Gender, Women’s Suffrage, and Political Power: Past, Present, and Future
The Gender, Women’s Suffrage, and Political Power: Past, Present, and Future (GWSPP) conference is a multi-day meeting hosted by the Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen) and Department of History at Michigan State University and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) at the University of Michigan. This conference will bring together academics and activists to explore the critical history of women’s suffrage and political power, and the future possibilities for expanding gender equity in political participation and representation in the United States and across the globe. This conference intends to have a particular focus on womxn of color and will conceptualize suffrage broadly as encompassing civic participation and political power within and outside of electoral politics, and will include a critical perspective on the role of white supremacy in the suffrage movement. There will also be a portion of the conference dedicated to women’s power in higher education, with a view to drawing links between the exclusion of diverse women’s voices in the academy, and women’s broader political power.
The GWSPP conference is timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment in the United States, the 40th anniversary of the GenCen’s Gendered Perspectives on International Development Papers Series, the 30th anniversary of the Re-Visioning Knowledge and the Curriculum: Feminist Perspectives conference at MSU, and the 25th anniversary of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at UMich.