CFP: Revolution and Protest: Women and Gender January 8, 2008

From: victoria baranetsky <v.baranetsky@gmail.com>

Dear Professors, I am contacting you about perhaps contributing to the encyclopedia currently being published by Blackwell. The encyclopedia entitled, the International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to Present, is expected to be out by fall 2008 as an eight -volume, 5000-page work. It covers the protests and revolutions in countries throughout the world. That said, as the Associate Editor for the Women and Gender Section. I was wondering if you would like to contribute to this work and perhaps suggest some of the entries. We are seeking entries on the actual protests, movements, as well as biographies of protest leaders and organizational profiles. If you are interested please respond back to me at your soonest convenience. In addition, perhaps you could provide us with names and contact information for writers that may be interested in writing on the topic for any geographical region.We expect that the encyclopedia will be the first of its kind writtenby scholars and writers from the world over. The editorial advisoryboard views protest and revolution as a means to human freedom and are sympathetic to movements of all kinds to better humankind. This encyclopedia endeavors to cover revolutions from the 16th Century to the present. As noted, Blackwell Publishing is asking us to submit articles on important protests, revolutions, uprisings, and insurrections, biographies of important historical figures, and organizational profiles. As a leading expert, I am reaching out to you. At the same time, the essays (which are peer-review and

refereed) should not be a great burden and do not involve much time in completing.

If you agree, are you able to complete the essay in the coming months?

I am attaching the Blackwell Publishing style guide for the project.

Let me know if you have any questions. Since time is of essence, I look forward to hearing from you in the coming day or two. I am attaching the Blackwell Styleguide for this Project.

With best regards,

Victoria Baranetsky

Associate Editor

International Encycloepdia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to Present

Brooklyn College Graduate Center25 Broadway – 7th FloorNew York 10004 NY (US)Tel. 212-822-1715Fax.212-966-4038ARTICLES NEED TO BE WRITTENDoris StevensEleanor Marx

Clara Zetkin

Alexandra Kollontai

the Bandit Queen in India Phoolan Devi

Blanche, Lady Arundel,

Eva Perón and the Peronista Feminist Party Fry, Elizabeth Huda Shaarawi Ida B. Wells International Congress of Women at the Hague International Women’s Day.

Kimura Komako

Lowell, Massachusetts Strike

Marie Popelin helps found the Belgian League of Women’s Rights.

McAliskey, Bernadette, Devlin

Mmanthatisi

Mother Jones

Mothers of Plaza de Mayo

The Mother’s Committee of El Salvador

North American Indian Women’s Association NOW Olympia de Gouges Pankhurst, Emmeline Parks, Rosa Postcolonial feminism and third-world feminism Riotgrrl Feminism Sanger, Margaret Sofya Alekseyevna the Sudanese Women’s League Spanish Women’s Movement Second Wave Feminism Third Wave Feminism Wollstonecraft, Mary Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) Women’s Suffrage and Protest ( ie Kate Sheppard, New Zealand …Alice Stone Blackwell … National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Alice Paul) Women and Protest in Afghanistan Women and Protest in North Korea Women and Protest in Japan Hiratsuka Raicho, Oku Mumeo, and Ichikawa Fusae Women Strike for Peace World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London and Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) and Mary Morton Kimball Kehew, Mary Kenney O’Sullivan, and Jane Addams Mohtaram Eskandari and the Union of Patriotic Women, Iran Solidarity Independent Self-governing Trade Union strike-Poland 1980 Sri Lanka Tamil Women’s Union Northern Ireland Peace Movement (later Community of Peace People):

Betty Williams and Mairéad Corrigan-Maguire

Diversity = Productivity

Today’s NY Times has an article on research that strongly supports the benefits of diversity to organizations.  At the same time, Gloria Steinem has an op-ed piece on a strong force against diversity.  After giving some  snippets from these two articles, we’ll look at a question about philosophy as an academic field.

The forces against diversity?  Racism and sexism are two strong ones.  Steinem’s piece today argues that the commentators’ reactions to the current US campaigns for the Democratic nomination show that sexism is the stronger. A black man may win, but women are never frontrunners:

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.

(Compare the last clause with Jender’s post immediately below this one.  Also, Jender  in the comments on this post points us to this excellent  discussion of Steinem’s claim about racism.)

UPDATE:  See Jender’s more recent post on the blatant racism in US politics.  After thinking about the Steinem remarks, it now seems to me that the enterprise of comparing quantities of evil, particularly when one is the not the target of one of them, may make it much harder to discern the evil.  Whether or not that’s true, it seems right to be concerned that Steinem’s piece in fact could facilitate the competition among the oppressed that she  wants to say would be wrong and destructive.

Why is diversity good? Scot E. Page has developed mathematical models of its effects, showing the benefits. His doing so may help people grasp his claims, but to readers of this blog it should seem just common sense:

Because diverse groups of people bring to organizations more and different ways of seeing a problem and, thus, faster/better ways of solving it.

People from different backgrounds have varying ways of looking at problems, what I call “tools.” The sum of these tools is far more powerful in organizations with diversity than in ones where everyone has gone to the same schools, been trained in the same mold and thinks in almost identical ways.

The problems we face in the world are very complicated. Any one of us can get stuck. If we’re in an organization where everyone thinks in the same way, everyone will get stuck in the same place.

But if we have people with diverse tools, they’ll get stuck in different places. One person can do their best, and then someone else can come in and improve on it. There’s a lot of empirical data to show that diverse cities are more productive, diverse boards of directors make better decisions, the most innovative companies are diverse.

Breakthroughs in science increasingly come from teams of bright, diverse people. That’s why interdisciplinary work is the biggest trend in scientific research.

It’s important to realize that Page does not necessarily mean racial and gender diversity; he’s looking at different ways of thinking and approaching problems that cut across all sorts of categories. Still, in practice a lot of the diversity will be racial and gender diversity.

So we can all read Page’s book, present the arguments to our departments, and they’ll all start to look at ways to become more diverse. Right?

I’m sceptical, but it is less clear to me why one should be so. After all, there have been significant changes in the ways philosophy is done. So the discipline is not totally inflexible. Nonetheless, I suspect that in ours and a number of other academic fields, faculty will say that they are simply not interested in any of changes diversity could bring.  They know in advance that the changes won’t be worth it.  And just how do they know that?

When I held a Significant Faculty Leadership Position, I used to hear the arguments a lot. And my conclusion was that fundamentally “they,” the guys in charge, do not think we can do it as well as they do.

Other responses are very welcome!!

Exactly what is the acceptable way to behave?

Remember back when Hillary Clinton was too cold and calculating to be President?  Well, now she’s too angry.  And too choked up about how she wants to change the country.  And yes, some of this is undoubtedly because the stunningly juvenile press corps just doesn’t like her. But it’s hard not too think about the bind that gender schemas place her in: If she doesn’t show emotion, she is creepily unfeminine. If she does show emotion, she is not to be trusted with power. (See Hegel, 166 Addition.) And even the showing of emotion is viewed and rewarded differently in men and women. The truth is, I’m not actually a big Hillary fan. But I don’t like what’s going on. Though maybe it’s wrong to attribute it too much to gender schemas, remembering what happened to Howard Dean when he showed too much emotion. And to ‘wooden’ Al Gore when he showed too little. What do you think?