With a focus largely on garment and textile workers both historically and across national boundaries, the IROW Conference, "Women in the Global Economy: Making Connections" brought together an exciting group of scholars and activists to seek new insights and strategies to guide women's organizing in the 1990s and beyond.
Highlights of the conference included keynote addresses by Saskia Sassen (Columbia University) and Meera Nanda (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) on the history of women in the global economy since 1945 and the challenge of new technology. Maria Gutierrez de Soldatenko (UCLA) and Olivia Taylor (Director, East New York Alliance Academy), spoke on racism, feminism and unions in the U.S.
Panels addressing historical and current issues featured scholars with a wide range of interests and approaches; they drew together the insights of economists, historians, anthropologists and sociologists. Speaking on the panel "Connecting With the past" were Judith Byfield (Dartmouth College), a specialist on Nigerian textile producers; Ann Farnsworth Alvear (University of Pennsylvania), whose interests cover the textile industry and unions in Columbia; Sharon Hartman Strom (University of Rhode Island), who discussed feminism, industrial unions and the left in the United States; and Mirta Zaida Lobato (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina), who shared her research on the transition from industrialization to industrial restructuring in Argentina.
The panel "Connecting Across Boundaries in the Present" included Edna Bonacich (University of California at Riverside), whose paper surveyed women in clothing and textile work; Ok-jie Lee (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) speaking on the textile industry in her country; Cecilia Green (University of Michigan), an expert on Caribbean export economies; Kathleen Sheldon (UCLA), a researcher on cashew and clothing workers in Mozambique; and Valentine Moghdam (United Nations University, Helsinki), whose talk focused on textile and garment export manufacturing in the Middle East.
A diverse group of labor activists shared their perspectives on "Connecting the Present and the Future." They included: Shamim Meer, an editor of Speak magazine in South Africa; Danyun Fung and Jeff Hermanson of the ILGWU International; Mary McGinn and Lynda Yanz, connected with Mujer a Mujer/ Woman to Woman, a group linking the U.S., Canada and Mexico; Annie Luk Fung Ngor, from the Trade Union Education Center in Hong Kong; and Martie Voland, of the NY/NJ Joint Reginal Board of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers' Union.
The last day featured workshops on "Spreading the Word," focusing on using various media to publicize the issues of working-class women and on integrating international perspectives into women's studies courses. Activists Shamim Meer (South Africa) and Mary McGinn (U.S.) led the former session and IROW Associate Chris Bose the latter.
The conference closed with a discussion- oriented panel on "National Organizing in the Global Workplace." Introducing the discussion, Gillian Hart (University of California, Berkeley) spoke on "Gender and the Socio-Spatial Reorganization of Work" and conference co-organizer Sucheta Mazumdar (Duke University) discussed "Chains of Commodities, Bonds of Labor."
This session sought to generate concrete suggestions for future action. The organizers have plans to publish the conference papers in the near future. Watch for details in upcoming issues of IROW News.