The Windham World Affairs Council is pleased to announce an online Zoom panel discussion by five esteemed colleagues on:
“The Intersectionality of Gender-Based Violence”
Sunday January 17, 2021, 4 – 5:30 PM
Registration is required on Zoom (click here)
Five panelists – Willow O’Feral (Haptic Pictures), Aida Oualate (Justice and Dignity for the Women of Sahel), Patricia Pedroza González (Keene State College), Mei-Ling Ellerman (Brandeis University), and an advocate of the Women’s Freedom Center will dialogue about the intersectionality of gender-based violence (GBV), answering the questions :
How do patterns of social injustice, marginalization, discrimination and cultural bias shape GBV? How have these dynamics shifted in the context of the pandemic?
Examined through multiple lenses – race/ethnicity, refugee, LGBTQ, religion, and rurality/urbanity, panelists share their stories, perspectives and experiences. We hope you will join us for this important and timely discussion. The panel will begin promptly at 4:00 PM and last until 5:30 PM. A recording will be shared on WWAC social platforms.
This talk is free and everyone is welcome to attend.
Panelist Biographies:
The Women’s Freedom Center is a Brattleboro-based domestic and sexual violence resource organization, representing Windham & southern Windsor counties. They support survivors of gender-based violence of all genders, and have been doing this work in our community for 46 years.
Aida H. Oualate is the founder and president of Justice and Dignity for the Women of the Sahel (JDWS). She was born in Kayes, Mali where she lived through civil war between Mali Government and the Tuareg groups. Her career as a communication director focused on combatting corruption in the financing of development initiatives in Mali. She holds a Master of Business Administration in project management and has served as a liaison for cross-sector international organizations in both Mali and the United States. Aida currently resides in NYC.
Mei-Ling Ellerman is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Global Development and Sustainability at Brandeis University. She conducts interdisciplinary research on all forms of power, control, and subordination exercised over members of vulnerable groups, and the socio-cultural, socio-political, moral, psychological, and cognitive factors that influence their responses. Her newest research project addresses domestic violence against African American/Black women and Chinese immigrant women in MA, their obstacles to self-advocacy, and the challenges they face with the justice system. She will work with her community partners to use her findings for awareness-raising and change. Ellerman’s past research on subordination has been supported by UNESCO and the Fulbright and David L. Boren Fellowships. Ellerman earned her PhD from The Australian National University.
Dr. Patricia Pedroza González is a Latina/Mexican scholar activist, speaker and performer. She teaches at Keene State College in Keene, NH within the interdisciplinary programs of Women’s Gender Studies and American Studies. Her scholarly work focus on a multidisciplinary examination of cultural understanding of bodies and survival. Her creative writing is about rituals and spirituality. She has been published by Arizona Press University. Her activist work is at Morelia Michoacán-MEXICO where she works with survivors of torture, criminal violence and mothers of daughters murdered by feminicide.
Willow O’Feral is the award-winning director, producer and cinematographer of two feature documentary films. Her new movie Sisters Rising, a feature documentary about six Native American women fighting to restore personal and tribal sovereignty in the face of sexual violence against Indigenous women, world premiered at the 2020 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, and was recently awarded Best Documentary Feature at the American Indian Film Festival, Thaddeus Stevens Award at the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival, and is currently nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival. Her 2018 documentary Break the Silence: Reproductive & Sexual Health Stories, winner of La Frontera Queer Film Festival’s Best Documentary Feature Award, and Planned Parenthood’s Choice Champion Award, was created in collaboration with the Women’s Action Team, a local feminist community organizing group Willow helped found in Southern Vermont in 2017. Willow is a member of New Day Films, the longest-running distribution cooperative for independent documentary filmmakers in the US.
We welcome your donations to support our panelists. Please especially consider donating to Justice and Dignity for the Women of Sahel, and The Women’s Freedom Center.
To support this and future events of the WWAC, please make a donation here:
https://www.windhamworldaffairscouncil.org/join-wwac-online-3/
