Demographic Change, Women’s Emancipation and Public Policy: Interrogating a Divisive Nexus – Gender and Intersectional Perspectives
Women have been the subject of demographic research and politics for the last 200 years. Based on the unquestioned assumption of procreation as a ‘natural fact,’ women became the primary objects of study of demography as well as – involuntarily – causal agents of demographic imbalances. Their ‘fertility behaviour’ further became the main indicator for demographic developments. Not only does this limited perspective contribute to the naturalisation of the gender order, it also implies that women’s emancipation is the cause of low reproduction rates in Western nation states. At the same time, under the surface, not all women are addressed in the same way in demography. Instead, such ‘interpellations’ are structured by race, class, ability and age.
Against this backdrop, the workshop aims to widen and strengthen the discussion about demography, gender order and public policy by developing new approaches and explanations informed by gender and intersectional perspectives as well as critically examine the epistemological and methodological foundations of current demography. Another aim is to establish a European-wide network of critical gender and intersectionality researchers with respect to these issues.
We are interested in contributions for the themes named below and for which we propose the following crosscutting issues: Contributions that
‐ deal with historical and/or contemporary perspectives;
‐are substantiated in, or linked to, concepts of intersectionality, feminist theory and gender studies, critical race theory and postcolonial studies, approaches for analysing classism;
‐ have a regional or national or European focus and compare regions or nation-states from post-socialist perspectives;
‐ examine social practices and/or social and/or symbolic structures (discourses) at an analytical level;
‐ study specific social fields and/or relations between different social fields, such as: politics, media, science and research, economics, medicine;
‐ study specific policies and/or their relations to one another, especially: family, demographics, migration, reproductive technologies, gender equality, and/or the state, at either a European or global level;
‐ analyse critiques, concepts and/or the influence of social movements.
The workshop is an opportunity to discuss work in progress and research results, as well as form networks for further international collaboration. Therefore, papers will be discussed in small groups. These groups will work together throughout the whole workshop. The papers (with a maximum length of 7.000 words) are due on January 31st, 2018, and will be delivered to participants of a given working group. All participants are expected to have read the papers in advance. During the workshop, the authors will introduce their papers briefly, and each participant will comment on one paper. Selected papers will be published.
For more information please click "Further Official Information" below.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://www2.gender.hu-berlin.de/ztg-blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CfP_DemographicChange-WomensEmancipation_Bochum_April-18-20-2018-3.pdf