When: August 23, 2011

Where: Dewan Persidangan Universiti, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang

Sessions:

I. Gender Inequality: Navigating through Social Inequalities and Multiple Discriminations
In this session, speakers will interrogate inequality and its various forms and expressions. Interest is placed on the relationship between gender-based inequalities with income as well as other social inequalities. The wide variety of approaches taken in the long Malaysian and Indian histories of grappling with inequalities has been as contentious as the presence of inequalities themselves. Speakers will present continuing dilemmas on reducing the gaps and eradicating discriminations.

Speakers: Dr. Lin Mui Kiang, UNDP Malaysia Country Office and Prof. Gita Sen, Center for Public Policy, Institute of Management in Bangalore and DAWN

Moderator: Prof. Rashidah Shuib, KANITA, USM

II. Gendered Challenges of Democratisation and the Politics of Power and Accumulation
In this session, the post-colonial histories of Malaysia and Madagascar show diverse and perverse paths of democratization. Party politics and social movements have in their own way opened up space for new forms of deliberative norms to take root but these spaces are fragile and threatened by processes of primitive accumulation at national and global level. Speakers will discuss how the pursuit of gender equality and women’s empowerment finds itself squeezed in between competitive actions of party elites, diluted in populist demands and marginalized in social movements, against the background of the globalization of struggles over resources.

Speakers: Prof. Francis Loh Kok Wah, School of Social Sciences, USM, and Ms. Zo Randriamaro, DAWN

Moderator: Dr. Cecilia Ng Choon Sim, KANITA, USM