Conférence de Jennifer Nedelsky
The conference will address three serious problems that afflict, in various forms, virtually all modern industrial societies. First, there is an unsustainable structure of work and family life that puts enormous stress on families, and forces workers (at all levels) into untenable choices. Second, the shift in gender norms and the inequality of women improves at a glacial pace, leaving women with less pay, less economic security, vulnerability to poverty, less leisure time, less access to top jobs and to other advantages such as high quality health care. Finally, the policy / care divide means that those in top policy making positions are almost always people with very little experience of the demands (or satisfactions or importance) of care taking. Those who do have the requisite knowledge and experience (primarily women) have very limited access to high level policy making positions. These three problems can only be redressed by a radical restructuring of work and care practices. We need a fundamental shift in social norms, so that the expectation of ALL is that we will work part-time and engage in care work for family, friends and community part time. This conference is an exploration of what such an optimal norm would look like.
Jennifer Nedelsky
Jennifer Nedelsky was appointed Visiting Assistant Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Toronto in 1985. She was appointed Assistant Professor of Law and Political Science in 1986 and promoted to full Professor in 1995. In 1991 and 1994, she was Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. Professor Nedelsky's teaching and scholarship have been concentrated on Feminist Theory, Theories of Judgment, American Constitutional History and Interpretation, and Comparative Constitutionalism. In addition to her book, Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism, she has published numerous articles in these areas. She is co-editor with Ronald Beiner of Judgment, Imagination and Politics: Themes From Kant and Arendt (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), and is at work on a book Human Rights and Judgment: A Relational Approach to be published by Oxford University Press. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society for Legal History and active in the American Political Science Association, the Law and Society Association, and the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy. In 2000 she was awarded the Bora Laskin National Fellowship in Human Rights Research.