The Social Enterprise Development Centre (SEDC), at the Suleman Dawood School of Business (SDSB), Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), promotes high-quality research, praxis and public policy dialogue to promote gender equality. To that end, we are holding this international conference titled ‘Gender, Work and Society: Challenges, Opportunities and Prospects for Women’s Economic Empowerment’ in South Asia and beyond to be held at LUMS in Lahore on April 22-23, 2017.
Women constitute roughly half of our population yet face unequal opportunities in access to social services, employment, judicial justice, political office and even public space. At the same time, millions of donor dollars are spent annually on gender equity enhancement programmes and public policy debates vigorously take up the cause of gender justice.
Our focus at this interdisciplinary conference is on women’s economic participation and how patriarchal norms, social movements and globalization affect women’s economic opportunities, and whether this actually translates into enhanced agency. The conference aims to bring together scholarship problematizing women’s work, within and outside the household, in particular social, economic, political and historical contexts. The conference will present an interdisciplinary platform for participants to analyze and critique recent trends, innovations, and conditions related to gender, work and society, broadly defined. The conference is supported by the South Asian Academy of Management (SAAM). The conference further aims to highlight both scholarship and praxis around gender, work and society.
Themes of the conference include:
- Critical approaches to understanding how and why we ‘do gender’
- Gender, class and social movements
- Education and employment – connecting the missing dots
- Gender disparities in health and nutrition
- Women in sweatshops and the global supply chain
- Sexual harassment at the workplace
- Women entrepreneurship: challenges, opportunities and critiques
- Opportunities and limits of home based work as an emancipator
- Violence, work and public space
- Gender, power and global justice networks
- The politics and praxis of donor funded ‘gender mainstreaming’ and development
Conference Website: https://icgws.lums.edu.pk/
