Brooke Willig, Class of 2014,  shares her experience as the WLA Young Academics Fund recipient.

1. The People

People in law school are always talking about networking, usually in the context of business cards and cocktail parties.  Academic conferences provide a fantastic, non-corporate opportunity to get to know both established and aspiring figures in the fields that matter to you.  Whether you have a rousing conversation over lunch, stop by after a panel to ask questions and offer suggestions, or just take note of names you may want to get in touch with weeks (or years) down the line, you’ll be building relationships that can only help your academic career.

 2. The Academic Experience

Law school, for better or worse, is in large part about research and writing.  Understanding how to frame and develop a research project, to write cogently about a problem you are still in the process of answering, and to distill those thoughts into a short presentation for peer review and support are key skills for any legal career.  It’s also important to start taking the initiative in creating and promoting your research, as well as to train yourself to be on the lookout for new scholarship and scholarly opportunities.  Better yet, that sort of training—learning to find peers, mentors, and opportunities for academic conversation—can be developed even if you merely attend a conference and are not yet ready to present yourself.

3. Confidence

In an age where women remain underrepresented in politics, law firms, legal scholarship, and even in classroom participation, it’s critical that women at HLS learn to stand up and speak out – a lesson made exponentially easier when that speech is applauded and encouraged.  I was amazed by the number of people, both presenters and audience members, who came up to me after speaking to tell me how much they liked my presentation, to propose ways I could deepen or augment my analysis, and/or to ask if they could consider my paper’s ideas or insights in their work.  While academic conferences may sound formal and intimidating, they can actually offer a critical ego boost, as people you respect and admire not only take the time to listen to your ideas, but come to gain insights from you and to help make your work as strong as possible so that you can succeed.

4. Something Different

Unfortunately, law school classes can get a little dry, as you try to take in all the requisite black letter law and traditional coursework.  Academic conferences, by contrast, are all about scholarly innovation and diversification, finding new areas of study, new implications, and new voices.  Attending a conference can be a wonderful way of combatting burnout and of discovering more avenues to get you excited about legal scholarship.

5. The Comparative Costs and Benefits

It’s surprisingly easy to become involved in, and present at, a conference.  In essence, all you need is:

a) the initiative to root around the internet and scout out conferences of interest to you,
b) an idea or problem that interests you, and for which you can write a short (read: one page) proposal, and
c) the time and energy to research and write a short paper on the subject, which can often be done in conjunction with a class or academic credit.

In exchange, you’ll get:

a) a network of possible mentors and collaborators,
b) experience developing, crafting, and presenting original work,
c) invaluable support and feedback, and
d) a chance to do and consider something different from traditional law school classes, not to mention
e) a great resume addition and talking point.

So what are you waiting for?

Brooke Willig, Class of 2014,  shares her experience as the WLA Young Academics Fund recipient. 

Thanks to the WLA, I got to start my reading week talking about Fifty Shades of Grey instead of the Federal Rules of Evidence.

As an ex-English major with a focus in women’s fiction, I had avidly followed the rather troubling discussions about “mommy porn” and women’s “secret, antifeminist desires” taking place throughout mainstream media following the publication of E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey.  While rifling through one such critique, my eyes were caught by a lengthy discussion of something that seemed far more appropriate to my 1L classes than to a work of erotica: contracts.

Namely, it seemed that E.L. James’s characters spent a large part of the novel drafting, negotiating, and revising a BDSM contract, which set out acceptable types of sexual play and limits to the relationship and even reprinted in full for the reader the exact sets of terms at issue.  As the characters themselves acknowledged, such a sexual contract would never be enforced in a court of law.  That knowledge, however, did not stop either the characters or James from turning again and again to the contract’s terms and forms, insisting it be treated with full legal formality, or from treating it as essential to their sexual and romantic relationship.

What followed were weeks of procrastination on Westlaw and daydreaming through contracts class, as I tried to determine just what these BDSM contracts constituted, who was using them, and why on earth a writer of erotica would repeatedly choose to stop talking about sex and start talking about the (honestly, less-than-sexy) subject of contract formation.  During the course of this procrastination, I happened across a call for proposals for a (Un)Safe, a graduate student conference at the University of Pennsylvania on notions of safety in relation to sex and gender.  Realizing that my research had focused largely on whether BDSM contracts served to make sex more conventional or more dangerous, I quickly jumbled together some of my thoughts and questions about BDSM contracts and sent them off.  Several weeks later, I was thrilled to hear that my proposal had been accepted and that I would be able to join a dozen other academics in conversations about gendered conceptions of safety.

Thus it was that I found myself spending reading week in Philadelphia, listening to speakers talk about women’s rights, queer aesthetics, and gender recognition.  The two-day conference took its interdisciplinary title seriously, featuring speakers from fields as diverse as law, public health, early modern literature, and contemporary film studies.  Whether in discussing the rhetoric of safe sex and women’s choice, the questions posed by female boxers and female virtuosity, or the intersection of genre and female identity in post-nuclear fiction, every speaker returned again and again to the ways in which gender and sexuality shape our construction of identity, safety, and normalcy.  The interdisciplinary nature of the conference also highlighted the ways in which genres and fields themselves are indisputably subject to gendering: one could easily perceive the differing extents to which issues of feminism, gender, and queerness were or were not commonplace within various departments.

An unquestionable highlight of the conference was the presence and participation of the keynote speaker, Lauren Berlant.  Berlant, the George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago and a pioneer in the study of affect and collective attachment, not only delivered a fascinating keynote on “Structures of Unfeeling: Mysterious Skin” (entirely while standing in a yoga tree pose, no less), but listened diligently to the student presentations and offered insights and advice to help each student further develop her piece.  I was particularly gratified when she came up to me after my presentation to congratulate me on my delivery and to offer to provide syllabi and notes that might be of future help to my research.

Above all, the conference provided a unique opportunity to take part in stimulating and diverse conversations about the ways in which gender shapes our everyday lives—indeed our very conception of “the everyday”—and I look forward to continuing those conversations with both the conference’s presenters and with the WLA and students here at HLS

 

 

Thanks to the boundless energy and dedication of the WLA Mentoring Chair, Nicole Kardassakis, some fantastic 1L women took a J-term break and tested out Davis Square’s Bowl Haven! Below are some snapshots of the fun:

It was a pleasure learning and listening with everyone today. We will have more photos, videos, etc. as we begin to process the amazing experience that was today’s conference. As most of you probably know, the event was live-tweeted @WLAHarvard. To read the live-tweets chronologically, start at the very bottom, and scroll up. 

<End Live Tweets>
“Join me. The cause is ours.” #19percent #wlaconference @WLAHarvard

 

@Schriock1 Thank you for everything! We’ll never forget the thrill of learning from you today! #womensupportingwomen #19percent

 

RT @WLAHarvard @Schriock1 ”As you make your way reach behind u & grab your sister to make sure she comes too-We must move forward together”

And everyone: stay safe in #nemo!

ENORMOUS thank you to everyone who attended & to all our speakers,@AlisonOmens @Schriock1 @mlkrook @brandihoffine @wutrain@FawziaKoofi77

Koofi: #Elections aren’t about how good you are..it’s about support. If we fail in 2014 election, then we fail.

Koofi: People are fed up with the leaders leading with violence and guns; I have all the social networks behind me.

Koofi: Afghanistan is not a poor country, and it’s an important country geographically

Koofi: second is drug trafficking, third is lack of good government and rule of law; these two elements must be reformed internally

Koofi: three challenges that afghanistan faces; first: insecurity

Koofi: with social media, the world will not be uninformed about what is going on in Afghanistan anymore

Impassioned remarks by @FawziaKoofi77 pic.twitter.com/JzVLhvuH

 

 

Koofi: The second priority is #democracy

Koofi: “#Women have come a long way.”

Koofi: “Women’s issue, women’s rights, should be the priority.”

Koofi: “It’s important for all of us to understand that the war in Afghanistan is not just an Afghan war.”

“#Peace is a value. Nobody can oppose it.”

Koofi: every sector was invested in, without priority. together with corruption, this reduced the hope and enthusiasm that people had felt

Koofi: “We wanted to do everything, and huge expectations were raised without managing the expectation.”

Koofi: you could see “hope and enthusiasm in the eyes” of the Afghan people

Koofi: describes a “back to school” campaign for girls after the Taliban fell

Koofi: Article 22 of the Afghan constitution bans discrimination, which is really important for women

Koofi: “We have paid a high price for the words of ‘freedom’ and ‘sovereignty.’”

Koofi: could finally live without the fear of being beaten for not swearing socks, a burka, and other required clothing for women

 

Koofi: only after 9/11 did the Taliban regime fall apart

 

Koofi: “As a Muslim woman, I don’t see any space for that [cutting off hands as punishment for theft] in Islam.”

 

Koofi: recalls a man trying to beat her with a stone because she had nail polish on

 

@Schriock1: Thank you @WLAHarvard! You are great women and great supportive men standing together to make #19percent 50 and more.

Retweeted by @WLAHarvard

 

Koofi: what she faced as a woman gave her the “determination and the passion” to enter politics

 

Koofi: recalls her husband being put in jail for no reason other than marrying her, since she was from a political family

 

Koofi: had to stop her education because of the Taliban taking power

 

Koofi: originally wanted to be a doctor, to “cure the injuries of my nation”

 

Koofi: “I come from a family that basically paid a high price for being in politics.”

 

Koofi: we need to take time to reflect on our mistakes, so we can make change in the future

Closing remarks from @FawziaKoofi77, retaking the stage

 

Our final panel is done! Now, closing remarks from Fawzia Koofi #19percent#WLAConference

 

Fried: complete disenfranchisement of felons is not very common, as widely believed

 

Fried: “At the bare minimum, people who have felony convictions should know what their rights are.”

 

Clarke: another problem is that those who can vote from prison don’t get their votes counted for their own state, but where the prison is

 

Second question from WLA VP Nitzan Weizmann: How do laws not allowing felons to vote affect our conversation?

 

Gill: “Money is needed from the federal government, absolutely,” but agrees there needs to be flexibility for states

 

Gill: Role for federal government: implement minimum set of standards.

 

Clarke: thinks it has to continue to be more of a state-by-state movement

 

Clarke: “There just isn’t enough money. There’s not enough training.” -on problems of the election in PA

 

Clarke: money should be put into election administration #WLAConference

 

Time for questions! Question 1 from Lena Silver: Is putting the answer of federal voting in federal hands a possible solution?

 

Omens: as the electorate expands, our conversations will continue to change #WLAConference #19percent

 

Omens: the electorate expanded and changed in 2008 so much, and people did not think it would continue in 2012

 

Omens: used social media to get people the right information and get it to them wherever they are

 

Omens: AFL-CIO used social media (facebook, twitter) to reach people during the election, encouraging people to stay on line

Clarke: the voter id laws ended up backfiring by getting people really involved in collectively fighting back against them

 

Clarke: “There was so much anger at this obvious effort to take voter’s rights away.”

 

Clarke: “This is part of who we are. This is part of what makes me a person. This is part of what makes me a citizen.” #voting #19percent

 

Clarke: PA constitution “enshrines the right to vote,” unlike the US constitution

 

Gill: “Why don’t all states use online registrations?”

 

Gill: we need portable voter registration, so that when people move their registration follows them. but many states don’t have this option

 

@Schriock1 Thank you SO much for coming and being such a fantastic keynote — hope you can get back safely and quickly.

 

Gill: one way to ensure there is no disenfranchisement is planning ahead of time, training poll workers, etc

 

Gill: Lawyers’ Committee brought suit against Ohio in 2004 on disenfranchisement grounds, and that has brought about real change today

 

Gill: “I think we are getting to a place where we can actually have some real reform, at the federal and state level.”

 

Gill: section 5 has helped to block voter ID laws in this past election

 

Gill: for states with history of voting discrimination, they must pre-clear voting law changes; section 5 continues to be relevant today

 

Fried: To have every governor talking about this is “mindblowing,” the public is demanding something better. We might get to that better way

 

Fried: Nationally, there is real momentum; talking seriously about playing offense, passing laws that are better, make it easier to vote

 

A reason to be hopeful moving forward? Fried: 2008 #Obama campaign revolutionized #voterprotection - now you can’t ignore that it’s an issue

 

Fried: what we can take away from this is that we need to be creative; “there is a lot of room for innovation”

 

in-office absentee voting: go to your voting office, request an absentee ballot in person, fill it out right there, and return it same day

 

Fried: her team came up with an idea of in-office absentee voting, which had never been done before

 

Fried: The concern was “How are we going to make people feel like the right to vote is not lost?” when talking about the voting laws

 

Fried: Florida has specific voter access problems, and wanted to make sure to talk about voting “without absolutely terrifying the voters”

 

Hannah Fried, Florida Voter Protection Coordinator for the Obama Campaign now speaking #19percent

 

Omens: “We really need to educate people and have these conversations . . . about what is really at stake here.”

 

Omens: pro-voter ID law language is about preventing people from cheating the system, but the real issue is restricting the rights to vote

 

Alison Omens, Director of Media Outreach at AFL-CIO speaking now

 

Women as a group are most impacted by #voterID laws – maiden name IDs won’t work if they’re gotten married. #19percent

 

Very little effort to educate voters in these states on new #voterID laws. Early voting cuts. pic.twitter.com/sa11yBzK

 

 

Gill: limitations on absentee voting, limited opportunities to register to vote. PA laws disproportionately impact minorities, elderly.

Can you tell us something you grappled with leading up to the election?

Jennifer Clarke, Hannah Fried, Sonia Gill, and Cynthia Bauerly are our panelists now #19percent pic.twitter.com/vl7Jgxsv

 

 

Our final panel of the day is beginning: Voter Disenfranchisement: Whose Voices are Represented? #19percent

Schriock: Pathways: business women do very well and law women are more inclined to run, but it’s imperative to find women in ALL areas!

So excited and grateful to pull such a HUGE crowd despite the snow!#19percent @emilyslist @Schriock1 pic.twitter.com/LKPEG0fN

View on Twitter

 

Schriock on building diverse coalition: look to political and non-political organizations to recruit candidates. #19Percent

Q: Why only Democratic women? A: We’re pro-choice; policies matter. We’re most successful in this lane. But need more of ALL women in power!

Wonderful keynote address by @Schriock1 – taking Qs from audience nowpic.twitter.com/TYvAn4DF

 

 

Schriock: As you make your way up, reach behind you and grab your sister to make sure she comes, too. We must strive move forward together.

Schriock: Nobody gave women the chance to make a difference. They banded together and went out and found it. It takes courage! Don’t wait!

 

Schriock: 55% of men who self-identify as unqualified to run for office, do. Women need to be asked 7 times to run. THIS IS YOUR FIRST ASK.

 

Schriock: “It rests on our shoulders to bring other women to the table”#19percent #WLAConference

 

Schriock: Place for ALL interests in politics. You CAN do this. You MUST. Democracy depends on us. ALL of you need to join me.

 

Schriock: Emily’s List recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office.#wlaconference

 

Schriock: “We need women and girls in this country to feel like they can take risks.” #19percent #wlaconference

 

Schriock: Loss is not end of the world, just the end of the race. Girls and women need to take bigger risks. Emily’s List ready to train!

 

Schriock: no better advancement of women’s leadership than Title IX, opened so many doors, and very existence is thanks to women–Patsy Mink

 

Schirock: It took laws to open up opportunities for women. #19percent

 

Schriock: 98 women in Congress today. We have earned our seat at the table many times over, it’s our time to take our place at the head.

 

Schriock: quotes Obama–there is a reason he started with Seneca Falls, was just the beginning

 

Schriock: many people in Congress have the wrong priorities, so we need to send new people, new women to Washington, we play offense!

 

Schriock: women working in news worked so hard for little credit, men wrote vast majority of all cover stories, held few leadership position

 

Schriock: in 1986 there was no women’s bathroom in the Senate!

 

Stephanie Schriock, President of Emily’s List, speaking now in Milstein East as the WLA Conference Keynote Speaker #19percent

 

Chen: Romney would have been a great President

 

Chen: she had a feeling Romney was going to be running for President in 2008, and wanted to meet him

 

Chen: told her boyfriend that no matter what it cost, even though they didn’t have much money, they had to win that dinner.

 

Chen: at a public interest auction through HBS, Josh Romney auctioned off dinner with his dad (Mitt)

 

Chen: her boyfriend at the time, now husband, was at HBS and his classmate was Romney’s son Josh

 

Chen: first time she met Mitt Romney she was at HLS and Romney was governor

 

Chen: “Politics at the end of the day is really about people and how they interact with one another . . . .”

 

Chen: Romney campaign had women leading some of the most important divisions in the campaign, and major roles in strategy and advertisements

 

Chen: Romney “made a real serious effort to put women in the cabinet” when he became governor

 

Chen: “The sentiment behind it . . . was real.”

 

Chen: was in the rapid response room with Romney’s binder comment was made

 

Rosenfeld: was there an instance you had to reach out to women in particular?

 

Rosenfeld’s next question: what are some of your favorite or pivotal moments in the campaign?

 

Hoffine: it was satisfying to watch a man running for senate “admit I don’t know how this policy works”

 

Hoffine: when the personhood law came up the two male candidates were asked by a male moderator how contraception and IUDs work

 

Hoffine: Kaine said that when women make up 50% of the economy, we all have to pay attention to these issues

 

Hoffine: “A male candidate can very effectively deliver this message” when it’s framed as “family and economic issues” @timkaine

 

Hoffine: “The second question was about Virginia’s ultrasound law” at an all-male business forum, which brought them to a new realization

 

Hoffine: the men became defensive over these issues on behalf of their wives, daughters

 

Hoffine: “We stopped talking about them as women’s issues” which helped bring in male voters @timkaine #19percent

 

freedom, gender equity (equal pay), etc. Men cared about these issues too.

 

Hoffine: 19 months of exhaustive research ended up with a conclusion that the issues that moved these people were issues of reproductive

 

Hoffine: gender and women’s issues were one of the most significant factors in Tim Kaine’s campaign

 

Hoffine: did not work for a woman candidate this cycle, but agrees with Wu’s comments about women candidates

 

Chen: outreach to women and outreach to men should be the same, since we all care about the same issues

 

Chen: “Women care about jobs, about the economy”

 

Chen: the problem is that these comments are linked to other republicans, like Romney

 

Chen: “He said a really idiotic thing that nobody should say” (re: Aiken’s “real rape” comments)

 

Chen: commenting how the republican party tried to get Aiken to withdraw after his legitimate rape comments

 

Chen: noting that Santorum wrote a book that criticized women who work for abandoning their families

 

Chen: it’s not true, factually, that republicans want to ban birth control or prevent women from working

 

Chen: “As a republican, I gristle at the notion that there are women’s issues separate from other issues that we should all care about.”

 

Wu: reaching out to local media in addition to mainstream papers helped Warren’s @elizabethforma #WLAConference #19percent

 

Wu: the reporters were men and brought a male or gendered bend to the Liz Warren campaign

 

Wu: “You need to look beyond Scott Brown’s truck and his masculine image” to see what the candidates really had to offer

 

Wu: worried that women politicans will always be forced to jump through extra hurdles to legitimize themselves

View on Twitter

Wu: from day 1, wondering if the Warren campaign could come over the shadow of the Coakley campaign. @elizabethforma

 

Rosenfeld: What kinds of lessons have you learned on the trail?

 

Wu: inspirational experience on the Warren campaign @elizabethforma#WLAConference #19percent

 

Wu: each card actually reflected the issues of the local community reflected by the language

 

Wu: proudest of the fact that on the Warren campaign they had information cards in at least 10 different languages

 

Wu: jumped on Warren’s campaign the first moment she could, eventually moving to a role on engaging communities of color

 

Wu: her second experience was in Contracts with Elizabeth Warren#19percent

 

Wu: this made her interested in how city government runs and affects people’s everyday lives and bigger dreams

 

Wu: had to move back to Chicago to take care of her mom and opened a small restaurant, which was her first experience with city government

 

Wu: two instances drove me into politics

 

Wu: noting her surprise that her mother signed her up for this class, but realizes her mother saw the barriers in integrating

 

Wu: “When I was 5 years old my mom had saved up to sign me up for an etiquette class.” Wu “had never had a dinner with no chopsticks before”

Wu: comes from an immigrant family, and felt she was part of two worlds growing up

 

Michelle Wu is now introducing herself, reminiscing about her previous experiences in the audience at the #WLAHarvard conference

 

Don’t miss our panel on blazing the political trail, happening now in Milstein East! #19percent #WLAHarvard

 

Hoffman: quit her job to work for Tim Kaine on the trail when he decided to run for office

 

Hoffman: used to be responsible for watching every single McCain/Palin appearance and do rapid response. She can quote their stump speeches!

 

Hoffman: went to work for DNC to do opposition research, which was a male-dominated field

 

Hoffman: “I was itching to get back into politics.”

 

Brandi Hoffman is now speaking about her early experiences, including volunteering with local political campaigns in high school and college

 

I’ll be switching over to last names, so replace all the Katie’s with “Chen”!

 

Katie is telling us about how gender affected the work she’s done; she says it hasn’t affected her work at all #WLAHarvard

 

Katie joined Bush/Cheney campaign as associate counsel upon graduating from HLS #WLAConference

 

Katie took a semester off of college to work for a senate campaign#19percent

 

Katie was always eager to get into politics, and reminisces about her first job picking up phones on the Dole campaign

 

And Brandi Hoffine was the Communications Director for Senator Tim Kaine’s campaign

 

Michelle Wu just graduated from HLS (JD ’12) and is running for Boston City Council

 

Short bios for you. Katie Biber Chen was the General Counsel of Romney 2012 Campaign

 

Moderator for today’s panel is HLS Professor Diane Rosenfeld

 

Panel starting now, so run in and grab a seat near the front!

 

Coming up on the next panel “Tips from the Trail: Gender in Political Campaigns” have Katie Biber Chen, Michelle Wu, and Brandi Hoffine

 

@brandihoffine Excited to have you!

 

Thanks for joining us for our first panel, huge thank you to @mlkrook,@FawziaKoofi77, Cathy Allen, and Mindy Roseman. #19percent

 

Krook: No, why should we be forced to vote for MEN. I want to have a choice.

 

Krook: men majority of voters, but women are majority of population in many countries. Why should voters be forced to vote for woman, right?

 

Krook: Yes, we have fewer years of political exp; no wonder – women have been excluded. Work twice as much to be considered half as good

 

Krook: women are equally or better qualified than the men; the men haven’t completed high school, women have the advanced degrees

 

@thetiniestbird We’re rooting for you to get here!

 

Allen: it’s not #education or that they’re not ready. It’s a woman’s lack of self confidence that takes her out of the loop. “Yes, you can!”

 

Koofi: #political obligation, universal value for government to find the right people. #19percent

 

Koofi: put criteria right in the law. Easy to find corrupt men, but noncorrupt women, difficult? Mobilize support for right people

 

Koofi: how to get right people in right positions. Education, right connections. Some men come in without being able to read & write.

 

Audience Q: how do we respond to democratic ideal, with most voters being men?

 

Audience Q: To what extent do we have to first break down traditional gender roles? How do we go about doing that?

 

Allen: “I’ve gotta say…we’re ready.” #19percent

 

Allen: proof in the pudding – if you want to ignore quotas, it’s at your peril. This generation won’t tolerate women not being at the table.

 

.@mlkrook: “I just joined #twitter last week!” We know!

 

Women are qualified but need to be inspired to run for office. @mlkrook

 

Krook: We’re not stuck with what we have! Arrangements can be different. But waiting gets us nowhere. #19percent

 

Koofi: Universal values should be pushed more. Require us to support each other – basic right to political/social activity #19percent

 

Koofi: women in West take many issues for granted that are still a struggle in other countries. Even have to fight to have bank accounts

 

Last question by moderator: what kind of lessons have we learned from international experience? 1-2 talking pts for #American public

 

Allen: when women/men hear the “stupid things men say” to women, everyone exclaims “what idiot!”

 

When there are #women in #politics, female constituents are more likely to contact their representatives #19percent

 

Mirror at #Swedish parliament, sign that says “First female prime minister” – could be you

 

.@mlkrook: Seemingly like at @Harvard_Law, in #Sweden parliament, no portraits of women

Great to have you all here at our 1st panel! @jessb_weiner @dianeew@AlisonOmens #19percent

 

Quota – “I don’t know of a good one, but I don’t know of a bad one either” – Allen

 

Allen: “20% is tipping point” – at that point, they start doing things – meaningful #guncontrol, other policy, across party lines

 

Voters to target to support women: young people, then men, then women. If young people voting, more likely to have women

 

ALlen: after you meet quota, you reach critical mass, start a process. “I have watched women move into govt who had no idea what govt does”

 

Allen: #American model is “it’ll happen somehow” – no longer global model of female #political involvement.

 

Must be quantity participation in order to ensure quality participation later.#quota #elections #women @FawziaKoofi77

 

They will talk about your clothes, your scarf, how covered your head is.

Women now willing to be agents of change. “But for us, we have to struggle from scratch” #wlaconference

Women missed out on political connections bc they had to stay home; no political support; not taken seriously because they have no weapons

Koofi: to pave way for women, need to have quota. In #Afghanistan, not quota for just political participation, but also gov offices

.@FawziaKoofi77: meaningful participation may not be there, #women there for sake of being women. There are weak women but also weak men too

How do we make sure participation is meaningful? Tokenism? Critical mass? Tipping point? Speak to #s.

Allen: next battle is equal access to capital #19percent

 

Allen: quota isn’t the panacea we’d like to see, each is different, they’re a little bad but means to an end; get #womens voices @ the table

 

Cathy Allen, President of The Connections Group: In #Afghanistan, asking for quota for # of women in colleges #education #genderequity

 

We may not have thousands of people, but the quality of people…#19percent

 

#Quotas will be the end of life as we know it — that is #alarmist. Analogy to#nemo

 

Changes in #USA have been much slower than elsewhere #19percent

 

#SaudiArabia - 20% quota which puts them ahead of #USA. #zimbabwe has 22% House, 50% of Senate. New global norm of #genderbalance

 

Quotas of elected women? @mlkrook: even countries where there is not a formal quota, there is some kind of soft target #19percent #elections

 

“If you want something said in #politics ask a man, if you want something done, ask a#woman” – Mona Lena Krook

 

Koofi: “Men talk about big things and deliver small” #zing #19percent

 

Koofi: “We have to support a woman because she will get elected anyway”#afghanistan #elections #19percent

Koofi: “Political participation is one of the means to pave the way for women” and reduce gender violence

Fawzia Koofi, Afghan Parliamentarian & Presidential Candidate: new constitution gave women a “new political life”

What countries are leading the way? What level of female participation are we seeing? #19percent

 

Our 1st panel is Models from Abroad: International Pathways to Women’s Political Participation

Getting started with our first panel, Mindy Roseman moderating #19percent

A huge thank you to #Kirkland&Ellis for making this possible.

Half an hour til showtime! Despite #nemo, we’re going full speed ahead.#19percent #wlaconference

 

What a turnout! WLA members and firm representatives from 12 firms filled up the bar at the Sheraton Commander Thursday night at the first annual WLA firms job fair. The students had the opportunity to drop resumes in a folder for the firms they were interested in and these folders were given to the firm representatives at the end of the night. There was plenty of food and drink to go around and the students were able to mingle with associates and partners from various firms – even a firm from California! We hope everyone enjoyed themselves as much as we did!