>Dr. Elvira: Colleagues and Friends of the
University of Illinois Chicago, good morning. Colleagues and Friends of the University of
Illinois Springfield, good morning. Colleagues and Friends of the University of Illinois
Urbana Champaign, good morning. On behalf of the University of Illinois system and the
initiative Illinois Mexican and Mexican American Student Initiative, I welcome all of you to
this international symposium on the Politics of Inclusion. Good morning, colleagues and
friends fr
om the University of Illinois, and friends from Mexico. A special welcome to
students and distinguished authorities and executives from different institutions. Gracias.
Thank you so much for your wonderful presence here. I thank President Timothy Killeen for
his leadership and enthusiasm, recognizing the need and the opportunity that I-MMAS presents.
I-MMAS, this Initiative for Mexican and Mexican American students, represents a culture of
support, building pipelines for Mexican and Mexican Amer
ican students, smoothing the path,
retaining as many talented students as possible, and building a network of collaborators. I-MMAS
is about partnering in collaboration with our peers in Mexico to enhance ongoing efforts
for the system's three universities to increase Mexican and Mexican American recruitment and
expand educational opportunities. I feel proud to be part of the eighth International I-MMAS
symposium with the participation of distinguished researchers from Mexico and the University
of Illinois system. This symposium was organized by doctors Dr. Adriana Crocker and Dr. Hinda
[Applause], both from the University of Illinois Springfield. Thank you for your leadership
and great work. We thank all authorities and representatives of different institutions
for their presence and remarks, especially the Chancellor of the University of Illinois
System and Vice President of the University of Illinois System, Dr. Janet L. Gooch. Welcome,
connecting online, the Ambassador of the Consu
l General of Mexico in Chicago, Ambassador Reyna
Torres Mendivil. I think she's there, and the president of the University of Colima,
Mexico, who will give welcome remarks. But first of all, I need to introduce my boss,
Dr. Pradeep Khanna, the Associate Vice President for Corporate and International Relations
in the University of Illinois system. Thank you all for your participation on behalf of
I-MMAS at the University of Illinois System. I thank all the speakers for their meaningful
and engagi
ng presentations. I hope this will spark new collaborations, new discoveries,
and that many problems will be solved. So, we start with Professor Dr. Pradeep Khanna,
Vice President. Please, good morning to all of you. >> Khanna: It's my great pleasure
to be able to join you this morning for this wonderful session. I would like to thank some
of our distinguished colleagues who have joined us: Chancellor Gooch, Ambassador Torres, and
the president of the University of Colima, Ortiz. It's wonderful
to have you all join
today for what is a very important topic—the politics of inclusion that we are going to
discuss today. As I reflect back three years, Professor launched this program. First, she
conducted a survey to understand the interest among our campuses, among our faculty and
students, to have stronger relationships with Mexico. That broad consultation led to the
establishment of I-MMAS, or Illinois Mexican and Mexican American Students Initiative.
The initiative has gone well beyond s
erving the students and led to the establishment
of strong research collaborations among faculty from our universities and at multiple universities
in Mexico. This collaboration has covered a range of topics. Very often when we think
of the University of Illinois, we talk about engineering, human health, and environmental
research. But this initiative has touched every single important aspect for all of us
as human beings and citizens in this society. The U.S. and Mexico are connected with each
other historically. What happens in one country impacts the other and vice versa. So, I think
it's important for us to explore important issues that impact our society—the issues
of inclusion, the issues of environment, the issues of labor, and many other things come
up. So, it's my great honor to be here to join you for this symposium. I wanted to do
it in person and, like many bureaucrats, I was late to start and then got lost. I was
in the university hall looking for the second floor until so
meone told me I'm in the wrong
building. Made it just in time, so thank you all.
>Elvira: We will be right back to you. It's a distinguished pleasure to have here the
Chancellor of the University of Illinois Springfield. She has been a Vice President of the University
for about two years now. So, we welcome you and thank you for your remarks. Welcome, everyone.
My name is Janet L. Gooch, and I serve as the proud Chancellor of the University of
Illinois Springfield. It's an honor to have you here
today, so thank you for joining us.
UIS is a very proud partner with I-MMAS and the University of Colima to present this important
symposium. UIS is strongly committed to belonging. So, we heard about the universal aspect of
today, and I'm going to bring it a little closer to home. We are very strongly committed
to belonging, dignity, and justice for all. We have a shared goal of providing as much
support as possible for our Mexican and Mexican American and Latin Latinx students, so they
are be
st positioned to successfully achieve their academic pursuits and personal goals.
About 8% of our students here at UIS are Hispanic, and we offer a wide range of support to students
of all backgrounds, including programs such as our Hispanic Latinx initiative, Men of
Color program, first-generation student support programming—they all help students achieve
their goals while at UIS. We have the Necessary Steps mentoring program, international student
services represented here today, as well as va
rious clubs and organizations. They all
exist to help students feel that sense of belonging and support that they need to be
successful. In order for us to make progress in the important area of inclusion, we must
first understand what barriers exist and why they exist, which is why events like today's
symposium are so critical. By looking at historical practices as well as current trends and decisions,
we can identify possible solutions needed to balance the scales and the cycles that
must be d
isrupted to achieve more optimal inclusion and parity.
I am confident that today's discussions will move us closer to that ideal. Thank you again
for being here today, and special thanks to our UIS faculty, staff, and students who are
participating. I'm so proud of the passion of our UIS community and what they bring to
this topic. Later today, you will hear from some of our strongest advocates and experts
on how to better serve and empower Mexican, Mexican American, and Latinx students. It's
no
w my privilege to introduce Ambassador Reyna Torres Mendivil, Consul General of Mexico
in Chicago. I will admit I wish I knew Spanish a whole lot better. Again, thank you and have
a great event. >Ambassador Torres: Good morning, everyone;
it's such a privilege to be here today. I very much enjoy all the events that I must
organize, as I enjoy the enthusiasm that they put into enhancing the bilateral relationship
in the field of education. I am also delighted to see here many of our universities
in Mexico
represented. So, congratulations to all of you for this outstanding event, in particular.
I appreciate the leadership of Dr. Elvira de Mejia. I'm just going to say a few words
of the relevance for us of the issues that you will be addressing in this event. The
issue of inclusion has been at the top of our priorities during the last four years
that I have been heading and that I've had the privilege of getting this consulate. We
have tried to develop new programs and align with the poli
cies that our headquarters in
Mexico to promote the inclusion of all our communities, for all the consulate should
be a space where everybody is represented. So, that's why we have enhanced our programs,
for example, to serve women, in particular, to empower them through education. I highlight
one of our programs for women entrepreneurs; we have graduated from this program more than
75 women so far. Our health booth, for example, that is also very important for us, has served
so far this year mo
re than 80,000 persons. We have specific programs for our indigenous
communities, and it's also very relevant the activities that we have displayed and the
changes that we have made in our rules and regulations to make sure that our LGBTQ community
is also included. So, that is why these discussions that you are having today are so relevant;
we're looking forward to continuing this partnership with the University of Illinois System through
I-MMAS to make sure that the Mexican community is well r
epresented, is heard, and that you
know new developments can favor their well-being but also all those Mexican students that we
were hoping to bring here to Chicago to get into the University of Illinois System. So,
once again, thank you for your leadership, and I look forward to the results of this
symposium. Thank you; now, my privilege to present the next panelist, which is Dr. Christian
Torres Ortiz, the President of the University of Colima. >> Ortiz: Hola muy buenos días
un gusto en saluda
rles, mi nombre es Cristian Torres Ortiz Zermeno, Rector de la Universidad
de Colima; y me da mucho gusto saludar a la excelentísima señora embajadora, Reyna Torres
Mendivil, consul general de México en Chicago Estados Unidos, también saludo con mucho
gusto a la Dra. Janet L. Gooch, rectora de la Universidad de Illinois de Springfield
y vicepresidenta para el Sistema de la Universidad de Illinois; también saludo al Dr. Pradeep
Khanna vice presidente asociado para la cooperación y relaciones inte
rnacionales en el sistema
de la Universidad de Illinois y a la maestra Ana Cecilia Garcia Valencia directora general
de relaciones internacionales y cooperación académica de la Universidad de Colima. Y
a los investigadoras e investigadores que nos acompañan esta mañana.
Hello, good morning; it is a pleasure to greet you. My name is Cristian Torres Ortiz Zermeno,
Rector of the University of Colima; I am pleased to greet. It is with immense pleasure and
respect that I greet your excellency Ambassa
dor Reyna Torres Mendivil, Consul General of Mexico
in Chicago, USA; Dr. Janet L. Gooch, Chancellor of the University of Illinois of Springfield
and Vice President of the University of Illinois; Dr. Pradeep Khanna, Executive Associate Vice
Chancellor for Corporate Relations and Economic Development. Maestra Ana Cecilia Garcia Valencia,
General Director of International Relations and Academic Operation of the University of
Colima, and I also greet everyone gathered here today.
>Ortiz: Para la Uni
versidad de Colima es una fortuna poder estar en este evento de políticas
de inclusión de poder poner sobre la mesa las tres funciones sustantivas que tenemos
la universidad públicas en México, la enseñanza que podemos generar entre los estudiantes
Mexicanos y Estadounidenses con nuevas e innovadoras oportunidades de formación. Tenemos claro
que la visión a nivel local ya no es suficiente. Debemos fijarnos metas con una perspectiva
global y preparar a nuestros estudiantes para ello, eso es una n
ecesitad y es una prioridad
de la Universidad de Colima. >Translator: The University of Colima, we're
very proud to be part of this important symposium. I appreciate this valuable opportunity to
highlight the three essential roles of a public university, such as teaching, research, and
cultural extension. Firstly, through teaching, we can generate new and innovative training
opportunities; among a local level is no longer enough; therefore, we must set goals with
a global perspective and prepare
students for it, since it is already a necessity and
a priority for us. >Ortiz: La segunda función sustantiva que
sería la investigación que se ve materializada en eventos como el que nos convoca pues coinciden
profesores y profesoras comparten objetivos y proyectos para analizar temas de gran relevancia
como el que nos ocupa el de las políticas de inclusión en las Américas. Así mismo,
daremos a conocer y aprovechamos para escuchar platicas de otros profesores de distintas
partes del continente
, y sobre todo podemos generar una memoria de conocimiento que podrá
compartirse con nuestros estudiantes atreves de la academia.
>Translator: I believe that the best, secondly, research, which is materialized in events
such as the one that brings us together today, since it makes it possible to gather professors
who share objectives and projects to analyze highly relevant topics such as the one at
hand: inclusion policies in the Americas. Likewise, we will make known and take advantage
of the g
ood practices of other teachers from different parts of the continent, and above
all, we will be able to generate a memory of knowledge that can be shared with other
students through the academy. >Ortiz: Finalmente, también incidimos en
una tercera función como es la extensión de la cultura. Ya que, la movilidad entre
estudiantes y profesores el intercambio de información entre profesores y estudiantes
y las relaciones académicas entre las universidades, podemos así fomentar una relación intercu
ltural.
Todo lo anterior se conjuga de forma fundamentalmente para fortalecer un eje transversal que es
muy importante en la Universidad que es el de la internacionalización con la premisa
de educar al mundo. Reconozco el trabajo colaborativo de las autoridades universitarias de la Universidad
de Illinois, del Cónsul General de México en Chicago y, sobre todo, de los estudiantes,
profesores y directivos de la Universidad de Colima.
Prof; finally, indirectly, we contemplate the third essential ro
le, which has to do
with the extension of culture. Since with the academic mobility between the students
and teachers and the academic relations between both universities, we promote their culture
and international development. All of the above is fundamentally combined to strengthen
our transversal access of internationalization with the premise of educating the world. I
recognize the collaborative work of the university authorities of the University of Illinois,
of the Consul General of Mexico
in Chicago, and above all, the students, professors, and
directors of the University of Colima. >Ortiz: Reconozco todo el trabajo, todo el
trabajo colaborativo detrás de todo este proyecto, todo el trabajo realizado para la
um del Cónsul General de México en Chicago, y a todos los estudiantes, profesores y directores.
Nuestra universidad tiene mucho, mucho que ofrecer al continente y al mundo. A todos
ustedes mi total reconocimiento y agradecimiento por la organización de este simposio. Sólo
me
queda agradecerles por toda su valiosa atención y desearles el mayor de los éxitos.
Gracias, muchas gracias, maravilloso. >Translator: I recognize all the work, all
the collaborative work behind all this project, all the work done for the um of the Consul
General of Mexico in Chicago, and all of the students, professors, and directors. Our university
has a lot, a lot to offer to the continent and the world. To all of you, my total recognition
and gratitude for the organization of this symposium
. I can only thank you for all your
valuable attention and wish you the greatest success. Thank you, thank you very much, wonderful.
>Elvira: Thank you so much to all our leaders and Friends of I-MMAS, the University of Illinois
system, and as the President Killeen says, empower extraordinary. So, thank you so much and welcome
to continue joining us for the uh heart of this symposium. Thank you all for you coming
here, and now it's my great pleasure to introduce Dr. Adriana Crocker who will cont
inue with
the program or start the program. >Adriana: So, hopefully you can see me above
the microphone. I'm vertically challenged. So, first, um, I'm going to read the objectives
of, uh, today's, um, symposium. Essentially, our goal is first to strengthen research collaborations
with colleagues from Mexico on issues concerning the politics of inclusion in the Americas
and also to share, learn, and discuss history and strategies to better serve Mexican American
and Mexican students and communiti
es at the University of Illinois Springfield and the
University of Illinois System. And now, I'm going to be reading the bios.
We probably have them, but uh, I'm going to shorten mine because I guess it was too long
as I was reading it, uh, and so um, I'm going to read the next panelists that are going
to be uh, presenting, um, starting with myself and Dr. Christina Tapia Muro. So, I am a professor
of political science for the School of Politics and International Affairs and also Global
Studies
League uh, at the University. In our program, I teach comparative politics and
international relations courses with an emphasis on Latin American Politics. I have published
four edited volumes, including the last one titled "Gender Quarters in South America's
Big Three: National and Subnational Impacts." More recently, I have published peer-reviewed
articles on the status of gender parity legislation in Latin America and on the diffusion of hash
"Ni Una Menos," a social protest movement created
to fight against misogynist violence
in the region. Next will be Dr. Christina Tapia Muro, who is a professor of political
and social sciences at the University of Colima, Mexico. She has a Ph.D. in economics and administrative
sciences with public policy orientation from the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, and
specialization on public policy and gender justice from the Latin American Council of
Social Sciences (CLACSO) and the Latin American College of Social Sciences (CLACSO) Brazil.
Claudi
a Prado Meza, who is present here; she has been a professor at the University of
Colima. She graduated with a Ph.D. in sustainable agriculture and a certificate in social justice
and higher education from Iowa State University in 2013. Her interests are women entrepreneurs
and businesswomen, gender, and internationalization at home. Currently, she is a leader of the
research group 109 Transdisciplinary Business Studies. Some of her recent publications are
dealing with psychological wear and fami
ly economy in an edited book called "Impact on
Developing Countries: Coronavirus Pandemic and Online Education Impact on Developing
Countries." Along with Castanos Vel, she analyzed the impact of educational strategies for COVID-19
on the gender gap in undergraduate women in economic administrative sciences in Mexico.
Finally, Damian Vergara Bamontes is an assistant professor in the Gender and Women's Studies
Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Vergara Ramones is a schola
r
of Latinx migration studies, critical prison studies, and queer and trans of color critique
with a focus on the social life of the law. He is currently working on two projects, one
on LGBTQ immigrant detention, and his manuscript "The Administration of Illegality and Mexican
Migrant Life," which traces the formation and consolidation of illegality in a new phase
of prolonged social exclusion and control. His work has appeared in Ethnic Studies Review
and Rowy Magazine. Thank you. [Applause] So
, I'm going to make sure I time myself because
I'm not good with timing; you can do it, okay? I'll goad, um, so if you have my power, yeah,
um, I'm going to be also looking at my PowerPoint, so I'm going to be; you're going to see my
side, um. So, uh, the title of the presentation is "Women's Descriptive Representation: Argentina
and Mexico," and it's a collaboration between myself and Dr. Christina Tapia Muro in, uh,
Mexico in the University OFA. Next, our research project between Dr. Tapia
Mur
o and myself is intended to study gender parity in both Argentina and Mexico comparatively,
with a focus on subnational level policies and outcomes in both countries. Even though
Mexico has been able to implement parity more successfully and beyond the legislature, this
project is significant for other countries, including Argentina, at subnational level
units to compare and contrast. So, what is ex-scripted representation? Essentially, ex-scripted
representation is the level at which government
bodies reflect a nation's constituency and
why. In a representative democracy, governmental institutions should represent society at large
in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.
Next; um, and gender quotas are a type of descriptive representation in terms of gender.
Legislative gender quotas are institutional mechanisms requiring political parties to
fill; a certain percentage of women candidates in party lists for legislative elections,
so they're designed to improve the descript
ive representation of women in public bodies of
government. Um, why are these important? Well, the literature, including some of the work
I've done, says that descriptive representation leads to substantive representation, that
is, personal characteristics and experiences help shape legislated priorities and policy
preferences. Before we get into discussing Argentina, I'm
going to contextualize this presentation in global terms. So, as you can see, between
1945 to 1995, the number of parliaments
increased by 150, yet when you look at the percentage
of women parliamentarians and women senators, it did increase more or less. In the first
case, a little bit more than 8%, in the second case, even less than 8%, so descriptive representation
of women in parliaments is really underwhelming. Next; today, a little bit more than a quarter
of women are representing in legislators worldwide, alright, so 26.7%.
Next; but between 1995 and 2022, particularly in the Americas, this has changed dramatic
ally,
and this is not because, sadly, the United States, but it's because of Latin America
and the Caribbean, alright. And 1995 was a turning point for women in politics because
this is when the fifth conference on women took place in Beijing, and the ensued platform
for action created a wave of gender quotas worldwide. So, that's why it's important.
In 1995, look at the increase in points in the Americas, 21.1 points from 1995 to 2022,
followed by Europe, followed by sub-Saharan Africa, and so
on. But the Americas first.
Next; in fact, the Americas today has 34.7% of women in parliaments, alright, again followed
by Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and so on. Next; so why, essentially? Primarily, it's
because of these legislative gender quotas that appeared in America, started in Argentina
in 1991, and sort of a wave through the Americas, where between 20 or 40%, minimum percentage
requirements for candidate lists were adopted as law or in constitutional amendments as
well. It was initially
a Latin American phenomena, the adoption of gender quotas, but since then,
they have spread worldwide. By 2021, 138 countries were using gender quotas, different types.
You can ask me later on if you have questions. But 138 countries adopted gender quotas, and
within the first decade of the new millennium, the wave changed from quotas that require
20 to 30 to 40%, to now, parity 50%. So, the arguments, the laws required that women fill
50% of the candidate party lead for legislative elections,
and in many cases, going to see
the case of Mexico, beyond the legislature. Ten Latin American countries have introduced
or implemented parity laws, and the wave is still ongoing.
This; this has led the region to have some of the largest proportions of women in the
world, alright? Mexico is number one in the Americas; it's number four, uh, placed number
four out of 180 something countries according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Bolivia
and Costa Rica are placed within the first 10. Argentina
is today number 17, but they
had elections two weeks ago, so hopefully, it will go up a little bit in that ranking.
So, how did this fusion of policy occur? Why is it that some countries adopted, started
in Argentina, and there was this kind of a wave? Well, these waves were characterized
by the strong role of women's organizations and international organizations, particularly
in the case of parity, the Economic Commission of Latin America, and the conferences of women
that take place every thr
ee years. And there are ensued documents or consensuses that push
countries to adopt parity. For example, Ecuador was the first country in Latin America to
adopt gender parity, and that happened right after the conference in Quito. Internally,
leadership RW from presidents to legislators to women to women NGOs play an extremely important
role in adopting gender parity in these countries. Next; so, these are the Latin American countries
with gender quotas. Eighteen of the 20 Latin American countr
ies have today gender quotas,
and the ones who are highlighted are the ones that have gender parity, alright? So, there
is a 50% requirement minimum, and as the implementation has not been as smooth, particularly because
we used different electoral systems, because they were introduced in a different manner.
For example, Honduras introduced gender parity, and Patrick is here from Honduras originally.
U introduced gender parity but only at the primary level election, so by the time you
get to the
general election, they're watered down, and they're a little bit more than 20%
of women because of that. Next; so, what about Argentina? Well, Argentina,
as I said, it was the first country in the world to adopt legislative quotas. Not even
the legislators knew what they were doing when they adopted the quotas, much less a
president when he actually signed the bill into law. But that's why it took more than
15 years to go from quotas to parity in Argentina, and it was not until 2016, after eigh
t bills
did not pass, to pass the last one, and we implemented it in 2019.
Next; this is what happened in Argentina regarding legislators. From quotas in 1991, I told you
they had only like 4% of women in the Senate, 6% of women in the lower chamber, and then
there were various regulations because in 1993, for example, they were placing women
at the bottom of the list, so they were not elected. So, there were several regulations,
expansion to the Senate, and so on until you can see the 2017 with
gender parity, the last
elections. The last numbers I have are 2021, but you cannot see here because the last one
there. So, today, until the last election, which was two weeks ago, there were 44.8%
of women in the lower house and 43.1% of women in the Senate. Hopefully, after this election,
we'll reach parity, at least in the lower house.
Next; this is a provincial level. As you can see, well, the 22 provinces of the 24 districts
have gender quotas as well, but because of the electoral systems
and how these quotas
have been implemented, they have not been as successful. In some cases, there are only
two provinces with no parity, and hopefully, in the near future, they will also change
the way they actually put together these quotas. Next; so, I show you a list; this is a way
we vote in Argentina. It's called proportional representation, a closed list system. So,
when the voter goes and votes, you cannot pick your candidates because if they did,
we wouldn't have parity in Argentina. S
o, you just have to vote with the list, alright?
And as you can see here, you have men alternating with women. So, it's not only 50%, so of the
60, 12 candidates, six are women, but they also have to be placed in alternation; otherwise,
they would have been placed at the bottom of the list and not elected with parity, right?
Similar with the substitutes; they're also alternative. So, despite the constitutional
clause on affirmative action for women for all elected posts, women remain underrepres
ented
in the other two branches of government because there's not a really workable gender quota.
This deficiency confirms the critical role of gender quotas in parities and parity systems
in promoting women's representation in bodies of government.
Next; so, this is the judiciary, for example, which has been very difficult to achieve some
kind of parity in the judiciary in Argentina. And as Dr. Tapia Muro will discuss later on,
same thing in Mexico. So, look at where the women are in administra
tive positions, in
the lower positions, the higher the positions in the judiciary, as prosecutors, as ministers
of justice, or public defenders, which public defenders, by the way, are a very important
job in Argentina. They actually remain very underrepresented.
Next; how much do I have? Ah, okay, perfect. So, um, the same thing is with the executive.
So, Argentina has had two female presidents and three female vice presidents. So, it's
one of the countries with more representation of women rig
ht at that level. Yet, the current
government has only 22.2% of the total cabinet positions. Right? And women governors have
decreased since the last presidential election to only two of 24. Um, we'll see what happens
after the next election. Women mayors are around 12% of the total, and only two provinces
had more than 20% of the total mayors, according to Mal Jami from the F. The situation of women
mayors in Argentina is like an obstacle race. Next; so this is since 1993, Argentina has
had dem
ocratic government. We had a dictatorship for quite some time before, and as you can
see, the proportion of women in ministries has increased but can remain stale for the
last two presidencies at 22%. All right? So, that is an issue that it has to be considered,
particularly for the next president. Hopefully, next. Social media also play a key role in
promoting the inclusion of women. That was and the one on the left, Racing Club. I don't
know those of you who are fans of soccer. Racing Club org
anized a game of women's soccer
that says, "Let's level the field." All right? At all, and these were political women is
a red I can parliamentarians. She is from the province of Buenos Aires, and they work
across political parties too because what kind of women are we going to get? You know,
we want to get women that really represent women's interests. So many women were protesting
in favor of having feminists in listas, hash feminists and listas, not any women, feminists.
All right? Next; and
these are women saying, "Let's level
the field." Next one; so, par has become the new game
in town for women. I'm done, legislators in Argentina. Yet, whereas gender parity has
been adopted in both national and subnational level legislators, it has not been implemented
uniformly. In addition, without gender parity, women have been overwhelmingly underrepresented
in Argentina's executive and judicial branches of government. Thank you.
Okay, Christina Tapuro would follow. Thank you, Christina. Tap
ia Muro: Thank you, Dr.
Crocker. Well, hello. It's a pleasure to be here. I want to thank you for the opportunity
to share some of the work that Professor Adriana Ker and I are doing at this moment. Well,
my presentation is about the effects of gender quotas in terms of descriptive representation.
We will analyze the composition by sex of the different branches: executive, legislative,
and judicial at both federal and subnational levels in order to understand the Mexican
path toward parity. Next
, please. Well, issues of parity and the representation
of women have been approached from different perspectives. In this panorama, it's possible
to distinguish three main lines. First, causes and the processes of affirmative action for
increasing the presence of women in politics. Two, different effects of these actions on
issues like, for example, both descriptive and substantive representation of women and
other historically underrepresented groups. And three, the relationships between diffe
rent
contextual factors and affirmative actions, for example, structures and practices of political
parties, media, etc. In addition, in a transversal way, some of the most important variations
in the literature come from different spatial levels and, obviously, the case of interest.
Next, thank you. Well, in Mexico, like in Latin America, the
path to parity has been developing for the last 30 years. As you can see, in 1993, modifications
were made to the federal code of electoral institutions a
nd procedures (KIPE in Spanish).
However, in this first moment, such inclusion represented just a recommendation. In 2002,
a maximum quota of 70% was specified for either sex in the candidacies for the legislative
branch, as well as consequences in case of non-compliance. Gender parity became a reality
on February 2014 but only in the legislative branch. Five years later, in 2019, the constitutional
reform parity in everything was published. It extended this principle to executive and
legislativ
e branches across their different levels. Next, please.
Well, Basquez, for example, analyzes the constitutional reform parity in everything, highlighting
both its scope and the challenge for the implementation. And she explains that the modifications related
to parity as a transversal topic do not entail dismissal of personnel but will be applied
progressively to the designations made after the publication. Also, well, in the legislative
branch, the candidacies for both deputies and senators, an
d corresponding to proportional
representation too. In the executive branch, while designation of the cabinet members at
the state and federal levels, candidacies for positions of public election, municipalities,
and indigenous representatives. And in the judiciary branch, the formation of judicial
federal and state bodies, as we will see in the data, the characteristics of the action
promoted parity have allowed significant progress, even though challenges remain. Next, please.
Well, different
branches have shown a heterogeneous increase of women in office. The difference
between branches can be explained by factors such as the levels of government, national
or subnational, selection mechanism, duration of the position, the existence of road and
gender stereotypes in certain activities, among many others. So, as you can see, currently,
the Congress of the Union demonstrates parity. The Chamber of Deputies is made of 50% women
and 50% men, while the Senate is made of 50.8% men and 49.2
% women. However, if we observe
the composition during the 90s, men represented more than 80% in both chambers. As we can
see, the condition generated in 2002 created a marked trend toward the increase of women
in the legislative branch. Next, please. Well, in the Congresses of each of the federal
entities, parity has practically also become a fact in recent years. In just two states,
the percentage of women is less than 50%, but only by a slight difference.
Certainly! Here's the revised text wi
th punctuation and capitalization in place:
However, in order to understand the mechanisms that have favored this outcome and improve
it, we should analyze disaggregated data. You can see in the slide concerning the proportion
of female deputies elected by proportional representation, the national average is 43.1%.
But for men, this percentage reaches only 34%. In most entities of the Mexican Republic,
you can see 72%. The proportion of women selected by proportional representation is higher tha
n
the corresponding percentage of men. So, although parity has been reached in the legislative
branch at the local level, it has been the result of affirmative actions, specifically
the selection of them by proportional representation. Well, the Mexican case is consistent with
literature. Several works documented that countries with electoral systems of proportional
representation integrate a greater number of women in their parliaments than states
whose system is majority-based. Next, please. S
orry, sorry.
In the executive branch, well, as in the legitimate case, significant progress has occurred in
terms of parity. However, although affirmative actions have produced important results, women
still have difficulty accessing positions of power. As you can see at the state level,
the proportion of women as governors has increased from the immediate previous period, from 6.2%
to 31.2%, showing a difference of 25 points. Concerning the states in which women were
elected as governors, there
are certain similarities about political gender violence, about education,
and about gender roles. Regarding political gender violence, 90% of those states present
lower levels of people sanctioned for this than the national average. In fact, 60% of
those states have no cases at all for the period 2020-2021. In education, 90% of those
states reflect a higher average level than the national level. And about gender roles,
80% of those states reflect a lower gender gap in the average weekly hour d
edicated to
unpaid work at home than the average for the entire country. So, next, please.
However, at the local level, the composition of city councils or municipalities has shown
a trend toward parity. But again, if we disaggregate this data by position, well, the proportion
of women as municipal president or mayor is lower than men, just 23.1%. Concerning the
three states with the highest proportion of women as mayor – Baha California, Tamaulipas,
and Tabasco – we can see some similarities ag
ain. So, states where the presence of women
in the executive branch has advanced show high educational levels and more egalitarian
societies, since there is less difference between the sexes in terms of time dedicated
to home care activities. Sorry. Next, please. About the composition of the federal public
administration, well, the distribution by functions shows that in 2019, the majority
were men. Data after the parity in everything reform show a positive change. The proportion
of women increa
sed from 17.6% in 2018 to 23.7% in 2021. At the state level, as you can see
in the slide, the proportion of women heads of public administration institutions also
shows recent advantage. In 2020, the national average was 27.1% women, which increased to
34.3% in 2022. In 2022, across all states, 87.5% of them show a greater or equal position
of women than two years earlier. The only sections were Guanajuato, Chihuahua, Mexico
City, and W. Next, please. Well, what about the judiciary branch? As
in
the executive branch, parity in the judicial branch is recent. Let's remember the reform,
parity in everything reform 2019. According to authors like Fierro and Burgos, the low
receptivity of this arena to the press of women may be because although the regulations
are apparently gender-neutral, they specify sometimes the requirement for some positions
to respond to the needs of the service, which frequently could imply mobility. So other
works suggest that this represents a relevant barrier for
women because of domestic and
childcare tasks. So, the proportion of women in the plenary session of the Judicial Power
of the Federation reached 34.7% in 2022. That has increased by just over 10 points from
2018. As we can see in the graph, the Federal Judicial Council is the closest space to parity,
while the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation reflects a significant increase in
women. The Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power of the Federation demonstrates the least
progress in the mat
ter, and it has remained the same condition in recent years. Just 28.5%
of its positions are occupied by women. Next, please.
Well, as we saw, advances in descriptive representation of women are heterogeneous among different
branches, exhibiting more progress in legislative branches, since both federal and local congresses
reflect parity. In contrast, both executive and judicial branches have been affected by
regulatory provisions for parity just recently. So, the parity in everything reform aro
se
only in 2019, and not only until 2020 were such changes made for the corresponding frameworks
to warrant progress have been made in the presence of women in government and municipal
presidencies, with municipalities being the closest spaces to parity. However, main areas
of opportunity remain in public administration. Finally, the judiciary branch reflects progress
toward the incorporation of women; however, it still does not represent equality. We can
conclude that despite this optimistic pi
cture, there are challenges to overcome. Thank you
very much. That's called that. Um, Europe had better
parity than the US for many years, and has that changed? Um, with your new chart, are
you looking strictly at the federal level, or...? Oh, well, um, Europe has so many several
countries that have gender parity. These include France, Italy, um, Spain, but others do not.
For example, the UK has parity at the party level. So essentially, only certain political
parties can have parity or not. So,
the Labour Party has a 50% parity, the Liberal Democrats
(this is in the UK) have 40%, and the Conservative Party, which is the ruling party now in the
UK, none, zero. So that essentially makes up the C of Commons at a very low level, about
maybe 20% or so. I don't have the data right now, so I'm just making that up, but I can
look it up. Um, other countries have, um... So we include all of Europe, um, and some,
as I said, some European countries have been very serious about parity, and that's
particularly
the case of Spain and France. But, for example, France, can I keep going, or is it too much?
Okay. Uh, France, for example, has not a very friendly legislative system for women because
they have a majoritarian, very similar to the US, where we have a plurality, so it's
one person you elect per district. All right. But, in the case of France, it has to be a
majority, has to gain at least more than 50% of the votes in order for the legislator to
win a seat. All right. So they could go
to a runoff election, and this dilutes also the
parity in France as well. So these are the problems that are facing the problems of implementation.
And really, it's not culture. It's really institutions. It's really how institutions
are designed. Because, like Mexico, for example, and you can add to that what happened at the
beginning when they just had a 30% quota in Mexico, that the parties tried to fill the
quota with women, but when they got to the position, well, they quit and they put the
substitute, and the substitutes were men. So, right now, well, there were changes made
in the legislation to prevent and eradicate this kind of behavior. In other words, institutions,
electoral systems, proportional representation, closed lists, better than open lists because
you don't want to give the voter the choice because the voter chooses men, like it happened
in Brazil, for example, that has a quota but has not been able to implement it well. And,
uh, so the fewer choices voters have, uh
, the more women can actually achieve parity.
It's very sad, but we still live in a very patriarchal society.
Why there, um, seven... Yeah, ah, comment. Yes, this is so different from our situation
in the United States. We, I mean, I don't know if everyone in Mexico knows, but, um,
we have very few quotas legally in the US. And even affirmative action, which was absolutely
not a quota-based system, the Supreme Court recently decided that we could no longer consider
race in admissions to higher e
ducation institutions. So, the University of Illinois and all universities
are grappling with that. Um, I guess one question would be, why do you think this is possible
in so many countries, yet in the US, it's practically unimaginable to have quotas, racial
quotas, gender quotas for, um, political positions? Yeah, I think if I'm not wrong, Matt is here.
He's a specialist in American government, but only the Democratic National Convention
has some kind of quota. That's the only part of the gover
nment. But, um, yeah, he can add
to that. He specializes. Why don't we have quotas, Matt?
Oh, yeah. Oh, the DNC requires it for its party committees at the state and local level.
Okay. Um, and the RNC does not, although some state-level Republican parties do require
it. But of course, as you mentioned before, being a member of a party doesn't mean you're
one of the candidates in the US. So we might have parity in these party organizations,
but that doesn't necessarily translate to parity in the
candidates who run for office.
Excellent. Yeah. And it's also the electoral system, you know? Having one member per district
be elected, as Christina was saying, even in Mexico, you have a mixed-member system.
You have both proportional representation and plurality. It works better in proportional
representation. I mean, literature says that if you have a list of candidates, the seats
are going to be won by a more diverse body, not only on the basis of women, but also on
the basis of ethnicity,
background, and so on. And the electoral system in the US does
not help to have that kind of diversity in the legislature.
So, hello. I am from Latin America, El Salvador specifically, and in Latin America, in general,
I guess because of their culture, in part, women do not tend to get involved in political
parties or look for government positions or being candidates. My question is, if in any
of these countries around the world, there is a quota for women in public service, let's
say 50%, but t
here are only 25% candidates, what do they do? Are there any initiatives
to promote or push women to look for those types of positions? Because it doesn't really
matter to have a law if there are no people to fill the positions or interested in them.
You want me to answer first, and then you want to add some? Okay. So, um, the quota
is a requirement. So, um, in most countries, the difference is, you know, among different
Latin American countries, I'm talking about Argentina and Mexico, that's a
requirement.
H. So, in order for a party list to present themselves for elections, they have to have
the quota. They have to comply with the 50%. If they don't, they cannot run for election.
So, they better find them, and what has been they have been doing is training women. So,
that picture that I showed you about "Let's level the field," that "Red, the Mentor as
Politicas," that's exactly what they are. They are a wave of mentoring future women
to become politicians and train them because that
could be a problem to find candidates,
you know? So, let's mentor them. And they're going across political parties as well. Um,
if women see that there is a friendly environment for them, they will run for politics. They
are as educated, if not more educated, today. They are more actually educated women than
men today. They go to colleges and receive college degrees more than men today in Latin
America. So, evidently, they have the education and they have the merits. H. So, they should,
and the
y have an environment that is friendly for women. So, they should be able to run
for politics. And that's why I don't think there have been many problems in finding women
to run for legislators. In Mexico, has it been a problem to find women candidates? I
guess. Um, something that I am, I think that women have been in politics since... I mean,
they just don't have the recognition. So, they are in the political parties, but they
don't have that position to run for the election. So, now, quotas ar
e pushing the political
parties to give them that condition and the candidacies. So, they are there. But it's
a lack of... I don't know. It's like a bias. Like a bias way to look at politics. To think
that women are outside and just for quotas. They are going in, yeah. Yes.
Five minutes, so I just want to add something to that. Dr. Tapia and I did research, oh
my god, when I first got to university, perhaps 10 years ago, and we started interviewing
women who were actively participating in this t
ype of parties, especially PRI, the main
ones. One of the conversations that we had a lot is women would share with us that they
were the ones organizing their communities, their neighborhood, like doing all these events,
bringing the families together, introducing the other politicians and the plans that the
party had for the entire term if elected. Then, when deciding the party, when deciding
who to propose as a candidate, they were never recognized. So, they were doing all the hard
work, mobi
lizing all the communities, shaking and making the community get involved and
participating. But when the party had to choose who to select, they weren't selected. And
I remember one of the participants that I interviewed, he was like, "I'm very young,
his name was Miguel, I'm 26, and I was already selected for AOS. So, I'm very happy. This
changed drastically my relationship with, let's say, Adriana. Adriana started in this
way before the night. She knows a lot of people. She's really hardworki
ng, and she has never
been selected to any position. So, I'm doing way better than her, and I'm younger." And
I'm like, "No, dude, that's not the case. That's not why you are being selected at all."
So, now the party is like, they have to recognize, but they have been there. They have been doing
all the job. So, they have to, one of the incidents, and we probably have to finish,
one of the incidents that happened in Argentina when they just created this quota law is that
at congressional level,
in Congress, there were no bathrooms for women. So, they had
to build bathrooms because all of a sudden, we have this 30% of women, and they didn't
have bathrooms for them. All right. And the other issue was how to vote. When you vote
in Argentina in Congress, there is these kind of pedals. It looks like an accelerator in
your car, a pedal, and they were so far away that women could not reach the pedal because
they were shorter than men in many cases. And so, they had to stand up, and now they
c
hanged the technology in that too, you know, to help women.
o yeah, my podium, this is not made for me, definitely. Uh, so, you're right. Um, so they
have to adjust and adapt, you know, to the new circumstances of more women, uh, coming
to politics. So yeah, there's a couple of questions online. Um, Jayen likle, sorry if
I'm pronouncing your name wrong, asks, "How do we maintain a democratic voter system while
also working towards parody?" Well, I think they're, uh, they're one and the same, uh,
so, uh, if you are talking about, uh, we live in representative democracies, uh, and we
have 50% of women, uh, in a given society, H shouldn't we also have 50% of women in bodies
of government, so we are following representative democracy? Uh, or, uh, the problem are the
countries that do not have a percentage. So we do maintain and follow principles of democracy,
and actually, one of the reasons why it was adopted is precisely because of that, that
if we live in democracies, we should have rep
resented the constituencies, uh, in Congress,
in the legislatures, or in other world of government, and beyond, you know, in the industry,
and so on, higher education everywhere. Hopefully, I responded. You want to say something else?
Okay. There's one more question from Martin. Martin Nto, "Are there any efforts in Mexico
to promote the idea of gender equality and parity in popular culture?" Um, well, um,
in the Electoral Institute, they are working in media, like, uh, campaigns, not to sensiti
ze
the population, to create conscience about the relevance of women in politics. So, I
guess media, everyone. Uh, thank you for inviting me to this symposium on the politics of inclusions.
I like especially to thank Adriana and Hinda for making my visit here a possibility, and
also L that I get to meet today. Uh, thank you so much for everything. So, next one,
please. Uh, I'll be sharing the findings of a project that is titled, relates to the phase
of activism analysis of the relationship betw
een gender and social actions. So, for this particular
presentation, I'm just focusing on an article that actually, uh, I'm writing with Dr. Christina
Tapia, who just met her, and Dr. Anar Martinez. And this article is about empowerment and
social participation in these women that are doing activism. I'm going to start the presentation
sharing a little bit about KMA, the context about where KMA is located, and how the situation
is for women that do activism in that state. And then the methodolog
y, who got to participate
or collaborate in this project, and how we analyze the data that we got. And finally,
the conclusions. So, key findings, next. So, for the literature review, uh, I thought there
would be more students. And so, I had this conversation about gender perspective and
why it was important to do research on gender perspective, because basically it's really
important for us not only about disaggregating data, right? Like women and men and get to
participate in this. But also ho
w women get to organize and how situations that are common
for men affect in a different way to women. So, we did the research on the wings, for
example, theoretically on Sandra Harding and Marcela Lagarde. And one of the things that
we wanted to make sure is to understand how women and men are affected differently when
doing activism and the kind of relationships that develop among each other and how these
relationships differ and why are. So, the other two aspects that we also analyzed in
thes
e articles are women's empowerment and because we want to understand their participation.
When we analyze women's empowerment, we are understanding their participation. For this
particular article, we're just focusing on the impact that public funding has on their
empowerment. But also the local regulations that are in place, are those helping women
to participate more or to participate. So yeah, my podium, this is not made for me,
definitely. Uh, so, you're right. Um, so they have to adjust and
adapt, you know, to the
new circumstances of more women coming to politics. So yeah, there's a couple of questions
online. Um, Jayen likle, sorry if I'm pronouncing your name wrong, asks, "How do we maintain
a democratic voter system while also working towards parody?" Well, I think they're, uh,
they're one and the same. Uh, so, uh, if you are talking about, uh, we live in representative
democracies, and we have 50% of women in a given society, shouldn't we also have 50%
of women in bodies of g
overnment, so we are following representative democracy? Uh, or
the problem is the countries that do not have a percentage. So we do maintain and follow
principles of democracy, and actually, one of the reasons why it was adopted is precisely
because of that, that if we live in democracies, we should have represented the constituencies
in Congress, in the legislatures, or in other world of government, and beyond, you know,
in the industry, and so on, higher education everywhere. Hopefully, I res
ponded. You want
to say something else? Okay. There's one more question from Martin. Martin Nto, "Are there
any efforts in Mexico to promote the idea of gender equality and parity in popular culture?"
Um, well, um, in the Electoral Institute, they are working in media, like, campaigns,
not to sensitize the population, to create conscience about the relevance of women in
politics. So, I guess media, everyone. Uh, thank you for inviting me to this symposium
on the politics of inclusions. I like es
pecially to thank Adriana and Hinda for making my visit
here a possibility, and also L that I get to meet today. Uh, thank you so much for everything.
So, next one, please. Uh, I'll be sharing the findings of a project that is titled,
relates to the phase of activism analysis of the relationship between gender and social
actions. So, for this particular presentation, I'm just focusing on an article that actually,
I'm writing with Dr. Christina Tapia, who just met her, and Dr. Anar Martinez. And
this
article is about empowerment and social participation in these women that are doing activism. I'm
going to start the presentation sharing a little bit about KMA, the context about where
KMA is located, and how the situation is for women that do activism in that state. And
then the methodology, who got to participate or collaborate in this project, and how we
analyze the data that we got. And finally, the conclusions. So, key findings, next.
So less, um, so I already explained a little bit o
f this, and there is one slide that is
missing, but, um, it's okay. I'm going to explain a little bit. It's about, that's okay,
thank you so much. Uh, so the slide that is missing, it was a little, I was sharing a
little bit about Kima and the context in which all the women that we interviewed, all the
context in the way that they were doing their activism. And one of the things that we found
is being an activist in Mexico is not easy. So, as I already told you, we conducted the
research from 12
14 to 1218, 1299, 12, yeah, 128. And one of the news articles that was
very popular at that time was there was a spyware that was quite used ER from the government
to spy activists, and it's called Pegasus. So they were basically tracking their cell
phones, and, um, they found that they were using a, uh, the Mexican government was using
this ASP to track human rights activists, also lawyers who were defending this activist,
and journalists. And at some point, early this year, it was also found t
hat this current
federal government is still using that SP, even though when this president was a candidate,
was completely opposite to that practice, and he commented h he's also apparently benefiting
from using that spyware. Another aspect that we found about KMA is KMA is a very small
state. It's on the Pacific side of the country, is exactly in the middle, if the third smallest
and regarding people, we are the least populated one. However, we have been in the list of
one of the most one of t
he states with most domestic violence, we're always in the top
10 rank of domestic violence, and the number of women that are killed by their partners
or relatives or cross relatives is really, really high. That's one of the reasons why
we have something that is called "Alerta de Vien." So basically, this is a federal program
in which the federal government gives more funding or money or allocates more money to
the state government in order to stop or to prevent this type of violence. One of the
things that is happening, though, in KMA, and Dr. Tapia already explained it better
than I did, and I'm going to do is we are getting towards having parity in all the chambers,
the local and the federal ones. And also, in 2021, a woman got selected as a governor.
Her name is IND-viso. And so, I'm going to keep talking because the slides that I need
are not there. But, as you see in the photos, those are portraits that another professor
from photography Professor took. And it was, we had a metho
dology that is called photoo.
So we use a lot of photos to do this research, and it was really interesting because this
particular photographer, this particular professor was taking a lot of photos of them portraits,
also photos of the work that they do. But also, uh, the activists were taking a lot
of photos about what they do, what they do it, where do they do it, um, and what are
the reasons why they keep doing this work. And so we had really long conversations about
their activism, and we we
re trying to understand how it has changed over the years. And that
resulted in a sample that it's, um, it has three different stages. So we have, uh, the
sample that we have, we have activists that are doing gender parity, gender empowerment,
that are doing activist environmental activism, and animal welfare. And so we have women that
are 18 to 68 years old. And okay, so we have the initial stage, medium stage, IMM mature
stage. And we use an approach called life course approach to identify if
they are doing
differently stuff and why they are doing differently, especially regarding empowerment and getting
public funding from the state government. Let's see, next one.
So fin regarding empowerment. So one of the things that we found that we tried to figure
it out with empowerment is if based on two things, an aspect that the government can
control regarding regulatory framework and funds from public source ER. And I would like
to explain a little bit about empowerment. First, we analyze
it, and we are talking about
giving a voice to people. But also, it's not about just making them visible, allowing them
to have a say an important decision and processes. So to make this happen, it is really important
to have a space mechanism and resources in place that encourage and enable participation.
So that's why we decided to analyze the regulatory framework, um, public financing, two aspects
that the government can control. Next one. What we find. So these are the findings. So
I, I don
't know if you remember where we have three different stages, the very young activist,
then the medium and mature stage. And those are like three different groups of activists.
And when we start analyzing empowerment, we realize that the way that they do this empowerment
aspect or that they get involved is very different depending on the stage of life that they are.
The activist that were in the initial stage, they were very active about visibilization,
a problem, or a social issue. They were pa
rticipating in protests a lot. So, for example, in KMA,
a lot of the young activists, uh, a lot of the activists that were participating regarding
legalizing abortion were really, really young, and they were really open about it, and they
weren't afraid to show their faces and to voice their opinions. And, however, when we
analyze the same aspects, the activists that were in the medium and mature stage, they
were more focused on changing legislation, like if we change the law, it will be easier
for other communities to get more involved, to be recognized, to be more visible, and
to have their voice heard. So, we found that they participate in a different way in the
political process, in the regulatory framework. And then, regarding public financing, this
was really interesting too. Well, for me, obviously, because I did the project, but
even now, it was really interesting. So, in order to have access to public funding from
the state government, you have to be registered, and you actual
ly have to go through a really
long process to get registered. It's not an easy process.
I don't know if it's the same for here, so only those activists who were in the middle
or stage have all the paperwork done and in order to actually be able to have access to
these calls and to these grants. One of the things that we found, though, is that the
calls that the state government does in granting the money are actually quite erratic. This
meant that the activists who were in the initial stage did
n't have access to public funding.
However, one of the things that we found is, since they work closely with other activists,
because KMA is so small, they had somehow access, or they could benefit from accessing
these fundings, so they will share in some way.
Another aspect that we found is some activists were adamantly saying no to have access to
this type of funding because they feel if they receive money from the government, they're
going to think that they have a say in what they do, the wa
y they do it, and why they
do it. So, they prefer to use their own resources, regardless if they are little or not, instead
of using state resources to participate and to keep participating in this type of activity
that they do. Finally, I'm going to conclude that one of
the things that we found is really important is how empowerment works in order to create
effective public policies. We found that the government actually plays a crucial role in
how much these activists were participating in emp
owerment activities or activities that
will empower them. But what we found is not that the local government was creating or
had created spaces for women to participate actively in the decision-making process. What
we found is these activists were actively working on changing regulations to make sure
that their voice was heard, but not only theirs but also those who are kind of like marginalized
communities. For example, abortion was legalized, and now it's against the law, something that's
call
ed "therapia reconversion," basically camps for converting the LGBT community.
Another legislation that is new is quite easy in KMA to change all your birth certificate
and everything if you are transitioning from male to a transgender community. Another aspect
that also changed recently is regarding animal warfare, which has become a huge issue. Right
now, there is an interesting conversation happening regarding funding. What we found
is if you are a mature activist, if you are an activist in t
he mature stage, it's very
likely that you are well recognized among the activist communities. So, you have the
social capital to access this type of funding in an easier way, contrary to those activists
who are really young and are still learning how to participate in all these processes.
They are still kind of newbies, so they don't know how all the administrative processes
work. So, they don't have access to this type of funding. However, they have been a really
nice community in which they s
hare resources. But also, there is a really good proportion
of women activists who are like, "We are not taking part in those fundings. We don't need
them. Or if we need them, we'd rather work without them because working with the government
is usually bad news." Even though we have a different party now, things are different,
but that doesn't necessarily mean they are especially better. Sorry about the confusion
with the presentation, but that's pretty. Much [Music] at the end.
[Music] Okay.
Ok
ay, yeah. Um, I was wondering whether, uh, first of all, some of the activists have been
involved in government as well, or have they become legislators? Number one and number
two, hasn't it made a difference since you have a woman governor in KMA? That's a really
interesting question. So when we decided on the sample, we decided that they had to be
doing activism in KMA for at least three years. And also, they couldn't be underage just because
of legal reasons. So 18 and older. Another aspect t
hat was really important for us when
deciding with whom we would be collaborating was that their activism shouldn't be related
to a political party, to the church, or to the government. So we wanted them to be completely
independent. If we look at the sample in 2014 and if we look at the sample now, almost 10
years later, now that a different party is empowered in KIMA, we couldn't interview a
lot of the women that we interviewed 10 years ago because many of them were working so hard
on changing
the entire legal framework that now they are in some public positions. Some
of them are in public positions because the same NGOs proposed them and had events in
which they were like, "We are proposing this person as the future governor because she
has shown that she knows about the topics, she has worked closely with the community,
and she actually cares about the community." So we have a lot of people in power now who
are in positions in the public government because they were proposed by the
NGOs. And
there were some others that, now that there is a new party, they have relationships or
they were more inclined to the left, which Morena is supposed to be, so that's why they
are more involved with the government. Yeah, that's a very interesting question. So it
has changed. Yes, in some aspects things are good, and in some aspects things are not.
So Mexico has 32 states, and each state has its own legislation regarding issues. I think
you understand this better than me. For example, w
hen thinking about that KMA is one of the
very few states in which now it's possible to have access to abortion, also the identity
law regarding transgender, also the banning of all this conversion therapy. I don't know
if it's the same term in here. Yes, it is the same. Okay, so it's banned. So things
have changed in that sense because many of the legislators are part of Morena, which
is perhaps a little bit more to the left than the previous parties. But there are still
some issues that need t
o be worked on. For example, access to funding was easier with
the previous parties than now that we have been working with Indy. She has been empowered
in 2021. There hasn't been a call, no call whatsoever, to grant fundings for NGOs in
KMA. So in that sense, a lot of NGOs are having a really, really hard time even though they
keep doing the job that they do. So it's a mix between it's not so bad, but some others,
it's really bad. So I'm learning a lot from it. And I was curious to hear from yo
u what
the reception is of people in the state of KMA about the participation of women's activism.
So like, how are the women responding to it? How are the men responding to it? You explained
a little bit that the climate is really hostile. So, you know, like, kind of want to hear how
that happens. So the domestic violence in KMA hasn't gotten any better. There was a
national survey that was published at the beginning of this year, and the results show
that KMA is still one of the most violent s
tates towards women, especially.
h, there are two types of domestic violence that are most common: domestic violence and
also psychological violence. Um, what is really, really sad is it starts really early. Women,
since the age of 11 years old, start complaining about being in somehow of a violent situation.
So, that situation hasn't changed. And a conversation that was having with Adriana yesterday, during
lunch, it was, there are, we have more women, as you saw in the previous presentation, w
e
have more women in the local chambers, but these women have also, a lot of these women
have also been very open about being victims of political violence. And what is sad is
when expressing, when sharing their situation and explaining why they have been suffering
violence, they don't have the support of a, the large community saying, "Yeah, I believe
you." So it's usually, they face their accusations with criticism. It's like, maybe she did something,
or maybe he didn't mean it, or maybe she's
overreacting. So even though they are local
politicians and they were elected and they have oppositions, they were facing a difficult,
they were facing that they didn't have the support and how difficult it was to put an
accusation in place, even though they have all the paperwork to show that something bad
was happening. So, it has, it was a learning experience for them. They felt really lonely.
All the interviews that they did and all the talks that in which they shared the aspect,
it was lik
e, we don't have the support, and the institutions that are in place to help
them are usually connected with the local government. So it also felt that the support
that they were receiving was not effective or enough. So, in that case, Kima still has
a lot of work to do. Like, yes, we have parity in the chambers, we have a governor, but that
doesn't mean that the violence is diminishing or decreasing at any point sometime soon.
That was, I think that's it. Thank you so much for, yeah, that's a z
ero. That's my zero.
So, thank you so much for your questions and invitation.
Hi, everyone. First of all, thank you to the organizers, CER Mia, and himself for the invitation,
and to all the staff for putting this event together and making it possible. As well for
all of you, both on Zoom and in person here. Um, it's really exciting to have these kind
of transnational conversations that, you know, I hope to be a part of more. So, my presentation
is going to turn to the U.S. to think about what t
he experiences of women and transgender
women's migration experience are once they arrive in the states and how gender impacts
their experiences here. Um, do we have the presentation? Okay.
Thank you, thank you for bearing with me. Okay, so for today's discussion, um, I will
focus on one of the most powerful sites to produce and manage illegality: detention,
and specifically alternative detention facilities, um, or family residential centers, as they
are most commonly known. Um, so if I can have
the next slide.
With Obama's expansion of family residential centers in 2014 to hold Central American women
and children, scholars are rushing to understand this iteration of detention centers. Dilly,
Berks, and Karnes have largely been conceived as a contemporary phenomenon. However, alternatives
to detention date back to at least the early 1970s.
As early as at least the 1970s, detention was designed as one of the responses to deal
with the growing numbers of women using it as a form of deter
rence. But this presented
a unique problem in the cases of women and children who were migrating in increasing
numbers. Contrary to popular belief, these proposals did not come from high-ranking immigration
officials but activists themselves. Chino activists, for example, made suggestions about
how to resolve the undue hardship on apprehended women and children by proposing a new facility
be established by the Border Patrol in San Diego County that will accommodate special
cases involving appreh
ended juveniles. This privilege might also be considered for women
in particular circumstances. The present Border Patrol Detention Center in Chula Vista accommodates
only men. So, this is a powerful example of the ways that more detention centers were
being called into existence first in the name of children and then women, and that such
facilities would be considered privileges. Established five years after this report,
the bulk of this talk examines Casa San Juan, the first-known alternative
detention center
and current model for family residential centers. I analyze Casa San Juan to track the evolving
logics around vulnerable populations that has led to the expansion of detention through
the development of specialized facilities. In this way, Casa serves as an origin story
that sought to protect the earliest categories of vulnerable migrants: women and children,
before this logic was applied to transgender migrants. And for those of you who may not
be familiar, transgender pods are
units that were developed to contain migrants segregated
from the larger detention facilities, or in some cases, like the Cibola Detention Center,
the entire facility is designated for LGBTI migrants and referred to as a pod.
In terms of method, I'm an interdisciplinary scholar that draws on archival materials and
analyzes them using queer and transgender frameworks. In the case of my work on Casa
San Juan, I created my own archive. I have privileged research that I obtained to gain
unprecedent
ed access to the facility. I gathered government contracts, photographed the site,
produced original interviews with the Catholic Charities executive director and program manager,
as well as with two formerly detained migrants. And it was very kind of by chance that this.
So happened that the time when I was doing the fieldwork, the facility had just closed,
and so it became accessible archivally in ways that it wouldn't have been had it still
been operating. Um, so from these sources, I make tw
o arguments: one, that ICE depends
on alternative institutions like us and F to insulate itself from human rights violations
by effectively subcontracting humane treatment. Secondly, that alternative detention centers
are central actors in the broader ecology of incarceration facilities that constitute
and legitimate each other. In other words, the term alternative is a misnomer. It tries
to signal a distinction as separate from other facilities, but in fact, these facilities
work together to le
gitimate each other so that alternative and private institutions
are illuminating a spectrum of detention violence, right? Slide, please.
Whereas private detention facilities like Otay are located at the outskirts of San Ysidro
Industrial and Commercial District, Casa San Juan was located on a residential street in
North Park, San Diego, California, in a neighborhood known for its art, music, and food. Casa San
Juan first opened its doors in July of 1982 to provide short-term housing for women a
nd
children being held as material witnesses in alien smuggling cases. Casa was owned by
Catholic Charities of San Diego and had contracts with both the U.S. Marshal Service and ICE.
The average length of stay was about 2 to 3 weeks. In general, residents left the facility
when they were no longer needed for their case or were released on bond with friends
and family for the duration of their case. One of the key features used to promote Casa
San Juan was its home-like appeal due to its location
in a residential neighborhood, as
well as the features of its house. Here, you kind of get a sense of the street view. Across
the street is like the DMV, Hillcrest, which is like the very LGBTQ neighborhood, is right
across the corner. So it's very unlike where detention centers are usually placed. If I
can have the next slide, please. So, this is a floor plan of the facility itself.
You can see here that the house itself has two stories. It has a dining room, a living
room, a patio, bedrooms,
right? The upstairs had a classroom where they had large classes
for children and a library that included fiction and legal materials for migrant women to read.
The hallways were narrow and very white. They did have religious iconography in the living
space, although they tried to provide a range of religious materials, not just Catholic
materials. And I'd be happy to talk more about the environment or the makeup of the house
if there are any questions about that. Um, let's go to the next slide,
please.
This is the second floor, so you can see seven bedrooms, all kind of next to each other,
and about 14 beds. There's the teacher's office, and these teachers came in from the city of
San Diego. Diego itself, who subcontracted teachers to
come and give lectures to the children. Slide, please. So under the cover of home, the existence
of Kasa San Juan was facilitated by arguments by Catholic Charities director, program manager,
and ICE as an alternative space that could appropriately accom
modate women and children.
In my interviews with program officials, they emphasized their mission as a humanitarian
organization. The home-like qualities Kasa San Juan and welcoming staff proclaimed were
ways to neutralize concerns over the detention of women and children by shoring up evidence
of the kind and humane treatment. In particular, they highlight their superiority as a humane
institution by frequently comparing it to other detention facilities such as Otay. In
this way, Kasa, a critic
al site to examine administrative violence, obscures the violence
of confinement by weighing them against what could be the worst-case scenario, and in doing
so, that enabled its existence for more than 50 years.
When I spoke with the director of Catholic Charities, he described two main issues with
other detention facilities: one, their use of detention as deterrence, and two, the treatment
of migrants as threats and profits. When it comes to migrant treatment, the director states
they see peop
le as profit and prioritize security, a way of thinking of people as cost, as threats.
In contrast, the director and manager highlighted that the mission of Kasa was to prioritize
human connection. These comparisons to other facilities to extraordinary violence are a
critical example of the ways that Kasa sought to distinguish itself and legitimate itself
as appropriate and a humane institution. The mission of Catholic Charities was a central
part of that narrative. Having discussed the ways tha
t Kasa was conceptualized
by its officials, I want to turn to migrant interviews that exposed the intense regulation
and bodily control they were subjected to, as well as the ways they were made vulnerable
for removal and expulsion. Migrant interviews described Kasa San Juan as a highly structured
institutional environment. Upon entry, migrants were interviewed for intake process, forced
to turn in their belongings in exchange for uniforms. These uniforms matched their room
assignments, and I ca
n give you a sense of it. In this slide, you can see the bunk beds
and the room numbers that they were assigned to. These rooms were often overcrowded, and
a report by the City of San Diego Planning Commission found that the facility had to
keep getting warned about the overcrowding they were facing, not unlike other detention
facilities. Daily life at Kasa San Juan was structured
by a rigid schedule. Sleeping, showering, meal times, chores, and recreational activities
were all timed activities.
This was one of the most significant ways migrants described
feeling like they were in a prison. One of the migrant women I interviewed noted the
kindness of the cook in providing an abundance of food but then caveated this memory by saying,
"Who knows who he was, but anyways, no, that didn't stop it from being a jail." I can go
to the next slide, and one more. I'm not used to doing my own clicking, sorry. I think,
yeah, that's good. In a report to the Planning Commission, when
Kasa officials d
escribed the security of the institution, they stated, "Residents are kept
occupied with structured classes, recreation, meals, and so forth." The very features used
to pitch the facility as homelike were now being used to assure security. The status
of this institution as a perceived refuge from other detention facilities led to the
development of strict criteria of who could qualify, making it exclusive and not an option
offered to all female migrants in detention. Referrals to Kasa San Juan w
ere highly subjective
and discretionary administrative decisions by U.S. Marshals, ICE, and Kasa officials.
U.S. Marshals and ICE primarily conducted their own screening and recommendations for
who should be transferred to Kasa San Juan. In the case of U.S. Marshals, this was based
on who would be the strongest witness in cases of human trafficking and were offered as a
kind of plea agreement to migrants who were caught crossing the border. Slide, please.
These are the main criteria, right? Preg
nant women or women with children under 18, boys
who were 13 and under and looked their age. Looking their age was a very interesting concept
that kept coming up in part of the way that they were segregating the facility itself
because there were concerns that if boys looked older, that somehow that created concerns
around sexuality within the facility itself. And so the idea that they were vulnerable
didn't apply to them because they looked beyond their age. Slide.
With their strict criteria, K
asa produced a binary classification of the criminal illegal
alien and the vulnerable migrant population. It made the assertion that humane treatment
was considered a privilege for a select few. In other words, this criteria suggested at
least two things. First, that those who don't qualify are criminal and subject to court
and punishment. This, of course, is a gendered assessment that marks men, queer, and transgender
migrants as criminal and women and children as victims. Secondly, the absence
of trans
women and queer migrants at Kasa San Juan implies that there were narrow definitions
of who women were and who could be considered a vulnerable population. The idea that Kasa
was a superior facility due to its decent food, bedding, and general respect for migrant
humanity led the program manager to conclude that being at Kasa was a privilege and used
that privilege as a disciplinary mechanism by threatening migrants of their potential
transfer to another facility. The privilege of bein
g at Kasa was reinforced by the threat
of experiencing the true force of immigration enforcement with its absence of the mew of
armed guards or cells. Kasa was reinforced in other ways. The director explained slide.
It wasn't the staff keeping people in. It was, "Here's your choice. Walk out the door,
and immigration's going to get you." So no guards. On the one hand, we hear the way officials
relied on moralizing language using used to discipline migrants, and on the other hand,
they're also mi
nimizing their role in keeping people.
Locked in by situating ICE as the real threat, thus Casa relied on the threat of deportation
that a migrant departure of the program would trigger as a form of security. Gasa was reinforced
both by the privilege of the facility and the force of immigration enforcement. In its
more than 50 years of operation, only five people abandoned the building. ICE and US
Marshals depended on Casa's existence not out of a genuine concern for the welfare of
migrants but
to insulate itself from critiques of abusive conditions.
The existence of Gasa was a power move. The Gasa director was well aware that the government
used them, as he states, "a good cop, bad cop kind of thing—you can go here or you
can go there." In this way, alternative detention centers are not exceptional spaces but central
actors in the broader ecology of carceral institutions. So, I'll just kind of stop there
because I'm at time, but basically, the idea of this presentation is to think abo
ut how
immigration authorities are using this idea of gender-responsive approaches to expand
its detention power at a moment where it's being questioned whether they should and can
detain people appropriately. Thank you, thank you for your presentation. I'm Hinda Scy from
USU. We just saw a slide up there that you probably didn't have time to talk about and
that talked about trans detention, so could you speak a bit to that for us? Thank you.
Sure, of course. So one of the things that happens af
ter the mid-1990s because of changes
to immigration policy that required the mandatory detention of asylum seekers is we see an increase
in the detention of transgender migrants. A lot of the concerns that activists put forward
were that they were being placed in detention facilities based on their sex assigned at
birth and not their gender affirmation. This made them vulnerable to violence both from
officials and also from other migrants in these facilities. In response to activists
pushing for
their release, they developed special facilities, and these are those transgender
pods, which has been the kind of new development to say we're now look at how they actually
launched this campaign around Sabola, which was one of the facilities created for transgender
migrants specifically. So, they developed a Twitter campaign and invited the press to
come and tour the facility, said, "Look at our basketball courts and look at the pink
walls and look at the transgender migrants and all of their
birthday cards and libraries
and classrooms," to show how well they were able to affirm transgender care. But what
they didn't do was actually allow them to talk to the migrants themselves who were still
reporting high levels of violence and sexual assault even in Sabola. So, you know, these
conditions haven't gone away, and actually, the queer and transgender migrant population
have been some of the most staunch criticisms of the abolition of detention facilities.
Altogether, and I have argued
away from "we don't want special facilities, we want the
end of detention" altogether, right? Um, and so yeah, afternoon, folks. My name is Betsy
Sano, and it's an honor to be here and to be invited to this special and important event.
Um, I recently graduated from UIS, and right now, I'll be presenting Dr. Nidia R. Garcia.
But first, I'll be reading her biography. Dr. Nidia R. Garcia is an assistant professor
of educational psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Garcia
earned
a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in psychology
and sociology, a Master of Arts degree from New York University (NYU) in human development
and social intervention, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in developmental and psychological
sciences. Her research interests include exploring social-cultural factors such as a sense of
belonging that impacts the academic performance and psychological development of historically
minoritized students.
She was also interested in informing and developing culturally sustaining
interventions for historically minoritized college students, specifically those who are
first-generation, low-income. Fli, please help me welcome Dr. Nidia Garcia.
Hello, everybody. Let me get positioned here. I'm going to start timing myself because I
can talk forever, so I need a visual reminder of how much I got. Alright, so thank you again
for the great introduction. My name is Dr. Garcia. Today I want to talk about a
sense
of belonging and how a sense of belonging can be used as both a tool to foster belonging
and increase positive life outcomes. It can also often times serve as a powerful mechanism
of exclusion and a powerful signal of non-belonging. So we can click next on here. I'll try my
best to remember to hit next or tell y'all to hit next. Got it.
So first, I wanted to introduce myself because I'm about to talk for a long time so you might
as well know who's talking to you. So you heard a little bit
about my research background.
I just kind of went back and forth across the United States. I did UCLA for undergrad,
and then I went to New York for NYU for grad school, and then I said the west coast is
the best coast, so I went back over to California to Stanford for my PhD, and then I ended up
in Champaign, Illinois. So I'm living my best Midwest life. The weather is being nice to
me this winter. We'll see in January how this goes. Click next, please.
And I put some pictures here that I think
are pretty important to who I am, and it'll
probably help you understand a little bit more when I talk about some of these signals
of non-belonging. So I identify as Mexican American, so I have this Mexican American
kind of mishmash photo over here on the left. I really like it because it kind of showcases
how I am a mix of two cultures but yet there are pretty clear lines between the two. And
so that's kind of how I navigate life, where oftentimes my culture is a mix of these two
cultures, but
then oftentimes I'm told or I see very clear distinctions between the
two cultures and where I'm supposed to do things or not supposed to do things. So I
like that image, but it also reminds us of my biculturalism. So, I am a child of immigrants.
My mom is from Mezquital, Mexico, and my dad's from Zacatecas, Mexico, in Calexico. She was
back and forth. So if anybody is familiar with border towns, my whole family is in that
area. I also have a photo of In-N-Out. So there, I have a very important
question, okay?
We are in the Midwest. Alright, so raise your hand if you've had In-N-Out and like it. Yes.
Alright, we're good. Raise your hand if you've had Shake Shack and like it. Okay, and apparently
in Texas, Water Burger. So does anybody have Water Burger? Apparently, that's a thing,
right? I was doing another keynote in Texas, and they were like, "It's all about Water
Burger," and I was like, "If you fail my, I'm leaving." So, um, fun fact is that...
I am from Baldwin Park, California,
which is in Los Angeles County, and that's where
the first In-N-Out was made. So that's my claim to fame, you know, where I'm from, but
that's about it. That's all we got—In-N-Out. And that's why I get really excited when people
raise their hand and say they like it. Um, and then that's me with a donut because I'm
always snacking. I think it's an important part of who I am. Food is really important,
not just to me but to my family. Oftentimes, the way that we show love is to make sure
you're fed
or overfed. But don't ever tell us that we're overfeeding you, just take whatever
we give you. Um, I also have a photo here of a volleyball, so I do like to play volleyball.
It gets hard in the winter time, and I haven't done it in quite a bit, but growing up, I
played a lot of volleyball, and it just kind of helped destress and get some physical activity.
Um, and sometimes I'll get fellow volleyball fans enthusiasts in the group, and then we
can make a volleyball team or something. Um, and the
n up top, I have a photo of me and
my mom, and that kind of signifies the family-oriented side of me. So family is very important, and
throughout college, throughout all of my academic endeavors, I've made sure to explicitly state
that family was a priority. And so I was actually able to customize a lot of my undergrad and
graduate education to make sure that everybody from my advisor to the program knew if there's
something that has to go, that I need to do family-wise, I need to be able to wor
k from
home or be able to travel and have funds to travel back to mom. So that's a little bit
about me. Let's click next. Yeah, all right. So I won't repeat the—you gave an excellent
introduction. These are the two buckets of research that I do. The first one is more
exploring and trying to see what the experience is among different groups. The second bucket
is more applied, using that knowledge to inform interventions, programs, and policies. And
if you click next there, for today, we're going
to focus on that one bucket. So I'm
going to try to give some examples of experiences that students may or may not have that can
influence their well-being and performance. Right? Thanks, next, please.
So first off, I wanted to bring up sociocultural theory. If anybody's heard of Vygotsky, that's
whoops, that's where this is coming from. Let me close this before I break something.
And a lot of things were said during sociocultural theory, and if you read through it, there
are a lot of things. Bu
t I wanted to pick out one thing in particular: cognitive development
is largely influenced by one's surrounding cultures. So it's really important to understand
that as students, they are learning not in a vacuum. They're learning with a lot of things
happening in their environment. And so it is not holistic thinking to focus on the student
in just the vacuum, but you must also look at the environment and the cultural background
of that student but also the culture that they're in. Next, please
.
So specifically, I'll be talking about, well, all of y'all know, a sense of belonging. But
it's a really difficult concept, and I think it'll be why I'll have a job for many, many
years because even Michelle Obama has a hard time talking about it or specifically putting
her finger on it, right? So in her book, she mentions, "It's hard to put into words, but
sometimes you pick up in the ether the quiet nuances of not belonging, the subtle cues
that tell you not to risk anything, to find your pe
ople and just stay put." And I think
we've gotten notions of that throughout the previous presentations as well. There's something
about this feeling that you get that you're just supposed to stay put and stay with your
people and not go out and explore. And she didn't really know how to put her finger on
it. Next, please. So researchers say, "But we'll try." So there
are a lot of definitions, but I wanted to focus on one here. A sense of belonging is
the experience of personal involvement in a
system or environment so that persons feel
themselves to be an integral part of that system or environment. So generally, that's
what it is. Next, please. And then you might want to click, like, four times. Yeah, thanks.
So sense of belonging is important for all of these things. And if you don't believe
me, you can read these articles here that I've cited. Um, there...
There is just a lot, a lot of empirical evidence that something like a sense of belonging,
something that Michelle Obama had a
hard time talking about and really placing her finger
on, has a lot of impact on our lives. And not just educationally, but also in terms
of motivation and well-being. Thanks. Next. So, importantly, and I'll come back to this
later, a sense of belonging is also context-dependent. So, you can have a different level of sense
of belonging depending on the different context that we're talking about. You can have a sense
of belonging to your school. A lot of us, if you went to a formal education syst
em,
wherever in or out of the United States, you had some type of school that you were a part
of, and you could have a high sense of belonging to that or a low sense of belonging to that.
More specifically, for those of us who kept going to school, we also went to some type
of university or institution of higher education. So, we also had a chance to develop a sense
of belonging in that sense as well. You can also have a sense of belonging to your country
or to the country that you're in at the
moment. That's different than your sense of belonging
to your university. You can have a high sense of belonging in one context to your university
and a low sense of belonging in another context, say your country. You could also have a sense
of belonging to your race or ethnicity, and that could be high or low. Some of us may
feel a strong sense of belonging to our race or ethnicity; some may not so much. That can
depend on a lot of experiences and things that have happened or how we've been rec
eived
by our race or ethnicity. So, you can have a sense of belonging to lots of different
things. Next, please. Now, because I wanted to talk about students,
I wanted to just quickly post here the definition for a sense of university belonging. Pretty
similar to the general definition that I gave, but I emphasize some pretty important words
here. I'm about to give some examples, and so you'll see how these important words like
connectedness, acceptance, respect, value, and mattering really infl
uence how we feel
in terms of our sense of belonging. Next, please. You might want to click a couple of
times again. Thanks. See, we're connected. Alright. So, as you may have kind of assumed,
a sense of university belonging also has impacts on these very important things. When you're
thinking about college students, their sense of belonging to this context that they're
in, AKA their university, is very important for not only their grades and whether they
graduate but for their psychological wel
l-being. And, again, just like generally, sense of
belonging has a lot of evidence that it's important for these things. Specifically,
sense of university belonging, there's also a lot of evidence that it's important for
all of these very important things. I threw in some citations there if you want to check
them out. Next. Please, let's click one more time. Yeah, that
way I can talk while y'all read. So, I wanted to put sociocultural theory and sense of belonging
together in these examples that
I want to give in a bit. So, I wanted to remind us,
because I think that we've all kind of seen this happen, that a sense of university belonging
can be influenced by signals of belonging outside of the university. So, a sense of
belonging for the university is not just contained within that formal institution, but there
can be things that happen outside of the institution that can influence the students' university
belonging. And with that, because I wanted to focus on students from minoritize
d groups,
same thing here, students from minoritized groups can have their belonging influenced
by things outside of the university. It's important to understand these signals and
how they operate because, especially if you're trying to build or foster a sense of belonging
for college students, you might want to understand a little bit about history and where these
students are coming from so that you can know how to adequately address and assess this.
Next, please. Alright, so I'm going to talk
about some signals
of non-belonging. And these might be a little bit, just a disclaimer, these might be a little
bit hard to listen to, especially if it's new to you. So, I just wanted to let y'all
know that it might make some of us uncomfortable. It always makes me uncomfortable because it's
not fun to talk about these things. But I think that just because they're not fun to
talk about, it doesn't mean that we don't. So, I wanted to highlight some of these examples
because they're actively als
o happening now, and they can serve as examples of signals
of non-belonging for our college students now. Next, please.
So when I was thinking, you know, which signals of non-belonging do I want to talk about,
and again, I am a scholar in the United States, so I'm restricted, not... I mean, I should
try harder to look at other countries, but a lot of my work on college students has focused
on college students in the United States. And these are some things that have been happening
in the past ye
ars, decades, centuries that have influenced how these students think about
their place in this country, but also their place in the university setting. So, I just
listed a bunch here. Part of my reason for it is if you're unfamiliar with any of these,
you could Google a bunch of these and get a lot of information about what these were
and how they impact the students. So, I didn't want to just focus on my examples, but I wanted
to give some extras here so that we could look at them. And then on
this side over here,
my left, your right, Zoomers, I'm not sure which side, but anyways, this one right here,
I put a lot of things in quotations. So, these happenings, these policies, these programs,
these things that happen over time give off these signals that say, "You don't belong
here. Your kind doesn't belong here. You're not valued here. The way that you're living,
what you're doing, it's wrong." You can also have microaggressions. You're competing for
limited resources, and I put that
in quotations because oftentimes they're not really limited
in the ways that we're kind of told they are, but it kind of supports this competition between
different minoritized groups. So, I have a lot of examples there, but I do want to focus
on just a couple, and they're going to focus on different groups. Um.
So, I want to just kind of give those examples, and then we'll wrap them up. I promise it'll
all make sense by the end of my keynote. Next is, oh, one more click. One more click. Cool.
S
o first, I wanted to talk about some signals of non-belonging for Chinese and Chinese Americans.
So in 1882, one of the first significant laws restricting immigration into the United States
took effect. This was essentially a 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the
United States. And then later on, in 1942, after the attacks on Pearl Harbor in the United
States, the U.S. set up what they called relocation centers that were actually internment camps
where they forced Japanese and Japan
ese American residents on the West Coast of the United
States. They were given only a 48-hour advance notice and consequently lost land, personal
possessions, homes, generational wealth, all of that cut off. And while these moments in
history are mostly talked about in the history books and in the history fields, and I'm not
a historian, so my historian friends that are watching this, I'm so sorry, and, you
know, maybe we can collaborate on a future keynote to make sure that I get all of this.
B
ut each of these is a whole class of information. So, I'm just swooping it into two bullets
here. So, while they are mostly talked about in history fields, history books, they are
also important in the psychological and educational sense. After all, many Chinese, Chinese American,
Japanese, Japanese Americans in and out of the United States are familiar with these
stories, are familiar with this history, and it can influence their relationship with the
United States, with institutions of higher
ed here in the United States, and others.
So, if the 1800s and 1900s or since the 1800s, 1900s, the United States told these two groups
of people they don't belong here. So, these are examples of this signal of non-belonging.
And many students now that identify with these groups ask themselves these questions still
now, right? If they did that back then, do I belong now? Do they accept me now? And those
are constant questions that are psychologically taxing and can influence a lot of decision-ma
king
processes for students. Next, please. Oh, two clicks. Nice. All right. Well, not nice.
Neither of these programs were nice. So, some other examples that I have are the Jim Crow
era and the era of the Bracero Program. So, these are another couple of examples of non-belonging.
From the end of the Civil War until 1968, a collection of state and local statutes around
the United States legalized racial segregation. These statutes marginalized African Americans
by denying them the right to vote,
have jobs, get an education, go to college, and more.
It was a clear message that African Americans were not valued, respected, or accepted in
the United States. During the same period, the Bracero Program surfaced in the Western
and Southwestern United States. On the surface, it seemed like a great initiative that allowed
Mexican laborers to temporarily come to the United States. And they were all kind of in
agricultural type of jobs. There was a shortage of agricultural workers, mostly due to
how
difficult and physically taxing the jobs were. The United States wanted to fill those jobs
and, in exchange, guaranteed a minimum wage, health insurance, I believe, and safe, free
housing. However, these promises fell short. Wages were paid late or not paid at all, and
housing was subpar. There was very little agency or control over the situation for Mexicans.
And it was a clear message that Mexicans were seen as people that could be used to fill
a need without being respected or treated fai
rly. So, both African American and Mexican
populations now are very aware of how these eras and this history lives on and influences
the way that Mexicans and African Americans are treated now. So, even though technically
these eras are over, a lot of policies and practices that were utilized during that time
have spilled over and still exist today. Again, strong signals of non-belonging, right? So,
if you don't identify with these groups, just try to imagine this happening to your grandparents
and how you would feel about the space now. All right, click. I need to take you with
me for future keynotes because you got it all right. So, more specifically for Latinx
immigration, I wanted to focus on this. So, DACA is not only for Latinos and Latinx immigrants,
but I wanted to focus on these two because they're also things that are in flex now.
So, you might be like, "That's in the past, Andia. There's no more Bracero Program." Well,
there's things that are still happening now. So, the DAC
A program, so DACA stands for Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals. It allows non-U.S. citizens to work in the U.S. and are specifically
designed for young people who came to the United States as children. It doesn't grant
them citizenship or lawful permanent residence, and also it's constantly in flux. It's also
very expensive to renew your DACA membership, and some are even, you know, you can renew
it every two years. Some are renewing it sooner than that, paying the extra fines because
you
just don't know what's going to happen in the government and stuff. I'll never work
for any of that because I don't understand it, but it's in flux, right? And it could
get struck down at any time. So, again, the United States, through its policies, reminds
different groups and particularly for those who identify as Mexican, who are DACA members,
this sounds very much like a Bracero Program, right? They're allowed to work here. They're
not citizens, and I can take it away at any time. It reminds
different groups that they
don't belong. And in this case, like the Bracero Program, that groups are visitors in this
space. On this slide, I just quickly threw in some things that have been happening very,
very recently. So, you have this idea of a physical wall separating different groups.
So, again, this signal of non-belonging. Who belongs on this side? Who belongs on that
side? Do you look like you belong over here or do you look like you belong over there?
And we're going to make a physic
al signal of non-belonging. There's also Title 42, which
was used to block entry of migrants due to disease. So, they used kind of the COVID pandemic
as a reason to block entry. I don't know where it is right now. They might have already struck
it down, but it was a thing to add on to our stress from the COVID pandemic. And then there's
SB 8, which is um, so local police were, for many years, encouraged to cooperate in terms
of deportation, but with SB 8, it was made a requirement for local poli
ce to cooperate
in terms of deportation. So, finding people who were undocumented or just kind of moving
the process along for deportation. Uh, let's hit "Next." Oh yeah, you already
see. I have to take it with me, right? See, I already clicked "Next." He felt it, alright.
So, I wanted to explain this figure here. Um, because it also kind of reminds us, and
I really led the presentations earlier today because, as y'all were talking, I was like,
"Yes, my flower." So, this is a flower. If you can'
t tell, it's a flower, don't tell
me because I worked really hard on it. So, there are petals, those things are petals,
and some of them are lined solid, some of them are dashed, and some of them are gray,
and some of them are darker gray. So, this is a flower; those are petals. And then, the
"R" stands for race, the "G" stands for gender, and the "S" stands for socioeconomic status.
Those are just three social identities that one individual can identify with, and that's
why I put more petals, b
ecause we can identify with many more social identities. And then,
you see there's kind of overlaps, like you see the "R" and the "G" is overlapping, you
have R * G. And that's kind of reminding us that you can have an experience; you can have
a sense of belonging that's influenced and impacted by how you're treated because of
your race and your gender at the same time. Right? So, we see this a lot with Kimberly
Crenshaw in the law world where she was teasing apart your experience in the workpla
ce being
a Black woman versus a Black man. You can't really tease out the Black and the woman,
right? They kind of work together and color your experience in a different way. So, that's
one example of the R times the G. And then, similarly, you can have like a G * S or you
can have an R times S, right? You can have two social identities kind of working, playing
at the same time in terms of your experience. And then, at the bottom there, we have the
core of the holistic individual where all of th
ose petals come together, and your experience
is colored and impacted by how society treats all of these social identities that you identify
with. And sometimes, it can be hard to tease it out. So, next, I...
Alright, so just how you can have different social identities, college students have also
different social identities. So, all of these programs, policies, practices that signal
non-belonging for, say, Mexican and Mexican Americans will influence your students that
identify as Mexican, Mexi
can American, or Latinx, right? But it's also going to influence
them differently based on gender and socioeconomic status. So, these policies and practices,
it's important to understand what type of person they're impacting, and not just in
terms of race or ethnicity but also gender and socioeconomic status. But the other thing,
lots of arrows, connections, and Venn diagrams, because the other thing is that, remember
how I mentioned that sense of belonging? You can have a sense of belonging to
different
contexts. Well, those can inform each other too. So, if you have a low sense of belonging
to, say, this country that you're living in, if you're constantly looking at the news,
and they're constantly attacking people of your race or people of your gender, people
of your socioeconomic status, that can trickle over and spill over into your sense of belonging
to your university, your sense of belonging to your workplace, your sense of belonging
to your family. And so, I put just some arro
ws because it just looked really messy when I
did all of the arrows, but just imagine a lot of arrows going all over because these
are all interconnected. And so, we really have to think about, like what's reminding
ourselves that not only does every individual have different social identities, but they're
also influenced by their sense of belonging to all these different contexts. Next.
Please, all right. So then, signals of belonging, right? I kind of went through some examples
of exclusion th
at could contribute to signals of non-belonging. But I wanted to do that
because I feel like that's how you adequately understand how signals of belonging can also
be used for optimal student success. So, the environment matters, our understanding of
history and the place that this individual or this group of students has in the space
can really influence their sense of belonging and how we address it and how we support.
And we can really harness the environment and the society to foster a sense
of university
belonging. So, we can be mindful of history and how history has wronged a lot of groups
and how people may have felt a sense of non-belonging. And we can use that to one, not repeat history,
which is really hard. We really, really hard like as humans. It's just it's really hard
for us to not repeat history. But we can address it. We can say, "We understand that this happened
before, and in this setting, it's not going to happen." Or at least, "I understand what
you're going throug
h, and I'm validating that just because you're here as a college student
doesn't mean that you're not impacted by policies and practices that are happening outside of
the university." Let's see, yeah. So, my conclusion is just to think about the flower because
I spent a lot of time on it, and not just the flower but also all those arrows because
when we really want to think about the academic performance and psychological well-being of
college students, especially diverse college students, there
are a lot of arrows. There
are a lot of petals that are overlapping, and that can feel overwhelming like, "Okay,
I have to put a policy in place, but now there's all these arrows and all these petals, and
now I'm overwhelmed, and I can't possibly help everybody." Right? Yeah, you could feel
like that, but another way to think about it is that that means there are plenty of
opportunities to intervene. There are plenty of opportunities to support. You can look
at one of those overlaps and focus o
n that. There are just plenty of ways that we can
help. And being aware of how colorful we all are and our beautiful flowers can really help
us truly understand how to foster the success of our students. So, thank you so much. Hopefully,
that was helpful. I'm always happy to talk about these. Thank you. Thank you for this
work. Um, and I just want to make a comment in support of the work that you're doing.
You know, when I look around this room, um, I'm the only African-American woman in here,
u
m, and that's okay. But it's not okay, too. Um, with what you want us to think about because
when it comes to a sense of belonging, um, you know, I've been an academic for almost
30 years, and I taught in California, Arizona, and now here I'm back into my own home space
because I'm originally from Chicago. Um, but it's been as part of my journey. I've oftentimes
been the only one, um, and this is for the last 30 years or so. So this is not a complaint.
Um, it's an acknowledgement for the work th
at you're doing. And since I've been here, everyone
has been so kind to me. You know, I have sisters that I didn't even know I had. Everyone's
just been wonderful and welcoming, but we need more. You know, we need more people of
all different colors if we're going to teach colors and shapes and sizes. And I know I
sound like I'm talking as if I'm in third grade, but in some ways, we are in third grade,
you know, when it comes to the importance of this work. Um, belonging for us as well
as being
able to model that behavior so that students see so what they see is different
and inclusive. So I really just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for your marvelous,
marvelous work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That means a lot to me. And as you mentioned,
it's okay but not okay, right? And so, something that I tell my students, and hopefully this
is helpful to them when they are the only one in the room is that you, along the lines
of the work that I do and the work that I presented here in
2023, it is no longer your
fault, right? There are way too many Black women, intelligent Black women who want to
be in academia for 30 plus years, right? There are too many diverse students that want to
be in these spaces that are not. And it's not for reasons of their own. And so, I think
that that's also important validity for students and for people who want to be in academia
because sometimes it can feel like something about my racial group or my ethnic group or
my gender, something about u
s that we don't fit in. But I think in now in 2023, it's no
longer a problem of the individual. It's a problem of the system and the institution
and the policies that have been in place. And so, I think that that's sometimes, at
least it calms me a little bit because when I'm the only one in the Room. Um, I also think
about, like, it's not me or my people. It's this system, and I remain in the system because
I want it to change. Uh, but it's not easy being the only one in the room. But thank
you
so much for your comment. That means a lot to me and the work of my lab and the work
that we're doing. Thank you. Yeah, here, uh, in laying the groundwork for
this new Institute on Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Social Justice. And, you know, we are
laying the tracks down. And, um, one of the things that is really encouraging to me is
that people like you, your work, um, this is a place where your work is welcomed. We
need to hear about that because it's really helping us to determine what else i
s going
on out here in academia and how, as we organize and institute this institute, you know, what
kind of focus we should have. So I wanted to say again thank you. And I just want to
make a second comment, and I promise I will not dominate. No, thank you. I'm gonna find
you. I will email you. All right, thank you. Oh, yes, hi, thank you. Um, I'm Uran Wallace.
I'm here, newly here at the University of Illinois Springfield as the new dean of the
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. Um,
and I'm here. So, one of the things I
really appreciated about your talk was the way that you made us think about the larger
context in which everything sits. Um, so it's not just what we do in our classrooms or what
we do in our colleges or what we do on our university campuses, but we sit in this larger
ecosystem. And I will just say that I moved to Illinois because this was a great job and
also because the ecosystem in which we sit here, if not perfect, is better than where
I was coming from,
which was in Florida. Um, and I was in Flagler College of Florida. So,
um, so, but I guess what I'm thinking about is, I wonder if you had thoughts about the
ways that maybe even in a hostile larger environment, places like universities, colleges, classrooms,
libraries can be a haven because I've just heard so many stories about, "I found myself
in the library. I found myself in the classroom. This teacher gave me a book. This teacher
looked like me." And that became a place where I suddenly fe
lt that I belonged, and that
changed the relationship to that larger ecosystem. So, that was my thought. Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you so, um, there are some amazing scholars that do work around subcultures and counter
spaces, and so there's a lot of theory work on that, but also a lot of empirical evidence
that there can be spaces within these larger places that can serve as havens or safe places.
Um, and since you said you're the dean, right? So you have access to some money. So, I'm
gonna say t
his. So, I think that because there are these subcultures and counter spaces that
kind of organically can come up, and because it can be so difficult for us as faculty,
staff, and administration to pinpoint them and know where they're at, you kind of almost
need like an undergrad consultant, right? To kind of tell you where all these things
are because it's so hard. I think that that's why it's also important to fund these various
mechanisms and fund these different spaces where this could organ
ically come up, right?
Give them a chance to come up because they can be the safe haven. They can be that saving
grace for a lot of students. So, funding them, I think, is really important in university
settings. And you will see, for every university, because every university has a different flavor
and has a different student body, you'll have different subcultures and safe spaces come
up. So, I think it's important to, and most of these safe spaces and counter spaces struggle
with funding and
are often times student-led, and it's just very difficult. I don't know
how undergrads do it to create these spaces over time, um, and really fight for funding.
So, hey, Dean, thanks for coming. Fund the [Laughter].
Things, Dr. Congratulations, a great presentation, about important concepts not only relevant
for our students but also for everyone in general. But what I want to ask is a term
that, not being a social scientist, I'm a hard science professor. But when I started
seeing in the literat
ure the term "Latinx," I felt uncomfortable with it, and you even
used that term in your presentation. Isn't that labeling people that they don't belong
to the general population and therefore is a term that shouldn't be used? And in fact,
some time ago, I noticed articles of people, even university authorities around the country
banning the term "Latinx." So, I really would like to hear your comments about this term.
In my view, it should be eliminated and not even used because it gives you tha
t feeling
of not belonging to society. Appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. We talk about this in my
class. It always takes up the whole three hours, and we got to have like a long lunch
or dinner to go through all of the nuances of it, but I'll try to be concise. Words matter,
and they're very powerful, um, and they can signal, like you mentioned, belonging and
non-belonging. They also change over time, depending on cultural shifts and depending
on, again, how society is thinking of different thing
s. So, I guess, before "Latinx," there's
"Latino" and "Latina," which are also exclusionary terms. And so "Latina" excludes male-identifying,
"Latino" excludes female-identifying. A lot of times when there's as, right, we know that
it's "Latina" until there's one male in the room, then it's "Latino." So now the females
are silenced, or they can feel silenced. "Latino/Latina" also doesn't take into account non-binary
or trans communities or queer communities. And so, "Latinx" has developed as an
inclusive
term. There's also "Latin@," because there are also issues with "Latinx." So, I am not
one to pick one or the other, but I do kind of make sure that I understand as much as
I can the progression of these terms, why they're changing, who they're including and
excluding, and in my context, what is the term? So, depending on what university I'm
at, so I'm collaborating at a university on the East Coast, and they use "Latinx" almost
exclusively. It's a smaller school, and they, in their ki
nd of culture, in their kind of
society and their group, they seem very comfortable with "Latinx." They don't seem very comfortable
with "Latin@" or "Latina/Latino." And so, within that context, on our surveys, when
we're collecting data and all that, that's the term that we use there. And so, I try
to be very mindful of the context that I'm in and how my students are responding to the
different terms. And I think that also, I, one of the pedals also is our levels of education,
and I always kind
of think about what people outside of academic circles think about these
terms and which ones they ascribe to or which ones they are more accepting of. But, you
know, ultimately, I think I very much agree with your point that each of these Terms can
be exclusionary; they can be signals of non-belonging. Um, and so, I think it's important for us
to always be aware that words are powerful. They can signal belonging or non-belonging,
and they change over time because people and cultures change ove
r time. So, I think that's
where we're at right now, where we're wrestling with these terms because we're not completely
on the same page about this term specifically. So, you know, it's always kind of worth many
conversations and bringing in my family, who may not have gone to college. What do they
think about these terms? The queer community, what do they think about these terms? The
migrant and immigrant community, what do they... I mean, some don't even identify as Latino,
right? Like, they
don't like "no x, no a, no o." Like, "I just don't want to be identified
as Latino." So, you bring up a great point: power words are very powerful and change over
time, and it's kind of our responsibility to be mindful of how they can or cannot exclude
communities. System-wise, I'm not sure. So again, I'm horrible
at all the government policy stuff. Um, so I don't know if they've explicitly... I don't
know if anybody knows. Oh, oh, okay. But, but yeah, I can check that, though. Um, I
don't know
exactly if they systematically... Okay, yeah, yeah. So maybe not, but yeah,
I'll... I'll... I'll check. There's a chat question from an anonymous
attendee: "Do you have any research regarding age gaps regarding returning older students?
Age adds another discomfort to belonging." Absolutely. So, um, my published work as of
now does not specifically focus on that, but I've been very excited to include that. So
you have the idea of, for example, student parents, transfer students. You even have
stu
dents, um, oftentimes from low SES backgrounds that, um, do the on and off. So, they'll work
for a semester, save up money, and then go the next semester, uh, and then just do the
on and off. There's a lot of different ways of being a college student, and I think the
more you digress from the quote-unquote traditional college student, and that would include people
who are maybe a bit older or have families and are coming in as first-year college students,
um, that can also be a signal of non-bel
onging, where you're, like, thriving in your 30s,
and then you come into a class, and everybody's 18 years old. Right? That's... that's going
to make you feel a certain way. And so, some ways to support at the university level would
be helpful in terms of students who are older. So there is work around, I think, like transfer
students, student parents. So there are a lot of amazing scholars that have published
on that work, and I want to be like them. So, I'm hoping that in the near future, I
sp
ecifically focus on that group because they've been in my sample, but I haven't been able
to tease them out yet. Excellent. Please join me too.
hank you so much; welcome back. This has been such a wonderful experience. Um, I think this
may be the first major Symposium we've had at UIS looking at Mexicans, Mexican Americans,
Latinas, Latin Americans. So, let's have a round of applause for that, and especially
for all of the work that people at IMAS have done. I'm not sure why it isn't called Emos
,
but I like calling it Emos for some reason. Um, but anyway, I wanted to introduce our
speaker from our next panel, and that panel is about serving and empowering Mexican, Mexican
American, Latino, a Latino, Latina, Latina students, history, research, and best practices.
Um, unfortunately, one of our presenters wasn't able to make it today, Dr. Lilia Fernandez.
I'll just mention that the University of Illinois is incredibly fortunate that she joined our
faculty recently. She's one of the most i
mportant historians of Mexican and Latina Chicago,
and I'm hoping that we can work with her in the future, so next, next event perhaps. But
we do have a couple of other amazing speakers. I'll introduce myself. Not that I'm one of
those amazing people, but I'll first introduce myself. I'm Professor Hinda Cyth. I'm an associate
professor of Sociology anthropology at this campus, the University of Illinois Springfield,
and also a faculty board member of the University of Illinois Press.
I'll mentio
n that Mexican in Chicago and Mexicans and Latinas generally in the Midwest have
been underrepresented in scholarship for a long time, especially if you look at the Mexican
immigrant population and the Mexican American and Cho population. There's been a focus on
the west and the Southwest, the places that used to be part of Mexico. This has been changing.
We're seeing, I would say, a flowering of research in the last couple of decades, and
I'm really proud to be affiliated with the U of I Press
because we have a wonderful book
series on Latinos in Chicago at the Midwest, which I think has been important in changing
this trajectory of marginalizing Latinas in the Midwest. I'm on their faculty board, and
I'm also a team member of the Chicago Monuments Project, Pilsen Latina Legacies.
My previous work has followed young undocumented activists born in Mexico and raised in the
United States, including the launch of the Coming Out of the Shadows movement. But these
days, I'm looking at the w
ays that Latina artists, especially of Mexican ancestry, are
changing the visual face of the city of Chicago. So that's me. We're very fortunate that Dr.
Carla Cwl is going to be joining us from the University of KMA. Dr. Cwl has master's and
doctoral degrees in sociocultural anthropologies from the University of Kansas. Since 2005,
she's worked as a professor and researcher in the University of KMA Department of Pedagogy
and is part of the research group Multidisciplinary Studies and Education,
Gender, and Violence.
She researches and advises projects about gender education and feminisms in Mexico,
migration, interculturality, and inclusion. And her most recent publications are related
to the history of the feminist movement in KMA, Mexico, as well as feminist teaching
practices. Oops, that means I'm supposed to be finishing up feminist teaching practices
in higher education in Mexico. And after Dr. Cwl, we're very fortunate that
Dr. Leonard Ramirez is also going to be zooming in from
Chicago, so we have two Zoomers on
this panel, but they're definitely worth hanging in there for the zooms. Dr. Ramirez, yes.
Oh, okay, yes. Um, Dr. Ramirez is an educator and longtime community advocate. His professional
and social activism is focused on Latin community advancement, including educational access
and success of Latinx youth and adults. He was among the founders of Latino Youth Alternative
High School in Chicago's Pilsen Community. For over 30 years, he was the director of
the na
tionally recognized Latin American Recruitment and Educational Services Program (LARES) at
University of Illinois Chicago. He was appointed to the Community Advisory Committee on Higher
Ed by State Senator Miguel Del Valle. Dr. Ramirez has served on various boards, including
the Diversifying Faculty Board in Illinois Program for the State of Illinois. Um, today
he is Policy Vice President of the Illinois Latino Council on Higher Education and a member
of the Illinois African-American and Latino
Higher Education Alliance.
But before we get to the panel, I'm going to briefly introduce people who are going
to provide remarks to us. And actually, I feel like it's very appropriate in light of
Dr. Ruas Gracia's comments about the unsung heroes that help Latinx students feel that
they belong on campus. Uh, we're going to hear in a moment from Justin Rose, who's an
EDD candidate but also the Director of Diversity Inclusion at our Diversity Center and a graduate
of UIS. And then we'll hear from
Christian Leono, who is the President of the Organization
of Latin American Students. And I can't read the list of Latino student organizations that
he's a member of because it would take too much time, but when I've talked with my students,
they have said that the Diversity Center, my Latina students, the Diversity Center,
and the many Latina student orgs that we now have on campus are what helped them feel belonging
at UIS. So let's first welcome Justin Rose from the Diversity.
Center, right.
All right, can everyone hear me? Good, good. Well, good afternoon. And
before I even jump into the formal remarks, just want to give Betsy some love right now.
Let's give Betsy another round of applause. Like I'm smelling Betsy is one of my former
students. And it's just moments like this where you just get to come back and just be
in all of the amazingness that we all probably got to contribute to help that happen. And
so Betsy, thank you for blessing us with your presence. That's beautiful. A
ll right, so
I am going to use the 3 Bs: be brief, brother. I learned that from one of my great mentors.
But I do come with a few remarks that I think are worth sharing towards the work that OS
is doing, but also some of the work that we're doing here at UIS and out of the Diversity
Center. So I just want to say good afternoon and thank
you to the Emos committee for allowing us to gather today for this ever-important Symposium.
I'm truly honored to be amongst you all today to share a few remarks
. Again, by formal introduction,
my name is Justin Rose, personal pronouns he/him and his, and I have the privilege of
serving as our Director of Diversity and Inclusion in the Division of Student Affairs. When asked
to speak, I'll be completely honest, my mind went 101 different places. I thought to myself,
what could I possibly say in a matter of minutes that would capture the essence and the importance
of the work that we're doing today, which is to provide growth and development and vision
f
orward for our Hispanic, Latina, Latinx students, but also to strengthen the pipeline at the
secondary but also postsecondary level and beyond because it truly matters when we're
talking about educational equity. So I questioned, do I stay really heady and
talk about the disparities we see nationally when we come to try to build affirming communities
to protect the diverse student populations that we see, to not result in chilly climates
for our minority students, or do I stay mindful of the adv
erse but real reality of what's
happening but reach for a form of celebration and success to all of the work that we're
doing to really talk about what it looks like when we do provide resources around prosperity
for our whole community and how we proactively do that and then foster the welcoming environments
that actually strengthen the vitality and the educational systems that we operate in
that also improve the domestic and global workforces that we all enter. But I think
even more than that,
I wanted to talk about the relationships that are built and the resources
shared and how it humanizes the HL students in the world that often erases their history
as well as their presence. And so to align my marks and move a lot closer
to what I really want to share, which is the ladder, I chose to do it because we have a
program, we have a resource here on campus, which is our Diversity Center. And so in our
Diversity Center, it's made up of a smattering of different resources that run the ga
mut
from first-generation resources all the way to Hispanic, Latina, Latinx resources headed
up by my colleague and good friend and brother, Danel, right there. And we made it our business
to be a resource to those who may need uplift and assistance through big and small crises,
but also to be a resource that celebrates identity, embraces difference, and empowers
people to see their wholeness as Dr. Garcia talked about the intersectionality of Kimberly
Crenshaw's work, right? To not just see the
interlocking of oppressions, but also to see
the uplifting and empowerment in which we bring that we don't have to fragment ourselves
to help everyone see that they have unquestionable unique and rich educational talents that are
critical to the education. Success that we want to see when seeing through
this lens, for me, is the single greatest part about doing this work. Obviously, in
an oversimplified version of equity work, students come to our campuses. Um, excuse
me, students come to our c
ampuses, we work to retain them, and then they graduate. However,
if we only look through this lens, then you miss out on the richness of building communities
that integrate the lives, the experiences, and the backgrounds that play such a salient
role in our HL students' lives at our U at UIS.
Through my unit, we have a first-generation college student program, the Necessary Steps
mentoring program. Through this support, retention, engagement, living and learning community,
I get to interact wit
h the HL community in very interpersonal ways. Since its creation
in 2008, 34% of our student participants have self-identified as persons holding HL identity.
Moreover, the average GPA for the students has been 2.67, with the median GPA of 2.79,
with a standard deviation of 0.76. So that's pretty good if you just want to capture that
in really quickly. Um, and we've also retained, by the sixth year, on 150% time, 50% of those
students have either graduated or been retained in the pipeline. Whil
e the numbers, like I
said, are somewhat impressive when compared to national statistics amongst first-generation
college students who hold HL identity, what's equally as impressive and notable is the sense
of connection, community, belonging, and support. I get to come in and build with every day.
I come into work; I get to attend programs that are relevant and matter to them. I get
to engage in important discussions where it runs the gamut from serious life events to
other topics that are soci
al, cultural, and just fun in nature. I get to witness them
being scholars and mentors to strengthen their campus belonging and support. What I'm able
to be a part of essentially is expanding and leveraging their funds of knowledge in our
communities and amplifying the voices of the students that are often rendered invisible
by the majority. I get to help our students navigate dominant structures that allow them
to lead with culture and confidence. For me, it's pretty personal. I believe the cro
ss-cultural
opportunities that I get to be a part of only help make this Campus Community much better
and much stronger. But also, I get to watch, like I said, the manifest the greatness and
put the demands on educational institutions that we want to see that goes beyond just
access and enrollment and then graduation. It actually recharges me, and it actually
recharges us as a team as we get to look forward to making sure that we do the work in efficient,
effective, and equitable ways. And so wi
th this notion in mind, I'm grateful for the
symposium today because we not only just get to learn about the good work that's happening
domestically and globally, but it also empowers us and reminds us that there's a lot of good
work that's already underway, and there's also a lot of roadmaps and on-ramps for us
to join the fight. And so I thank you, Emos, for the opportunity um to speak, and I'm grateful
to be a part of the symposium to learn a little bit more on how to make sure that our Campu
s
Community is a lot stronger. So thank you. Hello before starting, I'd like to give a
shout-out to someone in the audience, Carolina. She's the vice president of Olas this year,
and she's really been extremely active and extremely supportive in the success of the
year. So, Carolina, thank you for [Applause] coming.
Hello, my name is Christian Leo, and I am a first-generation Mexican-American undergrad
student here at the University of Illinois Springfield. But more than that, this academic
year
, I also have the privilege of serving as the president of the Organization of Latin
American Students, which is a Latin-based and Le student organization that has been
active on this campus for many years. Now, during my time here on campus, I have
slowly but surely seen an increase in Latino presence in many ways, ranging from overall
enrollment to RSO-held events, and even just in the atmosphere. You can feel the Latino
presence growing, even just by walking to the Student Union, and I only h
ope that this
keeps growing and amplifying through the years to come.
Having an event like the Symposium on a campus like UIS, that is the smaller campus among
all the other UI campuses, and is also a predominantly white institution, is of crucial importance.
Not only does it make the Latin population feel seen and allow us opportunities to come
together and learn, but it also brings a huge opportunity for individuals of other ethnicities,
races, and backgrounds to come and learn more about us.
We are an extremely important community
that keeps growing and evolving here in this country full of opportunities and freedom.
An example of this can be seen through an event that we held at Olas earlier in the
semester called "Noche Mexicana." We held this event during Hispanic Latin Heritage
Month, and it was a night full of Mexican culture. We brought in traditional Mexican
foods, drinks, played Lotería, and also had Mexican crafts like Papel Picado and piñata
making. At the end of the day,
this evented exactly what I had hoped when coming up with
the event idea. I saw people of different cultures coming together to sit, eat, and
converse. I saw a Latino student telling his friends from Caucasian and African-American
backgrounds, who were unsure how to prepare an esquites (Mexican street corn in a cup),
that he would guide them through the process of it and show them how to make it even extra
tasty. Once the event was over, I received a text
message from an attendee stating and I q
uote, "Thank you for making this event possible,
SL (student life) happen, Christian. >Christian I really feel close to home like I haven't
in a while with UIS." After receiving this message, I knew that this event, which I wanted
to host as soon as I became president, was a true success.
The point of telling the story was to show not only the need for holding more culturally
based events on a smaller campus but also to demonstrate the great outcomes that come
from it. We not only want but need
more Latin representation on this campus, as we are a
growing population with the majority of us being far from home, wanting to still stay
connected to our roots. Overall, thank you IMS and the UI Mexico program
for holding the Symposium. Thank you so much to the UI Mexico program for inviting me to
speak here on this crucial topic, and thank you all for being in attendance today, for
showing up and listening. It truly means more than you think. Thank you and have a blessed
rest of your day. So
, we're pulling up the PowerPoint. I'll
mention I'm going to try to show you parts of a digital exhibit, so I'm going to run
back there at some point. But why don't I get started here? Here we go.
Could you just flip to the next slide for a second, please? I'm going to dedicate my
talk today to Rigo Padilla, a person at the University of Illinois Chicago. People at
UIC know him, but my guess is that some people at our other campuses don't know him, and
certainly U of Colima, the University of Il
linois Urbana-Champaign. He died last spring, but he was very important
in starting the Coming Out of the Shadows movement of undocumented students in this
country. He was born in Mexico. They just named a student center after him. But let's
think of him during this panel. Thank you. Could you go back, please?
So, it's been my honor as a faculty member of the University of Illinois system, the
flagship higher ed system in the state of Illinois, to help document and promote important
Mexican and
Chicana contributions to Chicago, especially for our students. I want to remind
everyone that the Chicago metro area has the second-largest Mexican immigrant population
in the United States after Los Angeles. So, it's incredibly important to document.
I'm going to speak today about the Festival de Mujeres 1979. You might be wondering why
would we be interested in a festival. I'm going to talk about some of the whys, how
this digital exhibit came to be, and also some of the things that I learned
from the
original research in doing this digital exhibit. Next, please.
The Festival de Mujeres in 1979 was certainly one of the first street fairs by and for Latinas
and especially Mijas in Chicago. Next, please. It took place in the Pilsen neighborhood.
For those of you who don't know Chicago that well, Pilsen has been the heart of the Mexican
immigrant Midwest since the 1960s. Early in the history of Chicago, there were a couple
of neighborhoods where Mexican immigrants concentrated, and one
of them was the near
West Side. But when that neighborhood came under the construction ball, they basically
destroyed a lot of that neighborhood Um, so for Latina, mostly means to claim the street
for a day and night was something when it wasn't particularly a safe environment for
women and for Latinas. Um, buh, so a little bit of the story of the festival,
and this is, and and how the exhibit came to be here. All you have to do is type in
"Festival de Mues 1979 exhibit," and it should come up.
So the inspiration for it, uh, came
from a five-minute video, which was most of what we had to document this historic festival.
I'd recommend that you watch it. Um, but some of the things that really impressed me about
this video that was filmed by, um, Eleanor Boer and Karen Pew back in '79 were, for instance,
um, there was a very powerful poetry reading. This is really slow by, um, Sala Riva along
with Mar Aaso, two Puerto Rican, uh, poets. And Sala was a very important Latino cultural
organiz
er in Chicago. So one thing that this said to me is, even though this was mainly
a Mexican immigrant community, there was cross-ethnic stuff going on there. Um, these were Puerto
Rican poets. And then another thing that really impressed me from the video, and you can see
I did more research with, um, the other person who did this exhibit with me, um, Dian Siss.
Um, she's an artist, a teaching artist, and she was a co-organizer of the festival, and
she was on staff at MUHA back in 1979. But, um,
in the video, I saw that there were women
building the stages, etc. Um, so I learned that these were very early women carpenters
who were training in the carpentry profession as union carpenters. They included Latinas.
Um, and this would evolve into an important group called Chicago Women in Trades. So that
also really intrigued me. And, um, also, it was intergenerational. Um, the festival, um,
and it also included people from Mexico. Um, so whether they planned to stay in the United
States or p
lan to leave. And one example of that was Malu Ortega, um, who, uh, who worked
with AAN at the time, um, was, uh, had gone to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
and had been commissioned, along with another artist, to do a really important mural, um,
in Pilsen called "Al Esperanza." And this was on the new high school in Pilsen called
Benito Juarez High School that, um, many Mexican immigrant women and others had fought for
a high school in their community, not only to have one in the co
mmunity because there
wasn't one. They didn't have a high school. But also to have one that would be culturally
empowering, rather than seeing being Mexican or speaking Spanish as a deficit, which, I
think, was the model before that high school opened. So, as you can see, um, there were
a number of really intriguing things in this five-minute video. And to me, it said that
Latina feminism and the Latina women's organizing was very rich. It wasn't a secondhand copy
of white feminism or even of bl
ack feminism, although it had, you know, relationships and
inspirations from both of those. I particularly... I don't have time to tell you about the journey
of how the exhibit came to be. I will mention that we were very fortunate to get funding
from a wonderful program called USLDH. If anyone is interested in Latino Digital Humanities,
I'd highly recommend checking out their grants and their training. But also, we were able
to find some amazing things, like the program of the festival. Oh, my
gosh, maybe there's
only one in existence. But a friend of Dian Siss's who was a clown at the festival kept
a program, and we discovered that it was in her archives. So we got the map of the festival,
a list of who participated, uh, uh, uh, we had the schedule of when people presented,
when there were film screenings. So an incredible amount of information. And also, I do want
to mention that those beautiful photos that you saw on the digital exhibit were done by
Eleanor Boer's husband, a photog
rapher and filmmaker who was actually very early faculty
at University of Illinois Navy Pier. So before there was even a U of I Circle campus. So
he went with her when she was making the video. He took the photos, but they had been stored
for 45 years. And we found out when we went to Eleanor to ask her for permission to use
the video. Oh, by the way, my husband took all of these photos. So, um, so anyway, anyway,
I feel like Diana Solis and I were able to put together a pretty rich um, exhibit
on
this important event. But also to me, it's kind of a window, one window into the richness
of Latina and especially Mina and Chana feminisms in Chicago at the time. And I just want to
mention some of the things that I feel like I learned from, uh, from this research. One
is, again, the intergenerational women's movement in the neighborhood and the festival motto
was, um, "In celebration of what women have done, are doing, and can do." So to me, that's
like the three generations: the early gen,
the grandmothers, the mothers, and then the
daughters and children. So, intergenerational. Um, the fact that everything was done by women
in the festival, including building the stages in the carpentry, um, that it was cross-ethnic
and also interracial. So there were white women allies involved in MES and the festival,
and there were also, um, Black women, uh, and Black organizations at the festival. Right
now, Chicago is very racially segregated. Would you agree with me on that? Um, while
it w
as a lot worse, I don't know if it was a lot worse, but it was bad. It was a lot
worse in, um, 1979. So to have women of different races working together to support Latinas,
I think is really fantastic. What, okay. All right. Uh, that the festival and the community
embraced Mexicans, um, even Mexicans who had, who were, you know, just visiting or planning
to return, you know, and weren't staying in Pilsen. Um, they, uh, addressed reproductive
and health rights at the festival in a very Catholic
community. Um, there was a lot of
emphasis on reading books and education. For example, um, Latino Youth Alternative High
School was represented at the festival. Dr. Ramirez, who we're hearing from soon, worked
at Latino Youth. But another person who worked there at the time was Sandra Cisneros. Some
of you may have heard of her. One of the most important writers in the United States, um,
has won many awards and wrote a book you may have heard of called "The House on Mango Street."
Well, this wa
s before she had published the book, and she read some of her poetry at that
time. She was a creative writing teacher at, um, Latino Youth Alternative High School.
So arts and creativity were seen as central to MUHA's, um, they were dealing with family
violence, they were dealing with teen runaways, but it wasn't just, "Oh, we have to deal with
these hard issues." They felt like art, from talking with the festival organizer, Diane
Aila, who later went on to become probably one of the first Latin
as in Pilsen to graduate
from Harvard Medical School, but she said that MICHES really believed in creativity
and arts to empower women and empower the community. And then finally, um, I wanted
to mention that there was overt LGBTQ participation at the festival. Can you go to the next slide,
please? So there were, um, queer women and lesbians,
they called themselves lesbians at the time, uh, like Dr. Solis. Um, they didn't necessarily
announce themselves at the festival, but they did have a group
that performed and that was
on the program who were friends of Di's called Sister Blues and the Blue Dyke Band, D-Y-K-A.
So it was an overtly lesbian group. Um, they were welcome to the festival. It was an interracial
group, so the woman on the left, Allison Clark, was in the group.
So I think you can see the women's movement was very vital and fascinating and powerful
at the time. And please check out the digital exhibit and share it in the future. Thank. You okay? Good afternoon. Thank you so
much.
I really would like to especially thank Hilda and Adriana for the invitation. I'm so sorry
I couldn't be there in person. Hopefully, one day I'll get there so I can talk more
at length with Hilda, Adriana, and all of the group there.
I wanted to mention that I also have a bicultural family. My husband is Mexican. My two children
are bicultural and bilingual. I also have a trans daughter. So, diversity, inclusion,
and belonging, as we talked about earlier, is something very important to me
both as
a professor and as a mother. Next slide, please.
I wanted to talk about today, and it kind of is nice that with Henda's presentation,
some of the work that I've been doing recently here in the Mexican context has been with
fourth-wave feminist activism and higher education. Young feminists that have been protesting
and demanding public and private universities to have protocols for gender violence in our
institutions, which is a bit of a different history between Mexico and the United S
tates.
The United States has had Title IX for quite a while. Nothing of that kind of policy has
existed in the Mexican context. It's something that's been really important, especially in
the last five years, with the Me Too movement and other movements within the region. It's
been something that's been important, and something that I've been interested in studying,
doing interviews with activists, studying their publications on Facebook, Instagram,
and other social media. Currently, since 2022,
the University of Querétaro is one of 10
Mexican universities participating in a nationwide study about gender violence in the university
setting and advocating for more policies in those institutions. In the case of the University
of Querétaro, we have our first gender violence policy in 2019, the first full extensive gender
violence policy. It's really new, and we're still studying that and how we can improve.
In the context with students that are feminist activists. At the same time, as a fem
inist
academic and professor, I know that I have a lot of colleagues and there are a lot of
feminist academics doing a lot of important work in the classroom to promote gender inclusion
and diversity. I've also been studying that, starting in Querétaro in public and private
universities in Querétaro, and we're hoping to extend that study to other Mexican universities
as well to see how Mexican feminist academics are applying gender-inclusive practices in
the classroom. Next slide.
Please, so the
feminist activism of young people, young women in Mexico, we cannot ignore
it. It's one of those things where, as has been talked about and people have mentioned
today, what happens in society definitely happens in the university, and we can't turn
a blind eye. Here are a couple of photos from some of the student activism. These photos
are from 2021, but in the last few years, almost every year, especially around International
Women's Day or the 25th of November, which is the International Day
for the Elimination
of Violence Against Women, a lot of the feminist collectives take advantage of those dates
to protest, rally, and make visible gender violence happening within the university.
They're very vocal about it and also trying to get the university to take charge and sanction
professors or other individuals exercising gender violence. One of the signs there says
UD, which is University of Querétaro, stop the impunity, asking for the policies to be
rightly enforced. Next slide, pleas
e.
What have been some of the demands? The demands of the fourth-wave feminists. One of the principal
demands is non-sexist and inclusive education, which I think is really important to mention.
Also, students have mandatory gender sensitivity workshops, institutional support for feminist
student collectives, mandatory teacher training on gender non-sexist teaching practices in
all fields, something that has been emphasized, and gender in the university curriculum in
all areas of study. These pa
rticular demands have come out as some of the workshops that
we've done with student activists at the University of Querétaro. The university has taken, through
our Gender Study Center, and we've been working on lots of workshops, including a masculinities
program. So some of the things and teacher training are not mandatory, but we do almost
every teacher training period that we have here in December and August each year. We
offer courses. Some of the things we are working on are part of all Me
xican universities where
there's a big challenge is the curriculum. We don't have a lot of gender courses in most
universities, and most of them are optional, although there are some programs that have
had more advances than others, but in general, it's one of the areas that has been most highly
resisted. Next slide, please.
Taking into account the demands, the need, and the viewpoints of our feminist students,
I wanted to see what kinds of things feminist teachers are doing that maybe could be
taken
up in general in our teaching practices by other professors. In particular, I've had
an interest in feminist pedagogies. My very favorite author is bell hooks, an author who
I've studied a lot and have learned a lot from, and is a beautiful writer. She always
talks about empowering students to use their voice. She has a beautiful phrase in some
of her writings to help students find their inner light, which I love. In general, reading
different authors about what are feminist pedagogies, we
try to have shared authority
in the classroom, reconfigure student-teacher relationships. This is building consensus,
making decisions, including on contents that we review, how we're going to evaluate, what
kind of activities they'd like to do, trying to make it meaningful as well, the learning
experience from the needs of the students. In this sense, I have to say, in a lot of
the teacher training that I've done here, particularly in the context of Querétaro,
from grade school through higher
education, this part of shared authority has been one
of the issues that has been challenged and questioned a lot. To question the power, authority
role that teachers have is one of the areas that's most difficult, also from the viewpoint
of feminist pedagogies. There's a need to put a value on student experiences,
their voices, their diversity, which is one of the topics we've been talking about today.
That has to come into play in the classroom and in the learning experience. Feminist pedagogi
es
put the classroom as the space for change, activism, and social justice—the space of
the classroom as a privileged space to encourage students in recognizing inequalities and discrimination
in their own environments, in the university, in educational settings, and to advocate for
change. One area that's really important from feminist pedagogies is the recognition of
women's contributions in each discipline and field of study. One of the things that we
recommend to teachers is to include femal
e and diverse authors in your bibliography,
in your readings, in your courses, and the questioning of patriarchal paradigms in education,
questioning gender norms and practices in education, recognizing how discrimination
and gender inequality operate in educational settings are some of the basic ideas from
feminist pedagogy. Next slide, please. Some of the feminist practices in the university
classroom in KMA from our study of 22 feminist professors in KMA—some of the things that
they talked ab
out in the questionnaire that we applied was instilling feminist values
in students, instilling ideas of equality, sorority, which in Mexican or Spanish is a
really important concept from feminist literature and research—the idea that women see themselves
as allies, that we build each other up, recognize and make visible our contributions, empathy,
the ethics of care, that all of that comes into play in teaching practice. Critical thinking
skills are another area that's really important that als
o includes dialogue—being able to
listen to different postures, different perspectives, and be able to talk about it in dialogue and
not shut down or not listen to someone just because maybe they have a different perspective
but to actually listen and build consensus. Cooperative learning, active listening, validation
of diverse forms of knowing and knowledge—feminist literature talks about situated knowledge—that
it's relational, also knowledge can be collective—to recognize different kinds of
knowledge that
students can have based on their community, based on their culture, based on their own
experiences and bring that to the classroom to help the learning process. The questioning
of power relations and dynamics in the classroom in educational settings is one of the things
that the professors talked about—female professors talked about bringing into the
classroom that discussion with their students and also taking into account the role of emotions
in the teaching-learning process. In
particular, since the pandemic and post-pandemic, this
has been a really important issue. Social-emotional issues for students are something that we
really need to take into account to see them as humans and see us as humans as well. Next
slide, please. I wanted just to share a couple of the narratives
that some of the female feminist professors shared with us to kind of give an idea of
how they put into play some of these ideas. One professor said, "I give priority to the
voice of female stude
nts in the classroom. I encourage private tutoring sessions to help
build meaningful learning experiences. If there's a need to exercise leadership in teams,
if possible, I privilege the quietest girls and dedicate myself to accompany them." I
think this is really important. In some discussions or forums that we participated in, there's
been a questioning of why give priority to the female students' voices. But in patriarchal
and androcentric settings, especially in the context of our university
, we see that a lot
of the times our female students question themselves. They don't want to participate.
They're not used to being given a role as a protagonist. So as a feminist professor,
we try to motivate that and instill that and help students recognize and develop their
voice and leadership skills. Another professor said, "I conduct activities in teams of women
and men so that they have various perspectives." That's one of the things that we also talk
about from feminist pedagogies, from
inclusive pedagogies. It's not letting students all
the time pick their own teams when we do collaborative projects, that we as teachers and professors
can have an eye to build diverse teams so that they have that experience, that they
have to work together, they have to listen to each other, and play roles to be more collaborative
and cooperative. The professor continues to say, "I also encourage women's participation
in a balanced way through purposeful questions." I intentionally make gender
inequalities visible
in classroom activities such as readings, forums, etc. That's part of incorporating
gender into the curriculum. Of course, it has to be an intentional exercise. It's not
going to happen if we don't do it and if we don't intentionally bring these questions
into the classroom and incorporate them into the activities that
we're doing. On the next slide, I think this is a final
reflection that we give in an article, one of the articles that we have published about
our study with
feminist professors. I think it's one of the goals and part of the feminist
movement is political change and transformation. This is why we're doing this, but anyway,
we close our article by saying we are filled with hope to see the implementation of dialogical
education and strategies that help students learn to use their voice, especially for female
students. Undoubtedly, learning to express oneself without fear of being heard and knowing
how to listen implies a powerful transformation in the
lives of young Mexican University women.
I have some photos here from one of the most recent workshops with my research group, team,
and wonderful feminist professors, my colleagues. We tirelessly work with many workshops at
the university and other universities in primary education. One of our most recent workshops
in September was with the Tourism and Gastronomy department. They asked us to come and give
a workshop on gender-related issues in those areas. It's something that we continue to
do
, and we hope that it will slowly make a change. About, thank you.
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