EGOS Women’s Network Meeting 2021: Feminist Repair: Critique & Hope as a Way Forward?
Call for Applications
The established agenda of diversity and inclusion with its concomitant discussions of means and ends has been reinforced
and rearticulated over the past year, as the Covid-19 pandemic, the resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests and the second
wave of #MeToo have all alerted us to persistent structural inequalities and discrimination, particularly foregrounding the
intersectionalities of gender, race, and class. Current movements, then, question the assumed progress of mainstream diversity
and inclusion initiatives. While such initiatives are, undoubtedly relevant, necessary and needed, they also carry with them
problems, complications and backlash. The narrative of success, in particular, enables backlash to current movements as marked
by, for example, #NotAllMen and #AllLivesMatter and complicates the struggle for recognition and equality.
Critique, therefore, continues to be a condition of possibility for feminist progress, as we must reflect upon the pervasive
injustices of society as well as the inadequacies of our own response. Upholding a critical stance, however, can be tough
and draining, and we need spaces for hope and care, spaces of feminist repair, that may fortify the continued push forward.
At the EGOS Colloquium 2021, we hope to initiate the opening of such a space by inviting discussion of our definitions of
and desires for the EGOS Women’s Network Meeting: Who do we include and who do we privilege in the current organization? Who
is a woman and what is a network? Might these terms risk reproducing problematic ideas of neoliberal empowerment? (How) might
we envision alternatives? What are our hopes for the future? And how do we plan to get there?
This year’s
EGOS Women’s Network Meeting seeks to put inclusivity and its potential backlashes at the forefront of our agenda through
two rounds of discussions:
First, we hope to provide a space for repair, for sharing stories and experiences from the last year, and for consideration of how these experiences have influenced our community.
Second, we invite discussion of what a post- Covid-19, BLM, #MeToo EGOS Women’s Network Meeting might look like. How do we connect (network) with each other to tackle what urgent issues? Who do we include for forging strength and making changes for sustainable development? How do we equip ourselves (theoretically and practically) to confront new challenges?
The EGOS Women’s
Network Meeting 2021 will take place online on Wednesday, July 7, 2021, 15:00–17:00 CEST [Central European Summertime].
Registration
Please register – via the EGOS website – by submitting a single pdf file document that
contains the following information: full details of name and contact (postal address, phone, email, affiliation).
Deadline for registrations: Monday, May 17, 2021, 23:59 CEST