Dear Gender Justice SIG Community:
Greetings! We are reaching out as the 2023-2024 Co-chairs of the Gender Justice SIG to officially open the CIES ‘year,’ during which we hope to build on the energy from Washington D.C. to deepen our collective work as a gender justice-focused community.
We want to start by thanking this past year’s leadership for their hard work and dedication. In 2022-2023, we shared the co-chairship with Jasmina Josic and Laura Edwards. Dao Nguyen generously took on the coordination of our SIG’s presence at CIES 2023. Thanks, all, for your labor and care. Thanks, too, to the Gender and Education Committee, and their leadership (Cathryn Magno and Chrisitine Min Wotipka) for their collaboration and guidance as we establish ourselves within CIES.
We are extremely excited to continue building a SIG that reflects the diversity, energy, and insight of its membership, and of the broader CIES community. We are also excited to bring folks into our leadership team to join us in visioning this transformative space committed to gender and racial justice.
This email will provide details about our working vision; instructions to renew membership (or join the SIG); updates on leadership and upcoming opportunities for involvement; and path forward for the year.
Gender Justice SIG Working Vision
We want to share with you our working vision for the Gender Justice SIG, something we will continue to build with membership input. We will provide space at the 2024 Business Meeting in Miami for feedback and ideas forward.
First, the Gender Justice SIG seeks to build a broad membership of gender justice comparative education scholars and practitioners that reflects the gender, sexual, and racial diversity in the field and that actively works to engage and collaborate with scholars and practitioners from the global South and minoritized communities in the global North as leaders and members. We see the 2023 Conference as an ideal opportunity to make space for new perspectives, and we invite new members to join and actively shape the creation of the SIG’s mission and priorities.
Second, the Gender Justice SIG seeks to forward gender theorizing within CIE alongside and in response to feminist scholarly and activist movements across the world. In particular, we aim to: (1) foster connections between the SIG and the wide networks of feminist movements and gender justice activists in education in the global South; (2) prioritize the development of a robust feminist mentoring network that offers meaningful, long term opportunities for graduate students and other CIES newcomers; and (3) cultivate community and rigorous discussion about gender justice and theory through the development of thematic study groups comprised of scholars and practitioners.
Joining or Renewing Your Membership
We are committed to building an active and diverse SIG membership. Many of you may not be aware that SIG membership is annual in accordance with the calendar year. Growing membership is a key priority (including to keep our status as a SIG). Please ensure that your SIG membership to date, and please share this email widely among your peers interested in gender and racial justice.
To renew or join, please follow this link.
Leadership Opportunities
We are excited to share that we have many opportunities for leadership, including for the third SIG elected position. We envision the Gender Justice SIG leadership to be a collaborative feminist space. Currently we are looking for 1 Administrative Officer; 2 Program Coordinators; and 1 Communications Officer. All information about these roles and their responsibilities can be found on this survey, where you can indicate your particular position of interest. Please forward this leadership opportunity to any of your colleagues or graduate students that might be interested. We’re excited to hear from you/them by Friday, March 31. We will follow up thereafter with next steps. Please stay tuned for information on the forthcoming election.
Forward Looking
We have ideas from our initial plan and the most recent business meeting that we’re excited to move forward on. This year, we hope to:
- Create a new SIG role for Feminist Thought Leaders to anchor conference programming, inspire, and inform our work;
- Build an exciting GJ presence at CIES 2024 that includes keynote speakers and/or panels to speak to the highly relevant theme for feminists, The Power of Protest
- Launch a research roundtable to get to know each other’s work and to help facilitate the development of synergetic panel presentations for CIES 2024
- Foster a feminist reading group to build rigorous discussions about gender and feminist theory and its implication for our field
Please let us know if you have any questions by emailing genderjusticecies@gmail.com We are very excited to build this community with you.
Please forward this email and invitation widely!
With care,
Karishma Desai Rachel Silver
Rutgers University York University