Pre-2003 Events
2002
April 19-20, 2002
Confronting Domestic Violence and Achieving Gender Equality: Evaluating Battered Women & Feminist Lawmaking By Elizabeth M. Schneider
In this symposium, academics/activists evaluated the relationship between a quarter century of activism around domestic violence and the long struggle for gender equality. The symposium included Professor Schneider's reflections on her book, Battered Women & Feminist Lawmaking published by Yale University Press. Participants in the symposium explored the following topics: domestic violence and feminism; the importance of race, ethnicity, culture, and class in shaping our changing conceptions of and responses to violence against women; the law school as a site for theory, education, and advocacy; and changes in understanding and practice. The Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law published a symposium issue in December of 2003 (Volume 11, Issue 2) with the same title, containing articles by more than 30 national experts and advocates on domestic violence evaluating the last quarter-century of feminist work on domestic violence. The workshop and symposium issue are a major contribution to the integration of feminist scholarship and activism and demonstrate how WCL’s Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law actively shapes the development of feminist thought.
1997
November 3-6, 1997
Pan American Conference and Workshop on Transforming Women’s Legal Status: Overcoming the Barriers of Legal Doctrine and Legal Education
The Pan American Conference on Transforming Women's Legal Status: Overcoming the Barriers in Legal Doctrine and Legal Education took place at American University's Washington College of Law between November 3 and November 6, 1997. It was preceded by a three-day workshop, which took place between October 30 and November 1, 1997. The Conference and workshop brought together over seventy academics and women's advocates from throughout Latin America and the United States to develop the tools and theory necessary to integrate a gender perspective into legal education.
The three-day workshop which preceded the conference provided the opportunity for North American and Latin American feminist law teachers to exchange perspectives regarding developments in law teaching, and to test out theories and presentations which would be presented in a much more formal setting at the main conference. The workshop was intended to create a safe space where North American and Latin American feminist academics could learn from each other regarding similarities and differences in law teaching and scholarship in civil law and common law countries and prepare for the conference.
The main conference, which built on and incorporated the accomplishments of the three-day workshop, included most of the participants from the workshop, as well as a number of law teachers from Latin America and some from the United States. The Conference provided an opportunity for Latin American law teachers to work together and to explore the spaces for integrating feminist theory into law teaching. The Conference agenda consisted of a series of presentations, teaching demonstrations, round-table discussions, and small group exercises and focused on both content and pedagogy. Participants took part in a number of working groups which had the task of developing curricular proposals and teaching demonstrations in the areas of Family Law, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, International Law, and Women and the Law. Professors Ann Shalleck, Joan Williams, and Lauren Gilbert had prepared a five-volume pre-conference publication compiling and integrating some of the best feminist writings from the United States, Canada and Latin America.
July 14 - 18, 1997
Planning Workshop in Costa Rica
The Washington College of Law co-hosted a dynamic Workshop in Costa Rica at which participants developed the methodology for the Pan American Conference, prepared conference materials, selected articles for the pre-conference publication, evaluated candidates for the LL.M. fellowships and the regional fellowships, and began planning the Gender and the Law textbook. Experts from Chile, Costa Rica, Perú, the United States, and Ecuador participated at the meeting, which was co-hosted by the Women, Gender and Justice Program at the Instituto Latinoamericano de Naciones Unidas para la Prevención del Delito y Tratamiento del Delincuente (ILANUD). The Transforming Women’s Legal Status Board of Advisors was formed and immediately began to work, developing evaluative criteria for the fellowship programs and discussing possible candidates. In addition, this meeting served as the forum for the official birth of a new women’s advocacy organization, CIMA, the Concertación Interamericana de Mujeres Activistas (CIMA). Based in Costa Rica, CIMA contracted with the Transforming Women’s Legal Status program to produce a textbook regarding gender and the law.
1996
April 15-16, 1996
Pan American Consultation of Legal and Health Experts
The Pan American Consultation of Legal and Health Experts, held at Washington College of Law, April 15-16, 1996, and co-sponsored by the Women and International Law Program, the Pan American Health Organization, and the Health and Development Policy Project. This meeting brought together legal and health experts to examine, in an inter-disciplinary context, the different ways in which the legal and health sectors can work together in Latin America to develop an integrated approach to the problem of gender violence. The group, the Pan American Consultation of Legal and Health Experts, focused on the following areas of concern: the role of medical or forensic examiners in Latin America as gatekeepers to the legal system; the relationship between violence against women and girls and their reproductive health, and the potential role of law schools, other academic institutions, and the legal community in the region in confronting gender violence. Through a series of roundtable and small group discussions, legal and health experts from throughout the region examined some of the obstacles to better coordination among the legal community, health professionals and other advocacy groups in Latin America, exploring alternative strategies and developing a set of recommendations for future activities in the region.
March 29, 1996
Women, Human Rights and the Inter-American System: An Agenda for Action
In March 1996, the Washington College of Law co-sponsored with the Inter-American Commission of Women, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights a conference on Women, Human Rights and the Inter-American System: An Agenda for Action. The Conference sought to promote an exchange of ideas about the evolving role of the Inter-American system in the recognition, protection, and promotion of women’s human rights in the Americas, focusing in particular on the eradication of gender violence. The following day, at the Washington College of Law, Claudio Grossman, in his role as Special Rapporteur to the IACHR on the Legal Status of Women, convened a Second Meeting of Experts to give their recommendations to the Special Rapporteur on a draft questionnaire devised by a First Meeting of Experts held in San Jose, Costa Rica in May 1995. The purpose of the First Meeting was to begin to develop a questionnaire designed to gather information from governments and NGOs on instances of de jure and de facto discrimination against women which may arise within member states. The First Meeting allowed experts to identify as many potentially relevant inquiries as possible. The purpose of the Second Meeting was to streamline the questions into a practical data collection instrument that will both be easy for government officials, non-governmental groups, academics, and others to respond to and will elicit specific and relevant information.
1995
September 4-15, 1995
The United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, September 1995, Beijing, China. Hosted Panel: Human Rights and the Beijing Platform for Action
The Women and International Law Program participated in the Fourth World Conference on Women as official delegates under the umbrella of the Washington College of Law Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. The delegates hosted a panel and dialogue on Women's Human Rights and the Beijing Platform for Action, one of the few non-governmental organization (NGO) events held at the main conference site. This session bridged the NGO Forum and the official conference and provided an opportunity for discussion of the current state of deliberations with regard to key issues in the Platform for Action, including violence against women, women's health and reproductive rights, and the role of institutional arrangements in ensuring the protection and promotion of women's human rights.
1994
November 10-11, 1994
Conference on the International Protection of Reproductive Rights
In November 1994, the Women and International Law Program co-hosted a Conference on the International Protection of Reproductive Rights to evaluate how international law could be used more effectively to advance women’s reproductive rights in light of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo, Egypt in September 1994 and in anticipation of the Beijing conference. At our meeting, experts in international law, women’s rights and women’s health explored the complex relationship among international norms, national laws, local customs, and epidemiology in developing legal strategies for enforcing reproductive rights at the local, national, and international levels. The Conference agenda included presentations from internationally renowned experts in the field, which were published in a symposium volume of the American University Law Review and disseminated to academics, policymakers, program administrators, and women's rights advocates around the world.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the principle UN agency dealing with population issues, ordered thirty additional copies of the volume. Family Health International requested that we donate copies to be distributed to WILDAF (Women in Law and Development in Africa), one of the leading women’s advocacy groups in that region. Copies of the volume also were distributed at an Inter-Agency Symposium on Reproductive Health in Refugee Situations in Geneva, Switzerland in June 1995 and at a Regional Conference on the Legal Status of Refugee and Internally Displaced Women in August. In addition, we shipped one thousand copies of the volume to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, where they were disseminated by a member of the Editorial Board of The American University Law Review, who also assisted at the conference and in preparations for a follow-up meeting held at the Fourth World Conference on September 9, 1995.
