By student contributor Asthaa Chaturvedi

Global Gender Current is proud to present its first post in a short interview series that aims to understand the perspective of leaders in the arena of women and development and ask the simple question of why working for equality and agency of women matters in this moment in the 21st century. Through short interviews and audio clips we hope to engage our readers and connect with folks who are in the process of learning about the multifaceted process of improving the wellbeing of women in the U.S. and around the world.

We’re beginning our series with the issue of women in politics. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, women hold just 20.4 percent of parliamentary seats around the world. Internationally and at home, there are disparities when it comes to the political involvement and leadership of women. Susannah Wellford Shakow, President and co-founder of Running Start, an organization that aims to support young women and girls as they think about running for political office in the U.S., has dedicated much of her career to this cause. Shakow also cofounded and led Women Under Forty Political Action Committee, the only PAC devoted to getting young women of all parties into office.

While Running Start’s initiatives are focused in the U.S., Shakow has conducted workshops in Israel, Kuwait, Russia,and Shri Lanka  and finds that regardless of the the audience, in rural villages or sophisticated boardrooms, women share the same concerns. The key is the same in developed and developing countries. Women need the confidence to be leaders themselves.

Shakow says she realized that women might not be on the same level playing field when she was a lawyer and questions started to arise about when she planned on having children. She decided that women could balance both a career and family, and do extraordinary things.

“I’ve found that biggest changes have been made in the business world. Businesses are starting to pay attention to women, because if they don’t, women will leave,” Shakow said when I asked her about where the biggest strides have been made. Running Start programs help young women from middle and high school practice the skills they need for leadership positions, meet women who can serve as role models, and understand the importance having a voice in the political process. Check out our audio clip below to hear Shakow’s perspective on why getting women into political office remains relevant in this day and age.

Guest student post by Marybeth Sullivan

Hillary Rodham Clinton came closer to winning the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States than any woman before her. She gained 1,896 delegates compared to Barack Obama’s 2,201 delegates, which sealed his nomination. In her concession speech Clinton proclaimed that Americans “can be so proud that, from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories…unremarkable to think that a woman can be the President of the United States…and if we can blast fifty women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House.”[1] Despite this idealism, the numbers show that female political victories are still remarkable. Currently, women hold seventeen seats in the Senate and ninety seats in the House of Representatives, about seventeen percent of the total seats in Congress.[2] These figures place the United States poorly at number ninety-one in the proportion of women in National Parliaments worldwide. [3] The United States, therefore, ranks behind countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and China, countries highly criticized for their discrimination of women.[4]

The fact that women are underrepresented in elected politics is increasingly relevant today. At a time when the United States is fighting to maintain its credibility abroad, it loses legitimacy when nations whose governments the U.S. criticize, show more descriptive equality than our own. In addition, recent elections bring female candidates such as Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, and Hillary Clinton into the spotlight. Despite their policy perspectives, many media outlets and American citizens focus on these candidates’ gender. The 2012 election brings ascribed women’s issues to the center of debate. Issues affecting women are highly contested, especially as Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney threatens to appoint Supreme Court Justices to overturn Roe v. Wade[5] and stop funding for Planned Parenthood.[6] Meanwhile he is unwilling to state his positions on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act[7] or the Violence Against Women Act.[8]

With this in mind, questions arise about women’s role in elected office. First, if women account for fifty percent of citizens in the United States, why do women only hold seventeen percent of the elected seats? Second, at a time when “women’s issues” seem contentious in the 2012 presidential race, why do few women seem concerned? Last, does the fact that so few women are in government truly matter?

I argue the United States needs to increase its representation of women in elected office. Apathetic constituencies, who are disenchanted with the U.S. political system, limit female candidates’ success. Women can increase representation effectively if they create a critical mass external to elected office. Once created, this external critical mass can apply pressures to the government. I argue this critical mass can be created by women in business. In this way, women’s voices may not be seen inside the Capitol, but they will be heard and represented.
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By student contributor Delaney Allan, GGP Intern

On October 25, the Elliott School’s Global Gender Program hosted an international panel entitled Migrant Women Workers in Southeast Asia: Challenges, Programs, and Best Practices.  Melanne Verveer,  Ambassador-at-Large for  Global Women’s Issues in the  U.S. Department of State, delivered a powerful  keynote address.

She began by framing  the importance of migration, identifying the roles women in particular.  She offered some powerful statistics, documenting the feminization of migration:  Forty-nine percent of the world’s migrant populations and three quarters of the world’s refugee populations are women. Regionally, the countries of Southeast Asia supply a substantial amount of the global migrant labor force, but there is also substantial intra-regional migration, with Thailand and Malaysia identified as major recipients of migrant workers.

Ambassador Verveer emphasized the positive and negative effects that labor migration has on women. The economic opportunity provided by labor migration increases women’s confidence, economic independence, empowerment, and reduces inequality between men and women. Yet labor migration often increases women’s vulnerability, including discrimination and abuse, both  in transit and in the destination area. Jobs for migrant women are often found in sectors lacking government and community oversight, thus leaving open the possibility of women’s exploitation in the workplace. The additional income women receive by entering the migrant labor force  may come at a high price, and hopes for gender quality in the destination country are often “somewhat elusive.”
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Student post by Delaney Allan

2011 was a big year for women in politics. Over the past twelve months, the world has born witness to the election of the first female president of Kosovo, the first female prime ministers of Thailand and Jamaica, and the appointment of the first female president to the UN Human Rights Council. Advancements were also made in terms of changes in constitutions and laws. The implementation of new laws in countries such as Tunisia have brought about gender parities in constituent assembly elections; and, for the first time in Egypt, a woman ran for the highest political office. Although these achievements are notable, huge imbalances in gender representation remain in politics worldwide. The future of women in politics depends greatly on commitment at the state level to dedicate resources and legislation to the institutionalization and lawful promotion of women’s leadership and gender equality.

The guest speaker for the Global Gender Forum at George Washington University this week was Endah Agustiana, an activist who has vast experience in women’s rights, equality, and leadership. She is the Gender Advisor for the Seeds of Life Program and Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries/AusAID in Timor-Leste.

Dr. Agustiana addressed the promotion of women’s political leadership and equality currently taking place in Cambodia, Vietnam and Timor-Leste. These three countries have engendered constitution and law, established organisational structures and development strategies, and implemented gender responsive budgeting to promote women’s equality and leadership in politics.

Guaranteed women’s rights, gender equality laws (in Vietnam and Cambodia), affirmative action quotas, organizational structures such as gender centres, gender focal points (GFPs), the Gender Mainstreaming Action Group (GMAG), and the implementation of gender responsive budgeting (in Timor-Leste) have helped to increase women’s leadership in these three nations. The most impressive advance has been in Timor-Leste where just fewer than 30 percent of representatives in parliament are currently women. This number surpasses the percentage of women in the US senate (at 17 percent).

Dr. Agustiana emphasized that further changes are needed within the legal policy framework, including affirmative action against gender discrimination in a legal policy framework, political and institutional reform that enables equal opportunity for female leaderships, networking, capacity development, and an increase in the collection of and access to research and data for women nationwide.

Although the measures that have been taken so far have improved women’s leadership opportunities and participation in Timor-Leste, Cambodia and Vietnam, the percentage of women in leadership positions is still only about 30 percent. Women in these countries still face serious barriers to entry into political society. A key issue is policy evaporation — policies that are developed to promote women’s leadership and participation but are put into practice inefficiently and ineffectively. Women also encounter institutional barriers. Women find that political parties are hesitant to appoint new leaders, and when they do, they often prefer men. This preference is rooted in the cultural traditions of Southeast Asian countries. Traditionally, men were the leaders in Cambodia, Vietnam and Timor-Leste. This pattern is not likely to change quickly. Women also face security challenges such as intimidation and violence; sociocultural issues such as access to education, finances, and other essential resources; and stereotypical discrimination, where “women’s issues” are dismissed as women’s problems and not a statewide responsibility.

Dr. Agustiana reported that women’s rights are equally important to both the ruling parties and the opposition in these nations; this unity strengthens the front against discrimination and improves the future of legislative and constitutional changes promoting women’s rights, leadership and equality.

Dr. Agustiana gave a fascinating and eye-opening talk. Her experience and knowledge are inspiring. She argues that state and local governments are both important in promoting future political participation and leadership by women. As she commented, dedication to gender equality combined with continued determination by women will lead to a much brighter future.

Delaney Allan is a second year undergraduate student at the George Washington University. She is studying international affairs and economics in the Elliott School of International Affairs. She works as a volunteer research assistant for the Global Gender Program.

Student post by Lauren Farello

Summary of a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy, and Global Women’s Issues Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs

On Wednesday, November 3, 2011, U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Robert Casey spoke on two panels about women’s roles in the Arab Spring at a hearing held at the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The Senators began by providing a brief background on recent events throughout the Middle East and North Africa, citing both positive advancements and negative consequences. They noted that the reform movements in Egypt and Libya have been successful partly because of women’s participation in helping to facilitate change and by working to rebuild their countries.

The first panel consisted of two witnesses, The Honorable Melanne Verveer, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues in the White House, and Dr. Tamara Wittes, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs and Deputy Special Coordinator for Middle East Transitions. Ambassador Verveer’s statements centered on the importance of women in new democracies, saying that women’s political and economic participation have tangible benefits to a country. She described how her recent travels to countries in the region have given her the opportunity to speak with Arab women and to learn how United States’ support for their participation has positively affected them (see Ambassador Verveer’s testimony). Wittes stressed the importance of having women fully participate in political change in the region. She mentioned three primary reasons for supporting women in the Arab Spring movements, from the United States’ perspective: stability in the Middle East, the importance of democracy, and youth’s role in changes in the Arab world (see Deputy Assistant Secretary Wittes’ testimony).

The second panel included Manal Omar, Director of Iraq, Iran, and North Africa Programs at the United States Institute of Peace, Mahnaz Afkhami, President of the Women’s Learning Partnership, and Dr. Sandra Bunn-Livingstone, President and CEO of Freedom³.

Omar described the situation in Libya and the importance of Islam in the Arab Spring. She attributed the lack of women’s participation in Libyan political leadership to the various prevailing — and at times, conflicting — ideas about women in positions of authority. She offered recommendations to the Senate about policies to assist the women of the Arab Spring: encouraging the Libyan Transitional Council (LTC) to implement a quota system to help foster female politicians (and making sure the LTC follows through on their promises) and helping countries such as Libya support women who are female heads of households.

Afkhami works with an organization that focuses on assisting transitioning democracies. She focused on the importance of United States support for women in these countries. Her testimony conveyed that United States support for women’s rights would help support international norms for women’s rights.

Bunn-Livingstone focused on the most oppressed people in the Arab Spring as being women, the poor, and in Egypt, in particular, Christians. She urged the United States to support the women in the Middle East and North Africa by holding national leaders accountable for support for women. She condemned the LTC leaders’ recent discussion about repealing the anti-polygamy laws current in existence in Libya. (see prepared testimony).

A general consensus of the hearing was the notion that women’s rights are human rights and that women who are integrated into society can help a country grow economically and become more successful where women’s roles are limited.

Questions to the panelists involved religion and the role it plays in the lives of Arab women. Panelists responded by affirming the importance of Islam and also noting that many women leaders in the region use the Qu’ran to support their aspirations for equality.

The resounding message from the hearing is that women’s political participation in the transitioning countries of the Arab world is essential for the establishment of stable democracies. As Senator Boxer said: “women are the key to success” in the Middle East and North Africa.

Lauren Farello is a second year undergraduate student at the George Washington University. She is studying International Affairs and minoring in Spanish and Women’s Studies. She has been a student volunteer for the Global Gender Initative since September 2011.

Student post by Katy Stewart

Over 17,500 women are trafficked into the United States every year. Around the world, the number is more like 27 million.

The film, Cargo, is a fictionalized story of Natasha, a young Russian woman who is smuggled into the U.S. She is driven to New York City by Sayid, an Egyptian transporter. Her story portrays the harrowing journey taken by millions of women around the world when they are sold into sex trafficking rings.

Many GW students, faculty, and professionals from the Washington, DC area gained a glimpse into this dark reality when they viewed the anti-sex trafficking film Cargo on September 26. The event was a pre-screening sponsored by the Elliott School’s Global Gender Initiative in collaboration with FAIR Fund.

As a student at GW, I’ve tried to imagine those numbers. What if the entire GW undergraduate student population (around 10,000), the entire graduate school population (around 7,000), the faculty and the administration were all trafficked? That’s a lot of people. A lot of faces I recognize. Not nameless statistics. My friends, my teachers, my dean, my university president.

Many of the scenes in Cargo were difficult to watch. Yet it’s vital that we do watch. It’s vital that we are witness to the inequalities around us. Raising awareness of the extent of sex trafficking was a major objective of the film. I think it’s safe to say that everyone left with more knowledge about this inhumane trade.

After the film ended, Chris Cooper, an executive producer of the film, and Andrea Powell, Founder and CEO of FAIR Fund, were available for discussion with the audience. During the question and answer period, questions were raised about preconceived notions of prostitution and sex trafficking in the mainstream U.S. Powell recounted the conversation she had with a Washington, D.C. cop that ended when he said, “well, there are girls who are victims and there are child prostitutes.”  Uncovering how this man, and many others, interpret the difference between those two categories is an essential step in stopping trafficking.

Both Cargo and the panel discussion reinforce how we all need to work to redefine our notions of sex trafficking and prostitution. Moreover, like Andrea Powell and FAIR Fund, we need to move beyond shock and awe at the statistics and the stories to get involved to stop the problem.

The premier of Cargo will be on October 21 in New York City. To learn more about this event or to donate on behalf of Cargo, visit here.

For another GW student perspective: see comment here by Peggy Briton, an MIPP student at the Elliott School.

Katy Stewart is a third year undergraduate student at the George Washington University. She is studying International Affairs and Global Public Health, and minoring in public health. She works as an assistant for the Global Gender Initiative and the Culture in Global Affairs Research and Policy Program.

Student Post by Delaney Allan

Students at the George Washington University are neighbors to IMF, the World Bank, the State Department, and, just a few blocks down, the president of the United States of America. Our campus is outfitted with its own police department. There are 36 emergency phones across campus and a fleet of university-owned vans pick up students from various destinations at night when they wish to return to campus. Safety is something that we as students often take for granted, wandering the blocks of campus in the evenings, with relative assurance that we will arrive at our destinations unharmed.

The film Women in War zones: Sexual Violence in the Congo sheds light on women for whom this picture of campus security is but a distant reverie. These women are survivors of multiple, violent rapes. They are survivors who do not have the luxury of walking to their fields in safety in broad daylight, let alone walking to a friend’s house at night. They live in a country whose history is littered with conflict caused by foreign interests in mineral reserves present in their land. These women live in a country whose constitutional structure is too weak to fight the brutal rapes that occur on a daily basis. An emergency phone and a safe evening shuttle service are as foreign to women in the Congo as their daily reality is to men and women in America.

At the viewing of Scott Blanding’s documentary, students of the George Washington University and professionals from the D.C. area glimpsed the horrors that fill the everyday lives of Congolese women. The documentary is filmed at Panzi Hospital, a medical facility in South Bukavu. The ward in focus is the temporary home to women and girls from all over the Congo who suffer from vaginal fistulas as a result of violent rape. Panzi Hospital is one of the few facilities in the country that provides medical care free of charge. If not for the hospital, many women would remain untreated in their communities, mutilated and shunned because of events that they had no way of stopping.

Bijoux and Helene, two of the girls’ whose stories are explored in detail, are victims of such violence. They came to Panzi Hospital to undergo surgeries to fix their bodies that had been torn apart by brutal militiamen, only to return to their homes after surgery to be raped again. The terrors of these girls’ lives began when they were 13 and 14 years old. Bijoux and Helene’s stories are tragic, and the girls are not alone. For women at Panzi hospital, this is not unusual.

Viewers grimace upon hearing the events that Bijoux and Helene have endured. The procedures they undergo again and again make viewers turn their heads away. What we have trouble watching, these women have had to endure not once, but many times. There is no guarantee that they will not have to go through these troubles again.

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Student post by Erica Buckingham and Caroline Spangler

In January 2011, Caren Grown was hired as the Senior Gender Advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). With a focus on gender analysis of economics, Grown served as the Economist-in-Residence in the Department of Economics at American University. Grown now leads USAID’s efforts to integrate gender issues into American foreign assistance.

On July 21, Grown, along with other members of the task team, headed a “listening session” in Washington DC on the, “Consultation on the Development of USAID’s New Gender Policy.” This was an opportunity for members of USAID’s Gender Policy Task Team to hear what civil society organizations would like to see included in USAID’s gender policy, which dates from 1983.

The Gender Policy Task Team consists of nine members from various departments of USAID. It was recently created to inform USAID policy on gender equality and female empowerment. Grown noted that the task team contains gender experts as well as non-gender experts so that it has a wide range of perspectives as well as legitimacy in the non-gender arena.

She enthusiastically stated, “We are not all gender experts, but we are all gender champions.”

At the listening session, Grown asked the audience to answer these questions:
• What are the most important gender equality principles to incorporate in policy?
• How do you balance mandates with incentives in order to enforce policy?
• What are the lessons learned from past experiences in gender integration?
• How do you know when you have achieved success?

The audience then took over the discussion with responses to the questions. The group of approximately 100 people, representing various NGOs around Washington DC, provided many ideas and recommendations. A few key issues were raised repeatedly:
• Fear that momentum would be lost down the line of policy creation and that the policy might be dismissed or easily dismantled; Grown agreed that the US needs a policy “that can live, not something that sits on a shelf”
• Fixing the gap between policy and implementation through in-country, on-the-ground enforcement;
• Need for resource support for implementation;
• Need for a feedback loop, a dynamic implementation process to gauge success and act as a learning mechanism;
• The inclusion of men; and
• Defining empowerment for women in a collective way; many people in the audience noted that women find strength in belonging to a group of women.

After the robust discussion, Grown ended the session with a dose of reality. She emphasized the challenge of creating a policy that is department-specific yet also general enough to span across the entire agency. She also stressed the fact that the Gender Policy Task Team has to make choices that are constrained by a tight budget. Grown summed up the meeting by saying, “We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” as a way to manage the expectations of civil society for what a new gender policy at USAID can realistically incorporate and ultimately do.

It was enlightening for us to see how this “listening session” worked. We noticed enthusiasm from representatives of all different areas, from people interested in legal justice and land rights to those interested in reproductive health and family planning. With such a wide variety of input and growing support from various sectors, integrating gender into all USAID policy may indeed become a reality with visible results.

It was also refreshing to hear a realistic summary from the task team who repeatedly emphasized the struggles they will face. With no extra resources to allocate, they must build a comprehensive policy that spans the entirety of USAID, yet one that digs deep enough to have lasting effects in-country. It is a daunting, yet admirable task that shows USAID is thinking in the right direction.

Erica Buckingham is a second-year M.A. student in the International Development Studies Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She is concentrating in anthropology and is interested in human rights and gender issues. She is the Program Assistant for the Global Gender Initiative (GGI) and the Culture in Global Affairs (CIGA) Research and Policy Programs of the Elliott School of International Affairs, the George Washington University.

Caroline Spangler is a third-year undergraduate student at the College of Arts and Science at New York University. She is majoring in anthropology and is interested in human rights. She is working as a summer intern with the Global Gender Initiative (GGI) of the Elliott School of International Affairs, the George Washington University.

Student post by Erica Buckingham and Caroline Spangler

It seems counterintuitive to think that war and conflict can empower women. But increasing case studies show that it sometimes happens.

At a July 12 event in the Conflict Prevention and Resolution Forum series held in Washington, DC, speakers Mona Dave and Patti Petesch affirmed this point. Both speakers described how breaking down gender barriers in conflict and post-conflict environments can empower women by providing entry points for them to assume new roles. (See website for full list of sponsors and speaker bios)

The speakers framed their talk by starting with a video about Rosie the Riveter, showing American women during WWII doing jobs traditionally done by men. Patti Petesch, an international development consultant, spoke about her work with the World Bank’s Voices of the Poor and Moving Out of Poverty data sets. Petesch explained that her work was based off of a data set of 125 women from four countries, (Colombia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Sri Lanka) ranging over ten years, from 1995-2005. The data offered two findings:

• Women living in communities that were directly affected by conflict rated higher on empowerment measures than women living in non-conflict areas
• These communities that contained more empowered women underwent faster reconstruction than those communities not affected by conflict.

Mona Dave, the Asia Program Officer at the National Endowment for Democracy, spoke about Nepali women during the civil war, subsequent peace processes, and how many women took up arms in support of the Maoist revolution. Dave noted that women who joined the Maoists “felt empowered and different from other women in society” and “equal to” male combatants.

Dave’s main point was that during the post-war reconstruction, it is essential to include women through participatory planning if the government, or outside aid forces, wish to have a meaningful and lasting impact on women in the society as a whole. Dave emphasized that both government forces and outside aid organizations need to create mechanisms and systems to effectively meet the needs of women before these women’s disillusionment with the government is exacerbated.

Both speakers emphasized that conflict can provide some women the opportunity to assume male roles and leadership positions, however they also noted that a key post-conflict challenge is to find a way for the women to maintain this level of empowerment. This “temporary empowerment” recalls the notion of constrained agency that Kaufman and Williams discussed at a previous event on gender and conflict. Both events underscored the positive impact that conflict can present to women – agency and empowerment – yet these speakers also brought attention to the fact that conflict-induced benefits for women are oftentimes not upheld when peace is restored.

Erica Buckingham is a second-year M.A. student in the International Development Studies Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She is concentrating in anthropology and is interested in human rights and gender issues. She is the Program Assistant for the Global Gender Initiative (GGI) and the Culture in Global Affairs (CIGA) Research and Policy Programs of the Elliott School of International Affairs, the George Washington University.

Caroline Spangler is a third-year undergraduate student at the College of Arts and Science at New York University. She is majoring in anthropology and is interested in human rights. She is working as a summer intern with the Global Gender Initiative (GGI) of the Elliott School of International Affairs, the George Washington University.

Student post by Erica Buckingham and Caroline Spangler

In a recent event in Washington, DC, on June 20, sponsored by the Gender and Conflict Speaker Series, Joyce Kaufman and Kristen Williams discussed the topic of women involved in political violence. Their research in conflict torn areas, such as Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia, reveals that some women choose to engage in violence as a way to gain political agency by challenging gender norms. This presentation was supported by USAID’s Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) and their Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM).

Kaufman and Williams outlined four possible political responses of women in situations of conflict and political violence:

• Do nothing
• Flee and become political refugees
• Become peace activists
• Become active combatants

Their research focused on options three and four and sought to understand the factors, motivations, and patterns that spur women to choose violence over peace, or vice versa, when responding to conflict.

They found five main motivations for women’s engagement in political violence:

• Survival
• Recruitment
• Fighting for “the cause”
• Personal factors such as revenge
• Feminist reasons

Regardless of a woman’s decision to turn to violence or peace, Kaufman and Williams found that women in both groups used their actions as a means of political expression.

Looking specifically at female suicide bombers, they found that women embrace this most extreme form of violence as a way to challenge the social, political, and cultural structure in traditional societies. Kaufman and Williams stated that an astounding 30% of suicide bombers are women and they emphasized how women who become suicide bombers do so as a form of political agency. However, Kaufman and Williams also noted that although these women had embraced their agency, it was a “constrained agency,” meaning these women’s actions were restricted to the orders of male leaders.

From their presentation, the take home message was that gendered roles of a violent man and a peaceful woman must be broken and need to be questioned. Women can, in fact, be caring mothers, yet also violent extremists.

This then raises a challenging argument: Is this newfound recognition of women as violent beings ultimately empowering or destructive? We can argue that women have found a place in a conflict torn world where they can make the ultimate stand for their beliefs. However, should we really be celebrating the fact that the highest form of power these women have within their patriarchal societies is killing themselves? If women really want to make a difference, it seems they have no choice but to take extreme action. It is a difficult issue that left us questioning whether women had agency or if their actions were determined entirely by a patriarchal order.

Erica Buckingham is a second-year M.A. student in the International Development Studies Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She is concentrating in anthropology and is interested in human rights and gender issues. She is currently the Program Assistant for the Global Gender Initiative (GGI) and the Culture in Global Affairs (CIGA) Research and Policy Programs of the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.

Caroline Spangler is a third-year undergraduate student at the College of Arts and Science at New York University. She is majoring in anthropology and is interested in human rights. She is currently an intern for the Global Gender Initiative (GGI) of the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.