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Recapping the 8th Annual Texas Women, Peace, and Security Symposium

8th Annual Texas Women, Peace, and Security Symposium

On November 4, 2022, the Program on Women, Peace, and Security at the Bush School of Government and Public Service hosted the 8th Annual Symposium on Women, Peace, and Security. The title of the event was “National Security and the Global Birth Strike: New Perspectives on Rationalizing Reproduction and Caregiving.”

Symposium Highlights | Symposium Videos | Symposium Agenda

Symposium Highlights

The Bush School’s Dr. Valerie Hudson welcomed guests to kick-off the event and was followed by Dr. Jennifer Sciubba, Associate Professor at Rhodes College and author of 8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death, and Migration Shape Our World. The Honorable Andras Doncsev, Consul and Trade Counselor of Hungary in Houston, followed Dr. Sciubba.

The first of two keynote speakers followed Doncsev – Dr. Nancy Folbre, Professor Emerita of Economics and Director of the Program on Gender and Care Work at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Senior Fellow of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College in the United States.

After a one-hour lunch break, a Virtual Washington, DC Panel discussed “Recognizing Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan.” The panelists included Metra Mehran, human rights activist and Fellow at NYU School of Professional Studies; Karima Bennoune, Professor of Law at the UC Davis School of Law and previous UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights; and Zubaida Akbar, women’s rights and civil society activist.

Ann Crittendon, author of The Price of Motherhood, and If You’ve Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything, followed serving as the second keynote speaker of the day.

Following a short break, Dr. Theresa Morris, Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M and Coordinator of the Women and Gender Studies Program, spoke followed by an all Texas-based panel discussion and closing remarks by Dr. Hudson.

Symposium Videos

On behalf of the WPS concentration and the Bush School, we would like to thank everyone who participated, and we look forward to our next symposium in the fall of 2023.