Publications
Desiring Change
Amber Hollibaugh, Janet Jakobsen, Catherine Sameh
Desiring Change represents the integration of joint efforts by the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW) and Queers for Economic Justice (QEJ). Desiring Change offers a framework for thinking about how desire and gender are brought alive through the ways lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people use their bodies; and how desire and gender are made poignant and meaningful by the ways we construct or deny our erotic passions and gendered identities in the course of daily life. This project looks at intersections between LGBTQ and progressive politics, asking how best to integrate sex and gender into organizing around issues like immigration, the economy and social services. Desiring Change is born of the fact that in the current political moment, particularly after the financial crisis of 2008, both BCRW and QEJ see an opportunity to bring fresh vision to questions that have long challenged organizations and movements, including questions about how to frame issues of key concern and how to develop effective models for making change. We also see a longing for new possibilities, a way forward in the face of increasing inequality, and a means of keeping our desires at the center of our politics.
Read MoreCritical Conceptions: Technology, Justice, and the Global Reproductive Market
Rebecca Jordan-Young
Contributors include Gwendolyn Beetham, Claudia Castañeda, The Center for Bioethics and Culture, Wendy Chavkin, Jeanne Flavin, Sarah Franklin, Ana María García, Faye Ginsburg, Michele Bratcher Goodwin, Rebecca Haimowitz, Anna Harrington, Judith Helfand, Sujatha Jesudason, Rebecca Jordan-Young, Jessaca Leinaweaver, Iris Lopez, Susan Markens, Carol Mason, Faith Pennick, Rayna Rapp, Catherine Sameh, Vaishali Sinha, Debora Spar, Kalindi Vora, Catherine Waldby, and Karen Winkler.
Read MoreReproductive Justice in Action
Rebecca Jordan-Young, Lucy Trainor, Janet Jakobsen
Reproductive justice is an inclusive framework for thinking about reproductive freedoms, holistic well-being and comprehensive justice. Organizing for reproductive justice encompasses a multiplicity of issues; the individuals and networks working in this model are just as diverse in their missions, constituencies, and methods of action. Reproductive Justice in Action is the result of a collaboration between the Barnard Center for Research on Women, Groundswell's Catalyst Fund, the New York Women's Foundation and seventeen of their grantee partners doing reproductive justice work in New York City. Seeking to explore the ways in which these seventeen organizations think about their mission and work, we jointly embarked on a participatory action research project in order to better understand how the organizations relate to (or feel limited by) the model and language of reproductive justice.
Read MoreScholar and Feminist Online
Scholar and Feminist Online is an open-source feminist publication that, since its founding issue in 2003, has published academics, activists, and more recently, multimedia artists on topics ranging from queer agendas that center anti-racism, anti-capitalism, and trans justice, to the literary and political legacy of Black feminist poet, playwright, and choreographer Ntozake Shange. The journal’s […]
Read MoreNew Feminist Solutions
Marking the newest direction in BCRW's more than thirty-five-year-old tradition of print publication, New Feminist Solutions is a series of reports geared toward informing and inspiring activists, policy-makers and others. Each report was written in collaboration with organizations and individuals who, like BCRW, have made a concerted effort to link feminist struggles to those of racial, economic, social and global justice. The reports are based on conversations and ideas emerging from conferences held at Barnard College, and are published in conjunction with websites featuring additional information from these events. Copies of the reports are free. They can be downloaded from the New Feminist Solutions website. Print copies can be requested by emailing bcrw@barnard.edu.
Read MoreWhat Is: Key Terms in Feminist Studies
BCRW has produced a series of videos for use in the classroom that explain concepts and keywords used in social justice feminism, including: Feminism; Reproductive Justice; Neoliberalism; and STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) + the Arts.
Read MoreBCRW Blog
Part of our ever-evolving digital presence, the BCRW Blog aims to create an online space that can expand the important conversations happening at the Center, complement our programming, and feature thoughtful reflections on feminist issues of the day. A participatory platform, the Blog invites comments and submissions, allowing for timely and varied conversations with members of the BCRW community near and far. With the Blog, we hope to increase ties among diverse groups of women and develop new venues to encourage the open sharing of feminist ideas and action.
Read MoreValuing Domestic Work
Premilla Nadasen and Tiffany Wiliams
Domestic work—the daily maintenance of households and the labor of caring for children and other dependents—is crucial work. It enables workers to go out into the world, reproduces a new generation of workers and citizens, and sustains relationships among parents, children and families. And yet, it is devalued, degraded and made invisible. Its degradation and invisibility are produced through processes of gendering that naturalize domestic and caring labors as women's work, and racialization that naturalize low-wage, "dirty" jobs as the work of people of color and immigrants. As laborers doing devalued work, domestic workers receive neither adequate wages nor any of the other legal protections many US workers have—sick leave, time off, and collective bargaining. In New York and nationally, workers have organized for better wages, humane treatment and the right to legal protections that cover other US workers.
Read MoreTowards a Vision of Sexual and Economic Justice
Kate Bedford and Janet Jakobsen
Sexual oppression and economic oppression are inextricably linked, but the movements and theoretical frameworks that address each of these issues so often treat them as discrete. Contemporary movements for global economic justice tend to shy away from sexuality issues, while campaigns for sexual rights rarely foreground economic concerns. In some spheres, however, the gap is beginning to close. BCRW highlights these potential intersections with its new project entitled Towards a Vision of Sexual and Economic Justice.
Read MoreThe Work-Family Dilemma: A Better Balance
A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center and BCRW
Recognizing the need for a forum to discuss work-family issues that focused on issues across the economic spectrum, A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center and The Barnard Center for Research on Women, along with the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California at Hastings, and the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development, planned a summit bringing together leaders and experts (those who have studied these issues and those who advocate for better policies) and the actual stakeholders (labor, business and elected officials in New York City).
Read MorePolyphonic Feminisms: Acting in Concert
Mandy Van Deven and Julie Kubala
Contributors include Sara Ahmed, Anida Yoeu Ali, Moya Bailey, Lina Bertucci, Adrienne Maree Brown, brownfemipower, Nuala Cabral, Lindsay Caplan, Joy Castro, Lisa Factora-Borchers, Daniel Horowitz Garcia, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Duchess Harris, Jessica Hoffmann, Julie Kubala, Nomy Lamm, Noemi Y. Molitor, Felicia "Fe" Montes, Jennifer C. Nash, Adele Nieves, Lesleigh J. Owen, Cara Page, Jasmeen Patheja, Marta Sanchez, Larissa Sansour, Lamont Sims, SPEAK! Radical Women of Color Media Collective, Mandy Van Deven, and Mary Jane Villamor.
Read MoreWomen, Work, and the Academy: Strategies for Responding to ‘Post-Civil Rights Era’ Gender Discrimination
Alison Wylie, Janet Jakobsen, Gisela Fosado
This report is based on the Virginia C. Gildersleeve Conference at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, with keynote speakers Nancy Hopkins, Claude Steele, and Virginia Valian. The participants in this conference have all made significant contributions to our understanding of the situation women currently face in academia, highlighting the effects of a diffuse set of barriers to women's participation: small-scale, often unintended differences in recognition, support and response that can generate large-scale differences in outcomes for women. This conference was organized so as to take stock of the extant research and interventions and to chart a course forward.
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