New Feminist Solutions

Marking the newest direction in BCRW's more than thirty-five-year-old tradition of print publication, New Feminist Solutions is a series of reports geared toward informing and inspiring activists, policy-makers and others. Each report was written in collaboration with organizations and individuals who, like BCRW, have made a concerted effort to link feminist struggles to those of racial, economic, social and global justice. The reports are based on conversations and ideas emerging from conferences held at Barnard College, and are published in conjunction with websites featuring additional information from these events. Copies of the reports are free. They can be downloaded by clicking on the links below. Print copies can be requested by emailing bcrw@barnard.edu.

Towards a Vision of Sexual and Economic Justice

Sexual oppression and economic oppression are inextricably linked, but the movements and theoretical frameworks that address each of these issues so often treat them as discrete. Contemporary movements for global economic justice tend to shy away from sexuality issues, while campaigns for sexual rights rarely foreground economic concerns. In some spheres, however, the gap is beginning to close. BCRW highlights these potential intersections with its new project entitled Towards a Vision of Sexual and Economic Justice. The project has several components, the first of which was a public lecture featuring renowned feminist scholar and activist Josephine Ho and award-winning, world renowned journalist, syndicated columnist and internationally best-selling author Naomi Klein. A one-day colloquium followed the public lecture and brought together these two leaders alongside a distinguished group of scholars and activists working on the mutual configuration of sexual and economic justice. The project will conclude with a series of publications, including the fourth report in our New Feminists Solutions series, summarizing the outcome of these discussions and disseminating them to academic and activist circles in order to further develop the debates around sexual and economic justice.

Visit the website / Report will be available Fall 2008

The Work-Family Dilemma:
A Better Balance
Policy Solutions for All New Yorkers

Recognizing the need for a forum to discuss work-family issues that focused on issues across the economic spectrum, A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center and The Barnard Center for Research on Women, along with the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California at Hastings, and the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development, planned a summit bringing together leaders and experts (those who have studied these issues and those who advocate for better policies) and the actual stakeholders (labor, business and elected officials in New York City). Fifty participants attended a day-long roundtable discussion with a keynote by Betsy Gotbaum, Public Advocate for New York City. From this summit emerged a consensus around the need for a comprehensive work-family policy advocacy agenda for New York City. The report is based on discussions from the summit.

Visit the website / Get the report (PDF)

Women, Work, and the Academy:
Strategies for Responding to 'Post-Civil Rights Era' Gender Discrimination

This report is based on the Virginia C. Gildersleeve Conference at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, with keynote speakers Nancy Hopkins, Claude Steele, and Virginia Valian. The participants in this conference have all made significant contributions to our understanding of the situation women currently face in academia, highlighting the effects of a diffuse set of barriers to women's participation: small-scale, often unintended differences in recognition, support and response that can generate large-scale differences in outcomes for women. This conference was organized so as to take stock of the extant research and interventions and to chart a course forward.

Visit the website / Get the report (PDF)

Responding to Violence, Rethinking Security:
Policy Alternatives for Building Human Security

In the fall of 2002, the Center hosted Responding to Violence, a conference that brought together over twenty activists and academics whose work focused on developing alternatives to violence. In addition to a public lecture by Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams and a workshop with experts on responding to violence around the world, the conference generated a number of exciting projects, including the book Interventions co-edited by Elizabeth A. Castelli and Janet R. Jakobsen, Issue 2.2 of The Scholar & Feminist Online and the first report of the New Feminist Solutions series.

Visit the website / Get the report (PDF)