which the notion of gross national product is developed in which women's work which is primarily in the informal sector, and a country like India, 99% of women work all the time, but they work in the informal sector. As vendors, they work as peace work, they work in their homes, they work in the fields, they work in work that isn't counted as work. 50% of the population of Peru works in the informal sector. So this is not just a women's issue. It is a women's issue. It is an issue primarily of the poor and the dispossessed that the very notion of work must be redefined and rethought in our societies. And women throughout the world had been doing this to the extent that the International Labor Organization The ILO now has a whole taskforce working on the question of having to redefine what is labor what is work in the world. This is a difference women have made. This is a difference that affects women and men but that is clearly a result of the consciousness of women of the devaluation of our work in the world. Another example I could give is around the question of development. And the whole issue of development, which is many ways is where the Third World Women's Movement has focused a great deal of its attention, particularly questioning the model of development that is trying to be imposed upon the rest of the world, from the industrialized countries. And asking, what is this model of development? And I think that the work being done internationally on the question of development coincides precisely, in my opinion, with work being done in the west around the question of ecofeminism. What does it mean to talk about an industrial model of development that is destroying the globe and the earth? What does it mean to say that's the model of development? What does it mean, to have to rethink the whole question of gross, which is a fundamental aspect of our global economy, which is most of us have come to recognize is, in fact, also a fundamental aspect of the destruction of the planet. And I think that we underestimate the ways in which this is going to change all of the issues that we discuss. And I think, again, there's a movement in this country, there's movement internationally asking these questions from different perspectives, we can't answer them without the input of both of those perspectives, or both is not the right word, without the input of 100 different perspectives from the ways in which this affects our lives. Another example is around the question of democracy. There are many people in the world who discussed democracy in a much livelier way than we do in the United States where we think we've got it. And to some extent, we have some aspects of it. I'm not belittling those, if you live in dictatorship, you know that those aspects are important. But nonetheless, in Latin America, for example, there is a new slogan that has emerged out of Chile, and out of the work of the Chile and feminist under dictatorship, which is called democracy and lpac, and Mikasa, which is to say, the recognition that democracy is a question of the home, as well as the country, that democracy is a way of understanding how people live their lives and have power to control and determine their destiny is not only a question of a political structure, of voting, and so forth, that's one manifestation. But there are many more from a continent where the question of democracy is very critical to women's lives. This has emerged as another way of breaking down the distinctions between the public and the private sphere. Those distinctions, which I think we in this country have also felt are critical to how we begin to look at the questions of public policy for women. The final example I want to give because it takes me into human rights, which is the area I want to talk about in more detail is around the question of peace and violence. I think we've also come to recognize, there's always been a women's peace movement. But often that women's peace movement has been belittled. And I think there's associations between women in peace that have been very little precisely because we have not valued the difference of women's perspectives on questions like peace. And I think today we're seeing a resurgence of this difference in some very important ways, which is to say that we have to redefine what is peace. And what is it that we mean when we talk about peace. A couple of examples, again, we talk in the West about the time since World War Two as a peaceful era, right?

Unknown Speaker  58:30
There has not been any more than 45 days since the end of World War Two, when there was not a war going on somewhere in the world. Those 45 days were the first 45 days after the end of World War Two. Now, since that time, there has been a war going on at least one place, if not many more throughout the world. But most of those wars are being fought directly and by proxy in the third world. So we talk about it as a peaceful time. There is another way to look at the question of peace, which is related to the issue of environment. The women of India in the Chipko movement, which many of you know is the movement of hugging the trees, talk about peace in terms of the war on the trees. And they say how do we have a peaceful world when there is a war on the trees, there is a war on the earth itself. We don't live in a peaceful world while we are at war with the nature that we live off of a third way in which I want to talk about pieces around the question of violence against women. What does it mean to talk about this as a peaceful time when violence against women is so rampant? When the statistics Timur gave you are some I could give more. In the United States, a woman is beaten every 18 seconds. Battery is the major cause of injury to women in the United States. There's all kinds of deaths from violence against women that we don't call war simply because we don't define the domination of individual women, by men as a class as a state of war. And yet, I think this is the only way to really define it. And I want to read you an example of that, from South Asia, because I think this is an issue women are redefining worldwide. And this is from one of my favorite pamphlets, called some questions on feminism and its relevance in South Asia, written by a woman, commonly seen from India and kneecap Khan from Pakistan, which is already a regional collaboration between nations that have been at war throughout most of this period. And they answer many questions about feminism, wonderful questions, and sort of the spirit of taking on the big issues like Can you briefly describe patriarchy? Because one hears it so often. In one paragraph, it's wonderful pamphlet. But the example I want to read from is the question, don't feminists destroy peaceful homes? Now, this is a pamphlet aimed at addressing a wide audience, it comes in many different languages. I have it in English, but they've also translated into some of the many languages of South Asia. And they say, Well, yes, many feminists may actually destroy peaceful may actually destroy homes, we will deal later with the peaceful part. And then they go on precisely to do what I'm talking about, which is to talk about what would it mean to have homes that were peaceful? What does it mean to think we have peaceful homes and to think that change is what is destroying them, rather than to recognize the existing violence in our homes? Now, I use all of these broad examples to introduce the questioning of human rights. Because I think it's very important to see the Human Rights concept in the framework of how women are making the difference in concepts and policies throughout the globe, and how women are transforming not only the particulars of these policies, but the whole way in which we understood what the issue was. And I think this is precisely the area in which we have now moved. And in many ways, I think it's one of the reasons they call the feminist movement in decline is because they don't want us to move in this way. And so in some ways, our very success that we're now changing, the public debate is not being claimed, as the result of the movement that we have been. And so even we don't claim and respond to the ways in which we are changing the public debate, just because we're not doing it in the way that we originally thought might be, what would happen. Now, if you look at the way in which this is happening around human rights, which I think is one of the important concepts in the world, very, very problematic also, but an important concept, because it is generally one that has some quotes moral legitimacy in our society from which we can work. Now.

Unknown Speaker  1:02:53
Usually, in approaching a concept like human rights, we start by adding women's experience in traditional human rights areas, areas of experience of women, around human rights, that have tended to be left out, for example, there are groups that have been raising very important questions about rape and sexual assault of women, political prisoners, of women, refugees, of women who are in situations of police custody, et cetera. And this has been a very important way for people to start to see how the experience of women, even in traditional human rights situations like that, or being a prisoner is often you is often specific to being a woman. We don't have systematic policies around refugees that recognize the fact that the vast majority of refugees in the world are women, and their rumen, because women do not have the mobility that men do. So that when when populations are displaced, the men have other options. It is the women and the children who primarily become the refugee population, precisely because they don't have the options that men have of mobility in the world. Now, as a result, refugee policies that don't take into account sexual violence, and rape as a fundamental problem of vulnerability of women don't address one of the most serious problems within the situation of refugees. So that's just one example of what I mean about how adding the new concepts changes what you understand to be the problems you have to address. However, this pro, this approach of adding and changing those also brings up the limitations of the concept of human rights in the first place, and particularly the limitations of what we in the West and in the United States most often think of as human rights, which if I were to characterize it is almost exclusively focused on civil liberties and political freedom from state repression. If you look at what we do on December 10, International Human Rights Day as an example, it's primarily a day in which we look at state repression, anti communism, and to some limited extent, the problems of political repression in other forums around the world, you very rarely see the more fundamental questions of human rights abuse that I want to address addressed on December 10. Now, let me talk about how these contradictions emerge. If you're simply adding women into the traditional concept and trying to stir it without changing the broth, what you find is that you have contradictions like is the is the question of rape, only a human rights abuse, if it occurs in prison? Is rape only human rights abuse if it's at the hands of the police or the state? Or you raise the question that comes up an issue that Amnesty International is still debating, in which their position at one point and this is in change, because these concepts are changing their position at one point was that they would defend a person in jail for speaking on behalf of gay rights, but not a person who was in jail for being a homosexual. So that the contradiction of our focus only on freedom of speech and civil liberties, makes it appear that it's only a human right to speak gay, but not to be gay. And therefore, the whole issue of what do we see as the basis of human rights and persecution is raised.

Unknown Speaker  1:06:16
Another example that comes from some of the work I've done around trafficking and women, and the problem of forced prostitution, sex tourism, etc. is the question of what do we call force? What do we call coercion? When we speak of women and sex tourism or military prostitution, particularly in Southeast Asia? Is it only forced if the women were drugged there in chains? Does it only become forced at the point as happened in Thailand when they're literally chained to their beds, and therefore many women died and a fire in a brothel because they were chained to their beds? Is it not force also when they are there because of poverty and militarism and imperialism, and which they have often no other options? Is it not forced? Is it not a human rights abuse when the causes lie, and the problems of food, shelter and housing, as well as in the immediate physical violence toward people, I think this raises what has been a very fundamental debate and human rights that women must also take up, which is why we in the West have been so reluctant to include the second generation of human rights or the socio economic human rights of food, clothing, housing, and shelter as fundamental human rights issues. If we look at the homelessness problem in the United States, how can we talk about being a country that respects human rights, and perpetuate the amount of homelessness that we have in this country, for example, homelessness, which increasingly affects women and children, but I think is an indication of the contradiction in our concept of human rights and the lack of a global perspective in this country. Now, this leads me to raising a lot of other questions about public policy around human rights. If I talk specifically about why the abuse of women's rights when it's based on gender or femaleness or on sex discrimination is not taken seriously. We come up against what I think are several of the roadblocks we experience and most of the issues we deal with as women. First is the obvious fact which we're still reluctant to have to cope with that women's lives and concerns are still dismissed as trivial and less important. Women still receive a harsher sentence when they kill a man than a man receives when he kills a woman in the United States. That to me is just one barometer of the fact that women's lives are not considered as valuable. But let me give some other parameters. I think we have to reassert that sex discrimination is life and death. I think we've been to gentle about not pointing out all the forms of death that come from sex discrimination. Again, some dramatic examples. Malnutrition of girl children. Malnutrition of girl children in the world is much greater than malnutrition, avoid children, because when there is not enough food, it is the girl children who are fed less it is the girl children who die more it is the girl children who are maimed physically and mentally by malnutrition at even greater percentages. Infanticide is as we all know, a primarily girl problem of death of girl children. And the United States comparable phenomena is the whole area of sex pre selection. And so far as there have been surveys taken about six pre selection, which is not a technology where that far away from it's very clear that in this country, the vast majority of people would have a male child first, and maybe a girl child second, which would not only skew the entire proportion. This is what I call being you know, sex discrimination before you're even conceived would not only skew the population but would assess abolition, the relationship of dominance and subordinates in the family as a traditional form, ie older daughter, your older son, younger daughter, or whatever. So that these are not phenomena just of poverty. These are phenomena of sex discrimination, and how it affects people's lives in all areas of the world. Certainly, infant mortality is also a problem in the United States. And I want to add to what Tim has said about national health care, I think that we should be reminded that the United States has the most backward national health care policies of the developed quote unquote, or industrialized world except for South Africa.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:37
So that we have to look at what do these mean in terms of the life and death of women, because where there is malnutrition, where there is poverty, it is always the women who suffer the most the girls, the females, the denial of the right to control of our bodies, the issue of reproductive rights has to be redefined. Again as it is, it is an issue of the death of women. If anybody has any doubt about that in the United States, because you can't remember, before abortion was legal and somewhat safe, if not yet, as free as it should be. You can look simply at Latin America, Latin America is the continent where abortion is the most difficult and the most unsafe and complications from desperate, illegal, unsafe abortion is the leading cause of death for women between the ages of 15 and 39. In Latin America. So if you want to debate with somebody what abortion means in this country, or what Roe vs. Wade means you can simply start by saying that it means first and foremost the death of women. This is what it means particularly where women do not have the money and economic resources to buy their way out of it. Finally, the area of violence against women, which is the one that I find very useful for challenging human rights concepts. We've already talked about some of the statistics, both in this country and around the world. But I think if we began to see violence against women, as a situation that is profoundly political, we would begin to make some of the changes we need to make around this in terms of human rights. What do I mean by profoundly political, I think that in a funny way, in the United States, we've made violence against women public, we've succeeded in getting it on the talk shows, we've succeeded in getting it out there and being seen, and still have not quite succeeded. And what I think is the more fundamental task, which is making it seen as political, and by political I mean, not just, you know, voting, which are legislation, which, unfortunately, is how we too often think of politics in the United States. But I mean, the fundamental understanding that politics is about the systematic exercise of power and domination by one group over another, that is sanctioned, whether encouraged or simply ignored by the state. And that by political I also mean that we need to understand violence against women, as a socially and politically constructed phenomena, that is subject to change. And I want to repeat that, because I think even we often give in to the notion that violence against women is inevitable. And often we are very involved in social welfare responses that don't reach to the more basic question of why do we accept this phenomena as inevitable, and we accept this phenomenon as inevitable, I believe because the depth at which the subordination of women, which is like all forms of subordination, backed up in the end by violence. And this is true if you want to talk about racial subordination. If you want to talk about class subordination, if you want to talk about national subordination, they are all backed up finally, by violence, that is the that is the point at which these subordination are reinforced throughout our culture throughout the world. So too, with violence against women, it is not an individual phenomena of one man and one woman. It is a systematic means of control over the lives and bodies of women through the use of individual violence. And I think if we begin to re conceive of violence against women as a political phenomena in this way, we start to realize that it can also be deconstructed to use a favorite academic term. And it can be deconstructed and much more than just an academic fashion. It can be deconstructed in the way that the experimental program and Duluth, Minnesota has shown, for example, that if we believed that battery was not inevitable and natural, we could begin to develop very systematic social policies. If we thought it was more important to end violence, not only against women, but violence against all oppressed peoples. We could turn the military budget around and instead of spending our billions of dollars on perpetuating violence, we could spend them on trying Getting us all to live in a world without violence. And I'm sure with that amount of money, we feminists could come up with some extraordinarily constructive and creative approaches to how to do this.

Unknown Speaker  1:15:11
So that it is ultimately political violence against women is a political decision of this culture, and at this point, all the countries of the world to greater and lesser degrees, that this is not a priority. And this is not a priority, because women's lives are not a priority. But also I submit, because there is very little political will to end the dynamic of violence. And the dynamic of violence against women is the same dynamic of violence that upholds racism, militarism, imperialism, and all the forms of oppression that people experienced by which we continue to believe that differences between people are not only not good, but are the basis, the legitimate basis for the domination of one group by another. And that if we wanted to have a truly non violent, and by the way, we're all looking for a better term than nonviolent because it's, it sounds too passive in our language, there are better terms and other languages, that if we want to really create a world in which we have human rights at a fundamental level, we have to make a political, economic and social commitment to the priority of the turning around of this kind of violence. And I think that that's what human rights could begin to do. Now, I submit that the question of seeing this as political is very connected to the problem of reproductive rights as well, to really reinterpreting and understanding what are these questions of control over the physical territory of women's bodies, and the physical territory of our bodies isn't is, in fact, at the sort of baseline of the question of domination. And I think it also probably would, would come in very well, with other new approaches to how we can structure society that takes account of the physical control of women's bodies, which is tied to the physical differences of women's bodies, which we were discussing earlier, all of which I think is a part of, I see the profound challenge to feminism very much in the direction that Judas indicated, of dealing with differences and breaking the dynamic, which says differences have to mean any equality, breaking the dynamic that says differences, whether innate or socialized? I don't think that debate ought to be, are they innate or socialized? The debate ought to be why are they the basis of inequality? Why does it matter? If they're innate or socialized? Why should we construct a world that assumes difference leads to inequality and domination. And I think this is the area in which we have probably been most brainwashed by patriarchy, is in the assumption that difference means domination that one group will have to win out. And one of the areas where we need to do our most fundamental shifting of how we ourselves even still think about these questions. Now, globally, there are many different strategies. And I want to just take a couple of minutes to describe them, and then move on for expanding human rights policies. I've sort of mentioned in passing some of them, but let me just list them. The first strategy is really exemplified by the United Nations Convention Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. And this convention, which I think we in this country, have ignored far too much, because it is, in fact, the International equivalent to the era. And it is the International vehicle by which we could embarrass the United States for its inability to ratify this convention, precisely because we don't have an era in this country, it becomes could become a way of bringing that national issue into an international framework, and talking about what does it mean for our government to be one of the backward governments of the world that has refused to recognize legal discrimination against women, as a government responsibility and issue? Now, I also want to say that I think it's very interesting in that regard, in relation to this basis of seeing discrimination against women as a fundamental question, that there are no state policies in the United States or in the rest of the world, that are based on relating to another country that are in any way determined by the basis of how that country or this country deals with women. And if we were serious about human rights and women and human rights, we would begin to say that our state policy should also be based on the question of women in other countries as well as in this country. Now, the hypocrisy of that, given the treatment of women in the United States would then become clear. I do not at all believe that women are treated. I'm always asked, were women treated the worst? Were women treated the best? I think it's not the right question. There are different forms in which women's discrimination takes internationally, but in no country, can we say that the problem has been solved.

Unknown Speaker  1:19:49
Now another that's one approach. That's the sort of UN convention approach. Another approach is the one I mentioned about bringing the specifics of women into traditional areas of human rights, such as But women political prisoners. Now, I think that's very important for two reasons. One, because there are very real problems. And two, because it becomes a very useful way to indicate why the Human Rights concept must be expanded to indicate the limitations of that concept. And to bring those contradictions out. A third area, which I've touched on in passing is those women who are joining with the forces that are demanding a recognition of socio economic rights as fundamental human rights, and the recognition that many of the violations of women's rights are clearly connected to women's economic dependency and poverty, clearly connected to the lack of recognition of food, housing and shelter as fundamental human rights. And certainly, both economic violence and physical violence against women occurs very much in relation to women's poverty and women's economic dependency, even when the dependency is not poverty. So that I think we must join with those forces primarily from third world countries that have demanded for some time that this be seen as a fundamental human rights question. The fourth area, which is, in some ways, the most difficult because it is the most innovative of trying to stretch, the concept of human rights is those groups which are beginning to say, we must break down and further expand the concept of human rights by bringing together what has been called private, and the public and the political and new arrangements. One of the interesting areas that this occurred, and that was not done specifically as a feminist agenda, but it's very important is the work again, in South America, particularly of the mothers of the Plaza de mio in Argentina and the women in Chile, in the ways in which they demanded the rights of the disappeared and the families of the disappeared as a fundamental human rights question. Now, the progress they made is such that we now think of the disappeared as a human rights question. But 10 years ago, there was no such concept of the human rights have disappeared, people. So that is an indication of how the persistence of a movement primarily led by women to demand the recognition of this as human rights abuse has expanded and changed the way human rights was defined and seen to the point that we now just think, well, wasn't it always that way, which is, of course, what happens when you make change, instead of getting credit. Everybody says two years later wasn't always that way. And I don't mind not getting credit, except when we don't get credit as a movement, and we therefore think we haven't done anything, then we're accepting their propaganda and losing our power. There are other examples of this creation, perhaps the one I'll mention is the women in Dutch in the Netherlands, in Dutch refugee Association, and some of the women in the European Parliament have been seeking to demand the rights of asylum and refugee status for those who are persecuted on the basis of sex or sexual inclinations, sexual preference, as well as race, religion and traditional concepts of politics. Now, this has enormous consequences for women's lives if we began to accept that refugee status could be escaping persecution for your sex or your sexual orientation and breaks down again, the lines we have put up around what is human rights? In closing, because I know we have many sessions to go to, I just want to say that I'm indicating areas because I think the human rights question is starting to be one that women are taking on. In a sense, we took on some of the others first, but I now see various groups around the world globally seeking to make a difference in how we view and view human rights by demanding that the realities of women's lives and women's experiences be brought into that dialogue. And as in all the areas where where we are making a difference. When we demand that we be brought into the dialogue, we find that in order to have women's lives taken seriously by these concepts, we also have to transform the concepts. And I think that's really the most hopeful thing to me about a global feminist movement, which has the possibility of really transforming the concepts and therefore the conditions under which women and men live in this world and I think we are making a difference. Let's make it more let's make it more global Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  1:24:37
This is been one of the best mornings of my life. I want to we're running about a half hour late which is just fine. We've left some room in the program for that. But please adjust your programs about a half hour or so everything is is a half hour late. I want to thank Joy James The UN Center and the University of Massachusetts who at 130 Yesterday afternoon, agreed to replace Althea Simmons of the Washington NAACP, who is ill in the program on national and international perspectives on racism. And I most of all want to thank Ruth farmer, the Associate Director of the Center for Anita Dortch, the assistant, Kim Cooperman, who's the Collection Manager and Tracy Strasser, who's the Assistant Collection Manager for the work that they've done. There are also countless other students who will have to remain nameless, but you will see them through the day and you might thank them because they've been around and we've had a very hard time this this this year, but please be patient with us. And thank you all for coming and have a good morning. Bye bye