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

June 01 - 04, 2017

This roundtable will address the central question, “How are women shaping the post recession global economic landscape through their labor, activism, and multiple discourses about work?” Facilitated by an on-site moderator and three on-site participants, the panel will utilizing real-time video conferencing technology (e.g. GoToMeeting, Google Hangout) to create a “virtual” roundtable that brings together an interdisciplinary group of international scholars for discussion. This virtual roundtable will address three broad themes: exploitation versus opportunity for women within the context of racist and patriarchal structures of global capitalism and the international division of labor; women’s agency within the context of changing local and regional economic options; and women’s negotiations and re-negotiations of unpaid social reproductive labor. Discussants will engage in a gendered examination of work in the global economy, analyze the effects of the 2008 global economic downturn on women’s labor force participation and workplace activism, and analyze the impacts of geopolitical economic transformations on the gendering of work in country-specific and regional contexts.

Off-Site Discussants and Countries of Focus:
Ursula Barry (City University, Dublin), European Union
Meena Gopal (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai), India
Georgina Rojas-García (Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, Mexico City), Mexico 
Esra Sarioğlu (Yeditepe University, Istanbul),Turkey
Kelly Pike, (York University, Toronto), Kenya
Xiaodan Zhang (City University of New York), China