Has Feminism Gone Astray?: The Struggle for Substantive Equality in a Neoliberal Age
David Morrison Lecture in International Development
Event Details
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Tuesday, October 4, 2016
7:30 PM - 9:00 PM
City: Peterborough
Market Hall
Cost: Free
In recent years, critical feminist thinkers have been raising serious concerns about the "dangerous liaisons" between feminism and neoliberalism. These critiques provide important insights into feminism's recent currents, and bed fellows, as it has gone from being a critical voice on the margins, to a visible element in mainstream socioeconomic development. This institutionalization of feminist ideas across a wide range of organizations (whether state, bilateral or multilateral) has contributed to its fragmentation and distortion, as it has sought to find a better "fit" with disparate organizational goals and cultures into which it has been assimilated. In the process there has been a filtering out of certain critical elements - most evident in the discourses and practices around "women's economic empowerment". After elaborating in concrete terms how this neoliberalization has happened, the presentation will dwell on a number of concurrent developments that point to vibrant spaces of resistance and politics, including the ways in which neoliberalism itself has had to change the response to feminism, and more importantly, the role that human rights thinking has played in reviving an interest in structural inequalities,including those of gender, as a counter-vailing force against "roll-out" neoliberalism.
The 2016 David Morrison Lecture in International Development welcomes Shahra Razavi, chief of Research and Data, UN Women, New York.
Dr. Shahra Razavi joined UN Women in 2013, after twenty years as research coordinator at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Since joining UN Women she coordinated the preparation and publication of UN Women's highly-praised flagship report, Progress of the World's Women 2015 – 2016: Transforming Economies, Realizing Rights.
Dr Razavi specializes in the gender dimensions of social development, with a particular focus on livelihoods and social policies. As a result, she has led major international collaborative research projects on gender, poverty and well-being; agrarian change, gender and land rights; globalization, export-oriented female employment and social policy; gender justice and development; and the political economy of unpaid care work. These projects have resulted in a significant number of important reports, books, and peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr Razavi is a frequent speaker at international conferences and symposia.