These are all great suggestions. People may be interesting that I have
recently edited an issue of the journal Philosophical Topics on the topic of
global gender justice. It should be available in Jan. Below I will paste the
TOC with abstracts:
Introduction to the issue
*The Philosophical Challenges of Global Gender Justice*
By Alison M. Jaggar
Philosophy and Women and Gender Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder
* *
*Women and the Gendered Politics of Food*
By Vandana Shiva
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, New
Delhi, India
*Abstract*
From seed to table, the food chain is gendered.
When seeds and food are in women’s hands, seeds reproduce and multiply
freely, food is shared freely and respected. However, women’s seed and food
economy has been discounted as “productive work”. Women’s seed and food
knowledge has been discounted as knowledge.
Globalization has led to the transfer of seed and food from women’s hands to
corporate hands. Seed is now patented and genetically engineered. It is
treated as the creation and “property” of corporations like Monsanto.
Renewable seed becomes non-renewable. Sharing and saving seed becomes a
crime. Diversity, nourished by centuries of women’s breeding, disappears,
and with it the culture and natural evolution that is embodied in the
diversity is lost forever.
Food too is transformed in corporate hands. It is no longer our nourishment
it becomes a commodity. And as a commodity it can be manipulated and
monopolized of food grain sold to factory forms makes more money, it becomes
cattle feed. If food grain converted to biofuel to run automobiles is more
profitable, it become ethanol and biodiesel.
The consequence is the disappearance of food for billions. The contemporary
food riots due to rising prices signal a new period of food scarcity.
*Transnational Cycles of Gendered Vulnerability: A prologue to a theory of
global gender injustice*
By Alison M. Jaggar
Philosophy and Women and Gender Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder
*Abstract*
Across the world, the lives of men and women who are otherwise similarly
situated tend to differ from each other systematically. Although gender
disparities vary widely within and among regions, women everywhere are
disproportionately vulnerable to poverty, abuse and political
marginalization. This article proposes that global gender disparities are
caused by a network of norms, practices, policies, and institutions that
include transnational as well as national elements. These interlaced and
interacting factors frequently modify and sometimes even reduce gendered
vulnerabilities but their overall effect is to maintain and often intensify
them. Women’s vulnerabilities in different areas of life mutually reinforce
each other and I follow other authors in referring to such causal feedback
loops as cycles of gendered vulnerability. I argue that these cycles now
operate on a transnational as well as national scale and I illustrate this
by discussing the examples of domestic work and sex work. If global
institutional arrangements do indeed contribute to maintaining or
intensifying distinctively gendered vulnerabilities, these arrangements
deserve critical scrutiny from philosophers concerned with global justice.
*Transnational Rights and Wrongs: Moral Geographies of Gender and Migration*
* *
By Rachel Silvey
Associate Professor of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto,
Canada.
*Abstract*
This article examines the challenges that transnational women’s migration
poses to liberal, state-centered conceptions of rights. It reviews global
perspectives on gender justice that are being developed by Western feminist
philosophers and transnational migrant rights activists, and argues that
these frameworks are contributing to imagining the moral geographies
necessary for the protection of women migrants’ human rights and welfare.
Specifically, based on discussion of the issues and strategies that
Indonesian migrant workers’ organizations employ in relation to
international human rights discourse, the article argues that adequate
conceptualizations of justice must focus on the ways in which transnational
gendered inequalities are produced—and indeed must be addressed— across
‘local’, ‘national’, and ‘global’ spaces and scales. These arguments, now
commonplace in the discipline of geography, are offered as an elaboration of
the spatial elements of feminist philosophical conceptions of global
justice.
*The Moral Harm of Migrant Carework: Realizing a Global Right to Care ***
By Eva Feder Kittay
Professor of Philosophy, State University of New York at Stonybrook, USA.
*Abstract*
Arlie Hochschild glosses the practice of women migrants in poor nations who
leave their families behind for extended periods of time to do carework in
other wealthier countries as a “global heart transplant” from poor to
wealthy nations. Thus she signals the idea of an injustice between nations
and a moral harm for the individuals in the practice. Yet the nature of the
harm needs a clear articulation. When we posit a sufficiently nuanced “right
to care,” we locate the harm to central relationships of the migrant women.
The “right to (give and receive) care” we develop uses a concept of *a
relational self* drawn from an ethics of care. The harm is the harm of
broken relationships, which in turn have a serious impact on a person’s
sense of equal dignity and self-respect, particularly since the sacrifice of
central relationships of the migrant woman allows others (mostly women) to
maintain these same relationships.
The paper ends with a brief discussion of some of solutions we need to
consider.
*Global Inequalities in Women's Health: Who is responsible for doing what?*
By Ruth Macklin
Professor of Bioethics, Department of Epidemiology and Population
Medicine, Albert
Einstein College of Medicine, USA
*Abstract*
Empirical evidence confirms the existence of health inequalities between
women and men in developing countries, with women experiencing poorer health
status than men, as well as less access to vital health services. These
disparities have different sources and take different forms, some of which
result from cultural factors, others from discriminatory laws and practices,
and still others from the biological fact that only women undergo pregnancy
and childbirth, a major cause of maternal mortality. The injustice lies in
the fact that many of these disparities result from socially controllable
factors, while others could be remedied, especially in cases of violations
of human rights. Past and current policies and practices of the United
States government can be faulted for both actions and omissions that have
contributed to such inequalities. Different conceptions of global justice
have implications for who owes what to whom regarding these disparities.
*Reforming our Taxation Arrangements to Promote Global Gender Justice*
By Gillian Brock
Professor of Philosophy, University of Auckland, New Zealand
*Abstract*
In this article I examine how reforming our international tax regime could
be an important vehicle for realizing key aspects of global gender justice.
Ensuring all, including and especially multinationals, pay their fair share
of taxes is crucial to ensuring that all countries, especially developing
countries, are able to fund education, job training, infrastructural
development, programs which promote gender-equity, and so forth, thereby
enabling all countries to help themselves better. I discuss various
positive proposals for levying global taxes. I review why overtly
gender-neutral taxes can sometimes have unintended gendered consequences,
disproportionately burdening or benefiting individuals, according to their
gender. Any endorsement of global taxes must take this concern into
account. Fortunately there is good fit between the rationale for the Tobin
tax and the way in which it can be harnessed to promote gender-equity, so of
the taxes discussed here, it emerges as one of the most promising. However,
as I also argue, eliminating tax havens and blocking avenues that currently
facilitate tax escape must also be part of the agenda to promote
gender-equity, given the vast amounts of revenue that currently escape
taxation. In a context of globalization, fiscal policies cannot achieve
equity (including gender-equity) at national levels alone. Many concerns,
such as clamping down on tax evasion and harmonizing corporate tax rates can
only effectively be tackled at a global level. As I also discuss, feasible
arrangements for tackling such issues are available, as are mechanisms for
collecting and disbursing funds in ways that promote accountability and
compliance. Failing to reform our tax arrangements means that the basic
institutional structure of the global economy is unjust and also involves
gender injustice. Gender consciousness is indispensable for developing an
adequate account of taxation justice and therefore a global institutional
structure that is gender just.
*Discourses of Sexual Violence in a Global Framework*
By Linda Alcoff
Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College, City University of New York, USA
In this paper I make a preliminary analysis of western (or global north)
discourses on sexual violence, focusing on the important concepts of
"consent" and "victim." The concept of "consent" is widely used to determine
whether sexual violence has occurred, and is the focal point of debates over
the legitimacy of statutory offences and over the way we characterize sex
work done under conditions involving economic desperation. The concept of
"victim" is shunned by many feminists and non-feminists alike for its
apparent eclipse of agency.
Putting these concepts into a global framework sheds light on their
limitations. Bringing in the debate over the concept "Honor crime" reveals
contrasting assumptions about the nature of sexual violence. The comparative
analysis used in this paper shows how we can avoid universalizing from
specific frameworks, but also how we can learn from the discourses elsewhere
toward developing an account of commonalities across contexts.
Ultimately I argue that in applications to sexual violence, "consent" has
intrinsic limitations, "victim" has context-based dangers, and "honor crime"
makes both correct as well as incorrect assumptions.
*The Problem with Polygamy***
By Thom Brooks
Reader in Political and Legal Philosophy, Department of Geography, Politics
and Sociology, University of Newcastle, UK,
*Abstract*
Polygamy is a hotly contested practice and open to widespread
misunderstandings. This practice is defined as a relationship between either
one husband and multiple wives or one wife and multiple husbands. Today,
‘polygamy’ almost exclusively takes the form of one husband with multiple
wives. In this article, my focus will centre on limited defences of polygamy
offered recently by Chesire Calhoun and Martha Nussbaum. I will argue that
these defences are unconvincing. The problem with polygamy is primarily that
it is a structurally inegalitarian practice in both theory and fact.
Polygamy should be opposed for this reason.
*Feminist Paradigms of Solidarity and Justice*
By Ann Ferguson
Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Women and Gender Studies, University of
Massachusetts at Amherst, USA>
*Abstract*
My paper develops a new feminist paradigm for global justice that includes
several components. I deploy a non-ideal ethics approach based on an
argument about what principle of justice is possible to act on, given a
historical and intersectional feminist analysis of what kind of feminist
coalitions are possible in the present period. I claim that the time is ripe
for a new progressive feminist Solidarity paradigm of justice that
supersedes the classical liberal debates between Libertarian Freedom
paradigm and the Social Democrat Equality paradigm of Justice. I outline the
anti-globalization economic and political networks coming into existence, as
evidenced by networks of worker-owned cooperatives, labor unions, fair trade
commitments, squatter and other land reform movements. Such movements are
creating the material conditions in which North-South women's coalition
movements, based not on essentialist but on transformational identities, can
unite around various issues of global gender justice, including reproductive
rights, environmental justice, and the feminization of poverty.
Feminist Theory, Global Gender Justice, and the Evaluation of Grant-Making
By Brooke Ackerly
Associate Professor of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, USA.
*Abstract*
In activist circles feminist political thought is often viewed as abstract
because it does not help activists make the kinds of arguments that are
generally effective with donors and policy makers. The feminist political
philosopher’s focus on how we know and what counts as knowledge is a large
step away from the terrain in which activists make their arguments to
donors. Yet, philosophical reflection on the relations between power and
knowledge can make a significant contribution to women’s human rights work
in the area of evaluation. Feminist political philosophy can offer
guidelines for how to evaluate the work of women’s human rights
organizations and their funders in light of the social, political, and
economic conditions that render their work necessary and difficult. This
article offers 1) an account of the difficulty in showing the impact of
social change activism using conventional modes of measurement, particularly
those that focus on first order effects, 2) feminist theoretical insights
into the interrelatedness of global gender injustices that may help us
develop better benchmarks of evaluation for women’s human rights
programming, and 3) a sketch of how to approach the evaluation of
organizations and donors who seek to support global gender justice.
I have also written a number of articles in which people might be
interested:
“Globalizing Feminist Ethics,” *Hypatia*, 13:2 (Spring, 1998) pp. 7-31.
__________ reprinted in Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding, eds., *Decentering
the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist
World,* Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000.
__________ reprinted in Cheshire Calhoun, ed., *Setting the Moral Compass:
Essays by Women Philosophers¸* Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp.
233-255.
“Is Globalization Good for Women?” *Comparative Literature *53:4 (2001) pp.
298-314.
__________ reprinted in David Leiwei Li, ed. *Globalization and the
Humanities, *Hong Kong University Press, 2004, pp. 37-57.
“A Feminist Critique of the Alleged Southern Debt,” in Birgit Christensen,
Angelica Baum, Sidonia Blaettler, Anna Kusser, Irene Maria Marti, Briggitte
Weisshaupt, eds., *Wissen/Macht/Geschlecht: Philosophie und die Zukunft der
“condition feminine,” *Zuerich, SWITZERLAND: Chronos, 2002, pp. 19-40.
__________ reprinted in *Hypatia*, 17:4 (Fall, 2002) 119-142.
__________ reprinted (in Spanish translation) in *Mora* 8, (2002),
Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA: Universidad de Buenos Aires.
“Vulnerable Women and Neo-liberal Globalization: Debt Burdens Undermine
Women’s Health in the Global South,” *Theoretical Medicine and
Bioethics,*23:6 (2002) 425-440.
__________ reprinted in Robin N. Fiore and Hilde Nelson, eds.,
*Recognition,
Responsibility and Rights: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory,* Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.
__________ reprinted in German in Mechthild Nagel and Nina Zimnik,
eds., *Feministische Aufbreuche in die Postkoloniale,* Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 2003.
“Challenging Women’s Global Inequalities: Some Priorities for Western
Philosophers,” *Philosophical Topics,* 30:2 (fall, 2002) pp. 229-253.
__________ “Gegen die weltweite Benachteiligung von Frauen: Einige
Prioritaeten fuer die westliche Philosophie,” German translation in *Deutsche
Zeitschrift fuer Philosophie* 51:4 (2003) 485-609.
* *
“Arenas of Citizenship: Civil Society, State and the Global Order,”
*International
Feminist Journal of Politics,* 7:1, March, 2005, 1-24*.*
_________ reprinted in Marilyn Friedman, ed. *Women and
Citizenship,* Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 150-188.
“Western Feminism and Global Responsibility,” *Feminist Interventions in
Ethics and Politics, *edited by Barbara S. Andrew, Jean Keller, and Lisa H.
Schwartzman, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, 185-200.
“’Saving Amina:’ Global Justice for Women and Intercultural Dialogue,” *Ethics
and International Affairs* 19:3*, *fall 2005, 85-105.
__________ reprinted in *Real World Justice,* edited by Andreas
Follesdal and Thomas Pogge, Springer Verlag, 2005, 36-62.
__________ reprinted in Portugese translation in *Saberes e
fazeres de genero: entre o loal e o global*, eds Luzinete Simeos Minella and
Susana Borneo Funck, Florianopolis, BRAZIL: University Press of Santa
Catarina.
__________ reprinted in *Global Ethics: Seminal Essays, *edited by
Thomas Pogge and Keith Horton, St. Paul, MN: Paragon, 2008.
Reasoning About Well-Being: Nussbaum’s Methods of Justifying the
Capabilities,” *The Journal of Political Philosophy,* 14:4 2006, 301-322*.*
Finally, my contribution to the co-authored OUP book, ABORTION: THREE
PERSPECTIVES, presents abortion rights as human rights (to life, liberty,
and bodily integrity) and as a matter of global gender justice (rather than
as a matter of personal ethics)
I hope some of these are helpful. It is exciting to see the wealth of
material that has been produced over the past ten years.
Best,
Alison.
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Lynda Lange <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Carol Gould's new book *Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights* is a
> terrific project that includes integrating feminist perspectives, as well as
> consideration of matters of care, in a general theory of democracy and
> rights. Her own theory of rights especially reflects this.
>
>
> Lynda Lange
> University of Toronto at Scarborough
> Department of Humanities (Philosophy)
> 1265 Military Trail
> Toronto, ON
> Canada M1C 1A4
>
>
>
> On 10-Dec-09, at 10:10 AM, Charlotte Witt wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
> I am working on a feminist theory course that focuses on global feminism.
> This is a new approach for me (i.e. the focus on global feminism in a
> theory course) and I wonder if any of you have recommendations for readings
> or might be willing to share syllabi etc.
> Thanks in advance,
> Charlotte
>
>
>
--
Alison M. Jaggar
College Professor of Distinction
University of Colorado at Boulder
Philosophy and Women and Gender Studies
Boulder, CO 80309-0232
303-492-8997 (direct line)
303-492-6132 (dept. office)
303-492-8386 (fax)
--
Alison M. Jaggar
College Professor of Distinction
University of Colorado at Boulder
Philosophy and Women and Gender Studies
Boulder, CO 80309-0232
303-492-8997 (direct line)
303-492-6132 (dept. office)
303-492-8386 (fax)
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