Women’s Leadership and Human Rights

Speakers:

Madeleine M. Kunin, Founder, Institute for Sustainable Communities, Former Governor of Vermont and Former U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Madeleine May Kunin was the fourth woman to be elected Governor in her own right and the first woman to be elected for three terms. She immigrated to the United States as a child with her mother and brother from Switzerland at the outbreak of World War II in fear of the holocaust. She served on a three-person vice Presidential search committee which recommended Al Gore. She first served as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, and then returned to her birthplace when President Clinton appointed her ambassador to Switzerland from 1996-99. During her tenure she worked to retrieve dormant accounts for Jews who had deposited funds in Swiss banks. She was elected to the Vermont legislature in 1972 and served three terms. She was the first woman to be elected to a leadership position and to chair the House Appropriations committee. She was elected lieutenant Governor in 1978 and served two terms. She came to Vermont to work as a journalist after graduating from Columbia University School of Journalism. She has a B.A. degree from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) and an M.A. in English literature from the University of Vermont. After leaving the governorship, she formed a non-governmental organization, The Institute for Sustainable Communities, which partners with local organizations in the U.S. and around the world to create stronger democratic communities. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and has had appointments at Harvard, Dartmouth, Middlebury and St. Michael’s College. Presently she is a Marsh professor at the University of Vermont, a commentator on Vermont Public Radio, and a blogger on the Huffington Post and serves on several non-profit boards. She is the author of the recently published book, “Pearls, Politics and Power, how women can win and lead,” and “Living a Political Life,” and “The Big Green Book.” She frequently lectures on issues regarding women, the environment and education. Her most recent award was the Eleanor Roosevelt medal received in 2009. She resides in Burlington, Vermont with her husband John Hennessey and together they have six children and eight grandchildren.las Mujeres. Photo credit: Paul Boisvert Ms. Angie Le Mar, Writer, Producer, Comedienne, TV and Radio Personality, Great Britain Angie Le MarAngie Le Mar is one of Britain’s top comediennes. Angie’s wide ranging career achievements enable her to deliver top quality performance and production values on stage, screen and the airwaves. From being the first British performer to storm the legendary Harlem Apollo to making history in London‘s West End, Angie is a proven hit with audiences of all ages and backgrounds. Angie founded Straight to Audience Productions to draw not just on her unsurpassed reputation as a performer and writer but also on her acknowledged expertise in direction, production and marketing, to serve the growing international market for vibrant, top quality entertainment. Amongst her many productions include the hard hitting and topical drama Do You Know Where Your Daughter Is? in which Angie wrote and produced. It features a cast of teenage actors and focuses on the tensions of mother daughter relationships and the often devastating consequences of peer pressure. In the theatre, Angie’s award winning standup comedy has been celebrated with two star studded “Audience with…” Events, while she is equally well known as the writer, director and star of the ground breaking Funny Black Women on the Edge– the unique sketch show broke box office records at the Edinburgh Festival, and Forty the story of five women who discover that what was intended to be a celebration of old school ties turns into a night of score settling, personal revelation and ultimately forgiveness. The Angie Le Mar Show on Choice Fm, Britain’s Leading Urban Talk and Music station has trebled the station’s listenership in the weekend morning slot and has attracted guests ranging from Stevie Wonder, Danny Glover and John Singleton to India Irie, Maya Angelou and Whoopi Goldberg. Angie’s TV work includes memorable appearances on top rated shows such as BBC’s Grumpy Old Women, Must Try Harder, The Real McCoy, and her starring role in four successful series of Get Up Stand Up (Channel Four). Straight To Audience launched in May 2001 with the video release of Angie Le Mar The Movie making her live stand up available to eager fans for the first time. The success of the video allowed Angie to develop her work as a writer, director and producer of shows with other artists including Will the Real Wayne Rollins Please Stand Up, Big Sister which used the Big Brother format as a vehicle to showcase up and coming young comics and 26 episodes of Sharp Cuts a radio comedy/drama which Angie wrote and starred in for Choice FM. The success of Sharp Cuts led to the development of The Brothers, a radio drama which attracted 40,000 new listeners to the show and convinced Angie that there was a market for a live production. Not only has Angie Le Mar won numerous awards and accolades, as Britain’s First Lady of Black Comedy, but by her example she continues to raise the bar for women in the entertainment industry. Dr. Deepti P. Mehrotra, Activist, Writer and Social Scientist, India Dr. Deepti Priya Mehrotra is an independent thinker and activist, deeply interested in feminist and human rights issues. Her work includes pioneering research on single mothers’ lives in India, women in traditional theatre, peasant and anti-colonial movements, as well as issues of gender, power and knowledge. Trained as a political scientist and philosopher, she has engaged with human rights and anti-communal struggles, child rights and working class issues in New Delhi’s resettlement colonies, and interventions in education and popular media. She works extensively with civil society organizations in India as an adviser and consultant. A concern for the individual as well as collective rights and well-being runs through all her work. She tries to bridge many diverse worlds. She has taught at graduate and under-graduate levels across several departments and courses, including `Conflict Transformation and Peace Building’, Philosophy, Political Science, Education and Gender Studies. As a visiting lecturer at Ambedkar University Delhi, she is presently teaching an interdisciplinary course on `Ideas, Knowledge and Ethics’ and another on `Marginalisation, Resistance and Transformation’. At Delhi University, she holds gender workshops and workshops on textbook analysis. At the Indira Gandhi National Open University, she is helping design course material on Integral Education and on gender and women’s issues. She is currently exploring research on `educational for peace’ forms of non-violent resistance, and theoretical understanding of women’s movements. Her book Irom Sharmila and the Struggle for Peace in Manipur (Penguin India, 2009) has generated wide interest. She has written on the same theme in Hindi, and her book is being translated into Tamil and Bengali languages. Dr. Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya, Minister of Gender and Family Promotion, Rwanda Dr. Deepti Priya Mehrotra is an independent thinker and activist, deeply interested in feminist and human rights issues. Her work includes pioneering research on single mothers’ lives in India, women in traditional theatre, peasant and anti-colonial movements, as well as issues of gender, power and knowledge. Trained as a political scientist and philosopher, she has engaged with human rights and anti-communal struggles, child rights and working class issues in New Delhi’s resettlement colonies, and interventions in education and popular media. She works extensively with civil society organizations in India as an adviser and consultant. A concern for the individual as well as collective rights and well-being runs through all her work. She tries to bridge many diverse worlds. She has taught at graduate and under-graduate levels across several departments and courses, including `Conflict Transformation and Peace Building’, Philosophy, Political Science, Education and Gender Studies. As a visiting lecturer at Ambedkar University Delhi, she is presently teaching an interdisciplinary course on `Ideas, Knowledge and Ethics’ and another on `Marginalisation, Resistance and Transformation’. At Delhi University, she holds gender workshops and workshops on textbook analysis. At the Indira Gandhi National Open University, she is helping design course material on Integral Education and on gender and women’s issues. She is currently exploring research on `educational for peace’ forms of non-violent resistance, and theoretical understanding of women’s movements. Her book Irom Sharmila and the Struggle for Peace in Manipur (Penguin India, 2009) has generated wide interest. She has written on the same theme in Hindi, and her book is being translated into Tamil and Bengali languages. Dr. Lucrecia Ramírez-Restrepo, Psychiatrist and Professor, University of Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia Lucrecia Ramírez Restrepo is a Psychiatrist and Associate Professor in the Psychiatry Department, University of Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia. She is also Coordinator of the Women’s Mental Health Academic Group, Medical School, University of AntioquiaAmong her many positions, Dr. Ramírez Restrepo served as Coordinator in the Teenagers’ Ward as a general practitioner in Antioquia’s Mental Hospital, and as full time psychiatric doctor at Antioquia’s Mental Hospital from August 1990 until August 1991. Since April 1990, she has served as an undergraduate and graduate school lecturer in Clinical Psychiatry at the University of Antioquia’s Medical School. She is currently Associate Professor of the Department of Psychiatry, Medical School, and Coordinator of Women’s Mental Health Academic Area, and also director of the Action-Research group on Eating Disorders (anorexia and bulimia), and participant in the research group Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Action. Medellín, Colombia, is known as the fashion capital of Latin America, but it also holds another world record: it has the highest rate of anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders, standing at 17.7 percent of the population of adolescent girls in 2003. That compares with 5.0 percent in Spain and 10.2 percent in the US. After doing significant research on the problem, Dr. Ramírez-Restrepo created the Network for Prevention of Anorexia and Bulimia and launched ‘Project Skinny,’ with the slogan “Skinny, Pretty, Happy?,” to combat what she found was the widespread belief among not just adolescents, but also their mothers, fathers and teachers, that being skinny equates to being pretty and happy. The campaign uses creative advertisements on billboards around the city and in magazines and newspapers to make its point in graphic fashion, showing pictures of strange-looking “skinny” elephants, rhinoceroses and zebras, along with the tagline “It looks weird, right?…and you, how do you look?” As the First Lady of the City of Medellín (2004-2007), she coordinated the following projects: “Anorexia-Bulimia prevention network”, “Teen pregnancy prevention network”, “Sexual Violence Prevention Network”, “Medellin’s Public Women Network”, “Medellin’s Talented Women Network”, and “Medellin’s Women of Academic Excellence Network”. (http://www.iadb.org/features-and-web-stories/2006-08/english/eating-disorders-as-a-public-health-emergency-3249.html) Currently, at the University of Antioquia, Dr. Ramírez-Restrepo directs the academic project “A room for her own”, in development process, a virtual mass media-academic one that promotes women´s health as a human right throughout a very innovative strategy based on the concept of public communication – blog, web page, virtual medical school course, and electronic women´s democracy. Dr. Ramírez Restrepo is also in private practice as a Psychiatrist (with emphasis on women’s mental health) at SOMA Hospital since October 1990. She is well published and has received numerous awards and accolades for her work. Ms. Maytte Restrepo-Ruiz, CT Coalition Against Domestic Violence, USA Maytte Restrepo-Ruiz is an independent scholar who presently works at the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence as Prevention and Education program coordinator. She holds a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Connecticut and a psychology degree from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Before coming to CCADV, Maytte worked as clinician in the Greater New Haven area with the Latina population. She worked for several years in Colombia with a leading women’s human rights organization and was the project coordinator for the Bogotá chapter of the internationally recognized women’s peace movement Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres. Ms. Teresa C. Younger, Executive Director, CT Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, USA Teresa C. Younger is the Executive Director of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW). The PCSW has been the State’s leading force for women’s equality for over 35 years by fulfilling its mandate to: study all matters concerning women; to inform leaders and the public about the nature and scope of discrimination; to promote consideration of women for government positions; and to work with State agencies to assess programs and practices as they affect women. Prior to joining the PCSW, Younger was the Director of Affiliate Organizational Development at the American Civil Liberties Union National Office, where she assisted affiliates throughout the country with organization and management issues. Preceding her tenure with ACLU National, Younger served as the first woman and the first African American to serve as executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut. Teresa Younger has a diverse array of policy and management experiences from corporate philanthropy to youth development. She currently serves as the Fairfield County Regional Chair for the Girl Scouts of Connecticut, sits on the boards the National Association of Commissions for Women and the Universal Health Care Foundation, serves on the Academy of Educational Development’s New Voices National Advisory Board and the American Camp Association Public Policy Committee. She was most recently identified by Hartford Business Journal as one of the “Eight Remarkable Women in Business” and has continually been recognized for her commitment to civil rights and civil liberties. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Dakota. She lives in Shelton with her husband, Ronald Preston. Yuyachkani Cultural Group, a Theatrical Collective, Peru Peru’s most important theater collective, Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani has been working since 1971 at the forefront of theatrical experimentation, political performance, and collective creation. “Yuyachkani” is a Quechua word that means “I am thinking, I am remembering”; under this name, the theater group has devoted itself to the collective exploration of embodied social memory, particularly in relation to questions of ethnicity, violence, and memory in Peru. The group is comprised of seven actors (Augusto Casafranca, Amiel Cayo, Ana Correa, Débora Correa, Rebeca Ralli, Teresa Ralli, and Julián Vargas), a technical designer (Fidel Melquíades), and an artistic director (Miguel Rubio), who have made a commitment to collective creation as a mode of theatrical production and to group theater as a life style. Their work has been among the most important in Latin America’s so called “New Popular Theater,” with a strong commitment to grass-roots community issues, mobilization, and advocacy. Yuyachkani won Peru’s National Human Rights Award in 2000. Known for its creative embrace of both indigenous performance forms as well as cosmopolitan theatrical forms, Yuyachkani offers insight into Peruvian and Latin American theater, and to broader issues of postcolonial social aesthetics. For additional information, please visit www.yuyachkani.org or www.hemi.nyu.edu/cuaderno/yuyachkani/group.html.