| Conference workshops will be held on 4th of December at 15.00-17.00. Notice! Only one session for papers. List of workshops (click title to see description and list of presentations):
Workshop that were incorporated with other workshops Workshop descriptions Lähisuhdeväkivallan tiedostaminen ja ennaltaehkäiseminen ***** This workshop will be held in Finnish***** Työryhmä suomeksi****** During the last thirty years there has been an increasing awareness of the vast prevalence and seriousness of intimate violence in domestic setting in western countries. There has been a lot of effort to generate viable services like shelters for women who have been exposed to intimate violence. These services are often run by volunteers and they have often been developed by non-governmental organizations, especially women’s organizations. As the services have been developed by grass-roots activists, there are quite many differences between them. Later on there has been activities to develop counselling and programs for violent men and services for children who have been exposed to violence. Also among them there are various approaches and working methods. The aim of this workshop is to get together guests and participants to discuss, debate and compare different methods of violence prevention in intimate life. The papers presented in this workshop will cover practical working methods with victims or perpetrators of violence or with those exposed to violence. The papers can be case studies, descriptions of working methods or research projects based on qualitative or quantitative methodology. The main themes of the papers presented in the workshop are: Presentations in this workshop:
Normativity and sexuality Contemporary western societies have witnessed a rapid commodification and commercialisation of sexuality, to the point where, in many parts of the world, sexuality suffuses and saturates social, economic, political and cultural life (Feonna Attwood 2005). In what ways and to what extent, however, is this intensification of sexualities discourse productive of new regulatory norms governing sexualities as they are lived and experienced across generations, societies and cultures. Foregrounding the slipperiness of the regulative and disciplinary regimes governing gender and sexual norms in social practice, Judith Butler re-thinks what constitutes contemporary processes of normalisation: “Norms may or may not be explicit, and when they operate as the normalizing principle in social practice, they usually remain implicit, difficult to read, discernible most clearly and dramatically in the effects they produce” (Butler 2004: 41) Potential topics and questions to be addressed in our workshop: - What old and new gender and sexual norms are being constituted (displaced or re-fixed) in the social and cultural worlds of girls, boys, women and men? Presentations in this Workshop
Intercultural and intersectional chllenges in learning In this workshop the questions of interculturality, intersectionality, power, caring and learning will be discussed. Presentations in the workshop ask how power and caring are intertwined in private narrations and how they present themselves in learning and school context. What are the possibilities for intercultural dialogue and empowerment, how could indigenous knowledge be extended to the public and to education in order to empower the marginalized and what are the possibilities of education in creating equal and respecting cultures. Presentation in this workshop
Violence, power and empowerment in School Feminist research on gender and schooling and also men?s studies have increased our understanding about how accepted images of masculinities and femininities are produced and maintained, and how unequal hierarchies are established in social relationships in school. Violence is bound up with status struggle, which includes violent practices, sometimes visible, but often also subtle mechanisms, hidden behind normalized practises in the everyday life of school. Papers concerning gendered, sexualised, racist or other otherness-based violence in school from various perspectives will be discussed in this workshop. - How can status and power be acquired in the social field of school? - Is it possible to harness power to serve equity and communal values? Presentations in this workshop
Challenges in developing non violent communities among children an adolescents The 2006 UN world report on Violence against Children identified the multiple dimensions of violence in schools. Gender relations are an important aspect of violence in schools, and impact the learning environment and social development of school girls and boys. This workshop considers the possibilities for producing tools based on mutual respect, justice, and caring in different educational settings. The following issues will be discussed in the workshop: •How effective different kinds of programmes have been •How to deconstruct conventional gendered categorizations, violent practices, structures and processes at school •How alternative ways of considering masculinity and femininity in educational settings could be supported •How to support the vision of a world where young people can live in safety and without fear of threats of violence The workshop aims to consider gender-sensitive programmes to achieve safe, non-violent and child-friendly schools and other growth environments for young people. The workshop contributes to the development of appropriate and sustainable means to prevent and reduce violence in schools. Presentation in this workshop
Gender violence indicators and Policy Development Indicators for violence against women have been developed by the UN, European Union, WHO, European Women’s Lobby, etc. Typically these indicators focus on the policy development or the outcomes of violence, i.e. its prevalence, frequency and severity of the violence. These already existing indicators do not really take into the consideration the vast impact on a person’s life when the violence takes place on an intimate partner relationship or in other contexts. Whatever the context of abuse, the impact always goes beyond the health dimension, although the extent and characteristics of this impact will be quite different when violence has been encountered juts at home or in a workplace, or both at home and in the workplace. Thus, it is necessary to develop indicators that make visible this mainstreamed impact of violence in women’s life. This is the main aim of the GVEI project: to design social indicators for measuring and shedding light on the multidimensional effects of gender violence on women’s life, in order to improve social policies dealing with gender violence. We invite researchers and political actors to present papers dealing with gender violence effect indicators and participate in the discussion on the topic. The workshop is carried out with the GVEI project partners, for more information see website: http://www.surt.org/gvei/inicio_en.html Presentations in this workshop
Multi-professional work and policy development to take actions against violence The UN report of the expert group meeting “Good practices in combating and eliminating violence against women” (2004) identifies the necessity of inter-agency cooperation and coordination, since the creation of services and support for victims and sanctions for perpetrators requires the interlinking of a number of agencies and services. A clear leadership role for women’s specialist services should be built into all interagency projects, alongside a linked reference group of survivors, or another feedback mechanism, to ensure accountability and monitoring. Support, safety and services form the triangle of the key challenges. Accordingly all relevant professions should receive basic knowledge about the nature of gendered violence during primary, vocational or professional training Hagemann-White et al claim (2006) in the Stocktaking study on the measures and actions taken in the Council of Europe member States. According to that study, further training is needed to build the sensitivity and the skills to respond appropriately and effectively to manifestations of violence (ibid.). The study highlights the lack of appropriate education of highly educated groups such as physicians, lawyers and judges who tend to accept further training only within their own profession. Also school and preschool teachers, who have an important role in addressing the problem, still do not have sufficient training. An analytical study on the effective implementation of Recommendation Rec/2002)5 on the protection of women against violence in the Council of Europe member states (2007) indicates that when training for professions exist, it may still not have a wide coverage. The pre-school staff and media professionals are least likely to receive training, although they have children in their care who need attention to the problem. Presentations in this workshop
Ethics of caring and power in life-span The workshop focuses on the ethics of caring in diverse life phases and situations and its societal and structural conditions and prerequisites especially from the perspective of power. Our modern, society which emphasises individualism, independence, autonomy and competition makes it often difficult and challenging to keep the ethics of caring alive, or to put it into practice. In addition the ethics of caring has a feminine label, it is often said to be a women’s ethical orientation. This kind of gendering can weaken the voices of caring. Both theoretical and practical presentations as well as reports of diverse projects are welcome to the workshop. The presentations can range from early childhood to old age, and from individual level to the organisation and institutional levels. The presentations can look at the challenges of the ethics of caring and/ or search for solutions on how to promote the ethics of caring. Presentations in this workshop
Alternative healing and empowerment Empowerment is a process of increasing personal, interpersonal or political power so that individuals and communities can take action to improve their lives and enhance their self-determination. Scholars researching violence who do not identify with the practices and values of the dominant institutions face a major contradiction: they are working within systems that reproduce the politics of othering, objectification, epistemic violence and dehumanization, yet their work is aimed at challenging and transforming these very structures towards more solidarity and an ethics of care. Women's studies is expected to balance the oppressive practices and knowledge of male-stream academia and to foster critical white studies. However, the ruling relations are also reproduced among women and those addressing violence for as long as we fail to bring about collective and individual healing from the dysfunctions of euro/androcentric, and other, worldviews and social arrangements. Well-intentioned scholars are confronted with role strains and contradictions and need healing themselves from the effects of a culture of power over relations. The nature of the research on violence can and often leads to burnout and other forms of dis-ease, as those exposing the politics of violence often become targets of harassment. Much information has been produced concerning the roots, effects and extent of gendered violence. It is now time to raise awareness and research alter/native ways of healing and empowerment that do not themselves reproduce violent power relations. Empowerment involves rejecting the dimensions of knowledge, whether personal, cultural, or institutional, that perpetuate asymmetrical gender relations/intersectional forms of discrimination. I invite abstracts that might address the following, or other relevant issues: - How can researchers on violence be assisted in acknowledging their own internalized violence? Presentations in this workshop
Sexual and sexist harassment and elimination of harassment NOTICE! The abstracts for this workshop will be incorporated in other workshops Previous research about sexual and sexist harassment has led to a reflection upon embodiment and corporeality, agency and strategy within university organisations. The central tension according to the research may be located in the ambivalence between the individual and organisational levels that appear to frame one’s agency as intellectual, and embodied. Intellectuality forms a consistency for the development of agency whereas sexual and gender harassment experiences create inconsistencies for intellectual aspiration. The complex intertwined processes of power, agency and gender challenge a deeper intersectional analysis when dealing with policy development aiming to eliminate harassment from educational institutions, such as universities. There are interesting developments going on at the policy level in connection to the political framing of gender and sexual harassment. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has initiated work on statistical information and other indicators for use to promote and monitor the implementation of human rights (Criteria for identifying indicators on VAW, 2007). The incidence of sexual harassment by teaching staff in education institutions is viewed as perpetrated or condoned by the state as it is framed in Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women and human rights normative framework (ibid). The Council of the European Union has also made progress on the development of indicators on violence against women. The proposal for sexual harassment indicators for gender violence in the workplace deals with three aspects of the policy development in organizations: 1) the percentage of the employees who report incidents of sexual harassment, 2) the percentage of private and public enterprises that have a policy on sexual harassment, and 3) the percentage of private and public enterprises that have procedures for sanctions of the perpetrators of sexual harassment These current developments are relevant when exploring ways in which to eliminate sexual and gender harassment in organisations. The development of policies in connection with the equality and equity issues are special interests of the workshop. Papers dealing with other dimensions of sexual and gender harassment e.g. theoretical and methodological issues, are also welcome.
School violence & children and youth Työryhmä jaettu: Violence, power and empowerment in school sekä Challenges in developing non violent communities among children and adolescents Feminist research on gender and schooling and also critical men’s studies have increased our understanding about how accepted images of masculinities and femininities are produced and maintained, and how unequal hierarchies are established in social relationships in school. Violence is bound up with status struggle, which includes violent practices, sometimes visible, but often also subtle mechanisms, hidden behind normalized practises in the everyday life of school. Papers concerning gendered, sexualised, racist or other otherness-based violence in school from various perspectives will be discussed in this workshop.
Humour and Violence NOTICE! The abstracts for this workshop will be incorporated in other workshops The interest in research on humour has increased sharply in the past decade. Humour is a salient aspect in every day life in educational environments, but also in other spheres of life. It is also a vital part of cultural competence, and a constitutive element of constructing gender, especially masculinities. However, there has been little research focusing on the interconnectedness of humour and violence. Humour can be a strong instrument of violence: masqueraded as humour, violence can be difficult to resist. It can be used as exclusive, diminishing or normalized ways in creating otherness, with intersections like gender, class, ethnicity, disability or age. Keeping all this in mind, humour, violence and its interconnections with femininities, masculinities and different subject positions in different spheres of life will be discussed in this workshop. Conflict handling in School from a Gender Perspective NOTICE! The abstracts for this workshop will be incorporated in other workshops The school context constitutes an important part of children's and young people's daily lives and can be considered as a social arena. Current surveys and research show that many pupils and adults encounter violence and conflicts in this environment. All agents in school have a responsibility to contribute to the development of a supportive milieu where learning is meaningful, stimulating and safe. Successful work with different aspects of social relations has to proceed from the different value and standard systems represented among the students as well as in the local school culture, and requires the development of a common sustainable value basis. The socialization process concerning gender questions, conflict handling and different aspects of violation including bullying is the school's most important social task. Swedish curricula and new legislation for the protection of children and pupils passed in 2006 state that each school has to develop a culture that is supportive, sensitive and preventive concerning aspects of gender and violations as well as conflicts. The gender system with structures and constructs is expressed through various manifestations in everyday school life and, according to the research, there are different standards for girls and boys concerning socio-economic and culture aspects and ethnicity. These invisible standards generate consequences in school practice in the form of invisible orders and oppression. It is an important quest for the research to deepen the knowledge concerning conflicts that originate from gender aspects and to evolve helpful tools in order to prevent, handle and stop conflicts, generally, and particularly conflicts related to the gender equality perspective. |
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FACULTY of EDUCATION, Department of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education, Women's and Gender Studies P.O.box 2000 | FI-90014 University of Oulu | FINLAND Tel + 358 8 553 1011 |
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