Wellesley Hosts International Symposium on Education and Gender Equality

Gender inequality continues to be an issue around the world, including in the areas of salary, education, health and politics. The World Economics Forum’s 2016 Global Gender Gap Report, covering 144 countries, revealed that progress is still too slow for realizing the full potential of half the human race. The International Symposium on Education and Gender Equality – one of the largest international conferences about gender equality and how education can help improve it – features more than 70 international speakers from around the United States as well as Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The event is sponsored by The Suzy Newhouse Center for Humanities at Wellesley College, the Consulate General of France in Boston and Sciences Po Paris - an international research university.

The purpose of the symposium is to develop a declaration of the best practices and ideas to improve gender equality across the globe, as examined during the symposium. This declaration and report of discussions at the various symposium conferences will be sent to the United Nations.

The symposium is offering various occasions for the audience to mingle with one another and interact with speakers. The Newhouse Center has integrated some of its programming with the symposium in order to bring a stunning range of intellectuals to campus.

Angela Davis, activist, professor, and writer, for example, is part of the symposium and also in the Suzy Newhouse Center’s Distinguished Thinkers Program. Filmmaker, Mira Nair, is presenting a film and fielding questions in the Jordan lecture series. Other speakers include Prudence Carter, and Anne Balsamo, who feature in the Newhouse Center Program.

Other participants include former French Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira; Senegalese activist and artist Fifii Tamsir Cochery; Tunisian physicist Zohra Ben Lakhdar; Boston-based writer and education activist Colin Stokes; Massachusetts State Representative Alice Peisch; and Alice Albright, from Global Partnership for Education.

The aim in bringing together this diverse, international group is to provide an opportunity for collective thought, to offer solutions and allow for the sharing of good practices to further gender equality across disciplines and contexts.