gendered conference campaign

MOMiCon – A Noteworthy Conference for Several Reasons

Stacey Goguen

http://momicon.org | April 3, 2016 | UC Berkeley | You can read their full mission statement here.

Momicon

A non-exhaustive list of reasons why this conference is noteworthy:

–All the speakers are women

–It’s abbreviation is a smart pun

–The conference is attempting to show how academic events can accommodate mothers better:

“The Misconceptions of the Mind Conference (MoMiCon) has two aims:

(1) to bring together a small group of nationally-recognized female social scientists to present their work challenging common (mis)conceptions of the mind, engage with each other in cutting-edge intellectual dialogue, and generate high-quality video content to share with the public as scientific outreach,

and (2) to serve as a model for how to run a small, high-profile workshop-style conference while accommodating the needs of women who are academics with young children. The hope in focusing on this group is to start a broader conversation about how academic norms and institutions can change to accommodate scholars with different needs throughout their academic careers, thus reducing barriers to excellence in scholarship and facilitating academic outreach”

–The sessions look really interesting:

Keynote – Alison Gopnik
The “Parenting” Misconception: Why “Parenting” is a scientifically inaccurate and practically
dubious way to understand the relations between children and the people who care for them

COGNITIVE MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE MIND
Tania Lombrozo – Learning isn’t just about getting the right information

Linda Wilbrecht – Teenagers are not lacking their frontal lobes

SOCIAL MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE MIND
Abigail Marsh – Human nature is not fundamentally selfish

Marjorie Rhodes – We’re not born racist

Keynote – Mary Ann Mason
Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower: How does family formation affect
academic women and men across their career, from graduate student through retirement.

AFFECTIVE MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE MIND
June Gruber – Positive emotions aren’t all positive

Iris Mauss – Pursuing happiness can make us unhappy

Amy Cuddy – Feeling powerless is not being powerless