2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

This session will bring together scholars and activists who recently contributed to Ellen Chesler and Terry McGovern, eds., Women and Girls Rising: Progress and resistance around the world (Routledge Press; London and New York, 2015).  The volume anthologizes papers and presentations prepared for a conference organized by Ellen Chesler at the Ford Foundation in 2014 to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the historic UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. The book examines critical developments in the space the UN, working in partnership with diverse women’s movements, created for the formulation and achievement of global gender norms and obligations. It also looks bottom up at the realization of rights in national and local contexts.  Our session will bring together two historians and up to four activists from around the world (depending on schedules) who focused on sexual and reproductive health and rights, and specifically on voluntary access to safe and accessible family planning services for women and adolescents, as  cornerstones to the realization of women’s rights as fundamental human rights, and as critical factors in efforts to eradicate poverty and achieve inclusive, sustainable development.  The conversation will address the building of a global feminist consensus beginning in the 1970s, culminating in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and the Beijing Conference the following year, and extending to the present. It will address the resolution of important geographic and ideological tensions to overcome claims of cultural pluralism and advance the principle of universal rights.