Women, Gender, and Health

2021 Events

Challenges to Gender Justice & Health: Abortion Rights – Thursday, December 9, 2021

This event covered U.S. legal challenges to abortion rights. Specifically on challenges to Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in current Supreme Court hearings on anti-abortion laws in Mississippi (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization) and Texas (Senate Bill 8).  Guest speakers David S. Cohen, Esq (he/him/his; professor of law at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law) and Liz Janiak, ScD (she/her/hers; professor and instructor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) provided legal and public health perspective, with a following open discussion.

32 people attended this event. Check out the recording here

Challenges to Gender Justice & Health: Trans Health – Thursday, October 28, 2021

This event addressed various Anti-Trans bills from both civil society and public health perspectives, with presentations from guest speakers Malita Picasso (American Civil Liberties Union, LGBT/HIV Project) & Dr. Kacie Kidd (Adolescent Medicine & Pediatrics @ WVU Medicine Children’s & WVUSM).

20 people attended this event. Check out the recording here

Challenges to Gender Justice & Health: LGBTQ+ Family and Adoption Rights – Wednesday, September 29, 2021

This WGH event discussed a Supreme Court ruling this year that upholds the right for private organizations contracted to provide government services and receiving taxpayer-funding to discriminate and refuse individuals based on religion, race, gender/sex, and/or sexual orientation under the based on the First Amendment free exercise clause.

In particular, an organization hired by the city of Philadelphia to provide foster care services to children will not, based on religious objection, accept same-sex parent(s) as foster parents. Guest speakers, Shelbi Day (Family Equality) & Wendy Becker (Rhode Island College/Rhode Islanders for Parentage Equality coalition), discussed the case from a grassroots and legal perspective, with a follow-up discussion.

Notes and the event recording will be added after the event.

26 people attended this event. Check out the recording here

Cultivating Joy and Collective Restoration: (Re)Imagining and (Re)Claiming Pleasure and Liberation Conference – Saturday to Sunday, April 24-25, 2021

This graduate student conference was sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center, with additional co-sponsorship from the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights and the Women, Gender, and Health Interdisciplinary Concentration. Organized by Sherine Andreine Powerful (DrPH ’21) and Onisha Etkins (PhD ’21), it brought together graduate students, early career scholars, community activists, educators, and creatives to explore how Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities are reimagining and reclaiming pleasure and healing, and how this is liberatory and restorative work, particularly during times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. For more information, please visit the conference website.

435 people registered. Check out this playlist of all recorded conference sessions.

International Women’s Day In a Time of COVID-19: The Ongoing Fight for Health Justice- Monday, March 8, 2021

The Women, Gender, and Health Interdisciplinary Concentration hosted its annual International Women’s Day Celebration! Students, faculty, staff, and alumni joined us via Zoom for an informal get-together and a bit of radical history. Reflections on COVID-19, gender, structural racism, and health justice were shared by our guest speakers: Zinzi Bailey, Sarah Richardson, and Cristina Alonso. Several student organizations and school departments co-sponsored the event, and their representatives shared what IWD means to them: Brazilian Student Association; Center for Population and Development Studies; Committee on the Advancement of Women Faculty; Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences; Environmental Justice Student Organization; FAS Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies; François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights; Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers (HGSU-UAW); Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers-(HUCTW); Office of Diversity and Inclusion; Parents@Harvard Chan Student Group; UNITE HERE! Local 26; Women and Health Initiative; and Women in Leadership. The event concluded with a virtual group sing-a-long to “Bread and Roses”!

43 people attended. This event was not recorded.

Black Femmes in the Fight for Food Justice- Monday, February 22, 2021

This panel on Black food and land sovereignty, community wellbeing, and collective liberation included Ali Anderson, MPH and Lyric Zhané from Feed Black Futures and Ashley Gripper, MPH from Land Based Jawns. The conversation explored the role that mutual aid has played in supporting communities at the intersections of state-sanctioned violence, food apartheid, and food insecurity in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Feed Black Futures is a mutual aid organization serving Black mamas and caregivers impacted by parole, probation, and/or caring for incarcerated loved ones in Los Angeles. Land Based Jawns is a spiritually rooted, skill-building project helping Black Philly jawns to reconnect and deepen relationships with the earth.

43 people attended this event. Check out the recording here or here (if first link doesn’t work).

 

Last Updated: May 20, 2021