“Terrorizing Women: Feminicide and Gender Violence at the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands”—Cynthia Bejarano

February 28, 2012
3:00 pm to 4:30 pm
Knight Library Browsing Room
1501 Kincaid St.
University of Oregon

This lecture is cosponsored by Center for the Study of Women in Society and the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, both located at the University of Oregon.

Dr. Cynthia Bejarano is the Stan Fulton Endowed Chair in Arts and Sciences and an associate professor of Criminal Justice at New Mexico State University. In 2010, she was named Outstanding New Mexico Woman of the Year by the New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women for her activism in bringing attention to feminicide in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and for her advocacy for farmworkers and their families.

Partner Violence and Girls’ Educational and Vocational Development

CSWS Research Matters, Winter 2012  (Winter_12_CSWS_RM)

In-depth interviews reveal a broad range of violence against girls—with far-reaching and enduring effects

By Krista M. Chronister, Associate Professor, University of Oregon College of Education, Counseling Psychology Program

At 85 percent, women make up the overwhelming majority of reported partner violence victims in the United States, and partner violence is the most common form of violence against women around the world (1.2). Although all communities experience partner violence, there are significant disparities in partner violence rates and individuals’ access to services in marginalized communities (3,4). To date, girls, ages 16–24 years, are most at risk for experiencing dating violence (5). Studies conducted with youth from diverse identity, socioeconomic, and geographic communities suggest dating abuse rates range from 25 percent to 50 percent (6).

CREATE! Improving the Lives of Women and Girls in Rural Senegal

By Louise Ruhr, Director of Development
CREATE! (Center for Renewable Energy and Appropriate Technology for the Environment)

Women in Diender getting water from tap provided by solar powered pump.

CREATE! Center for Renewable Energy and Appropriate Technology is working in six villages in rural Senegal helping the people living in those villages to meet basic needs in the areas of water acquisition and storage; local food production; and fuel wood conservation. We recently had the opportunity to post Elizabeth Larson, a senior at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, to the small village of Diender in southern Senegal for a one-month internship during her winter break. She lived in the village, worked alongside the women, and communicated with them in their local language. Following are some of Elizabeth’s reflections on the experience, the problems faced by the women and girls of the village, and the impact of the work that CREATE! is doing:

Access to Water

Before CREATE! installed a solar-powered pump at the communal well in Diender, women and girls devoted much time and effort each day to procuring the water their families needed for drinking and cooking. The pump greatly simplifies this task. In addition to making it easier and less time consuming to obtain water for household needs, the solar-powered pump also makes it possible for the women of the community to utilize a sustainable, gravity-fed irrigation system, which CREATE! helped them design, install and maintain. This irrigation system makes it possible for the women of Diender to adopt a community garden model. The use and maintenance of the solar-powered pump also requires that women assume accountability for keeping the pump in good running order and insuring that the village adopts responsible water use practices.

Community Garden Project

StoveTeam International Wins a “Purpose Prize”

http://www.aarp.org/giving-back/local-heroes/info-10-2011/2011-purpose-prize-winner-nancy-hughes.html

By Nancy Sanford Hughes, Founder
StoveTeam International

Editor’s Note: Nancy Sanford Hughes is one of five Americans to win a 2011 $100,000 Purpose Prize for making an extraordinary impact in an encore career.

These 34 volunteers had just returned from a stove-testing trip in Honduras.

We started helping local entrepreneurs to build stove factories four years ago by assisting Gustavo Peña, who now owns his own factory in El Salvador, and who has not only produced thousands of fuel-efficient stoves but has employed 15 individuals, educated his children, and established local scholarships.

I returned from Honduras in early November, where I worked with a new factory owner, Anibal Murcia, and the volunteers field-testing the Ecocina stove. On the morning of my departure, I received a call from Sanya who had already arrived.

“Nancy” she said, “There are five in the village who have been hospitalized for tuberculosis. Should we still go?”

The families in San Jose de las Lagrimas have lived where there has been NO water, and there are NO toilets and little work. In a squatters’ camp such as this, everyone is at risk for acute respiratory infection, and there are villages such as this one throughout the world.

The first house I visited was ten by twelve.

Sebastian Strangio: Is Microfinance Pushing The World’s Poorest Even Deeper Into Poverty? | The New Republic

Sebastian Strangio: Is Microfinance Pushing The World’s Poorest Even Deeper Into Poverty? | The New Republic.

December 14, 2011—Lamia Karim, associate director of the University of Oregon Center for the Study of Women in Society, quoted in The New Republic:

…“Skepticism of microfinance and its benefits, meanwhile, has migrated to the academy as well. Lamia Karim, an anthropologist at the University of Oregon and the author of Microfinance and Its Discontents, has questioned the claim that offering small loans directly to Bangladeshi women has been empowering. On the contrary, she has found women are often pressured to hand over loans to their husbands or male relatives. At the same time, microcredit agencies have created what she terms an “economy of shame,” in which the traditional role of women as bearers of “family honor” is used to leverage repayments—a key yardstick of MFIs’ success. (Grameen, for instance, proudly trumpets a loan recovery rate of close to 97 percent). To avoid the public shame of default, many women take out additional loans from different lenders, and quickly find themselves mired in a quicksand of debt.”…