5 continents to be represented at gender-equality conference

The IU School of Law will be holding a gender-equality conference 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday in the Moot Court Room. The conference will bring together a diverse panel of experts from five different continents to discuss how to write a national constitution to include gender equality.\nThe conference was designed to get a group of experts together to think about what a constitution can do to promote gender equality, said IU law professor Susan Williams.\nShe said the U. S. Constitution doesn’t promote equality except for the voting-rights amendment. The conference is a way to see how other countries handle women’s rights and what the United States could do to improve, Williams said.\n“There are lots of constitutions in the world for separate countries that do different things, and some work and some don’t when it comes to promoting equality,” she said. “The goal of the conference is to find out which ones work.”\nLaw professor Christiana Ochoa said now is the time to write constitutions that include gender equality. \nOchoa said gender equality has become a much more prominent subject than it was 30 years ago and it is now feasible to accomplish.\nSpeakers will discuss topics including the impact of religious law on gender equality, reproductive rights and women’s roles in developing constitutions among others, according to the conference Web site. \nWilliams will speak on the subject “Equality, Representation and Disruption of Hierarchy: Justifying Electoral Quotas for Women.” She said she will talk about how “our understanding of equality affects quotas for women in government.”\n“We need to add something to the meaning of equality for quotas to work,” she said. “When we add disruption of hierarchy to our picture of equality and representation, we get a better justification of gender quotas.” \nWilliams said some countries have quotas for women in government, meaning there has to be a certain number of women in government positions of power. Some quotas work better than others, Williams said.\nOchoa’s speech is titled “Cosmopolitan Activity and the Implementation of Gender Equality Frameworks.” Ochoa said she will discuss “the ways that women’s sense of themselves as not just domestic citizens, but as citizens of the world, affects their rights as women.”\nBecause there will be several topics, Williams said, the conference will appeal to anybody who is interested in gender equality or designing democracies for developing nations.