COVID: Notes from the First Year with a Gender Lens

As the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic ends and we enter year two, join us to reflect on its gendered dimensions including impacts on labor market inequalities, care work, gender-based violence, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. In addition to discussing these troubling effects reverberated through society by the ongoing crisis, panelists will discuss opportunities for advocacy and policy change going forward. This event will include an hour long panel moderated by Yasmine Ergas, followed by 30 minutes for Q&A. We are honored to be joined by the following panelists:

Khara Jabola-Carolus is the Executive Director of the Hawai╩╗i State Commission on the Status of Women, a feminist government agency in the United States dedicated to the liberation of women and non-binary people. Khara is the only millennial to direct a statewide government agency in Hawai╩╗i. Previously, she led the Hawai╩╗i Coalition for Immigrant Rights where she passed landmark legislation that extended driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants. She earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Hawai╩╗i with a specialization in Native Hawaiian law and has performed fellowships at the United States Senate, Hawai╩╗i Supreme Court, and Committee to Protect Journalists. Her family is from Laguna, Philippines. Read the Hawai╩╗i State Commission on the Status of Women's Feminist Economic Recovery Plan for COVID-19 here: https://humanservices.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/4.13.20-Final-Cover-D2-Feminist-Economic-Recovery-D1.pdf

Terry McGovern currently serves as Harriet and Robert H. Heilbrunn Professor and Chair of the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health and the Director of the Program on Global Health Justice and Governance at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Ms. McGovern founded the HIV Law Project in 1989 where she served as its executive director until 1999. Ms. McGovern successfully litigated numerous cases against the federal, state and local governments including S.P. v. Sullivan which forced the Social Security Administration to expand HIV-related disability criteria so that women and other excluded individuals could qualify for Medicaid and social security, and T.N. v. FDA, which eliminated a 1977 FDA guideline restricting the participation of women of childbearing potential in early phases of clinical trials. As a member of the National Task Force on the Development of HIV/AIDS Drugs, she authored the 2001 federal regulation authorizing the FDA to halt any clinical trial for a life threatening disease that excludes women. From 2006 until 2012, she was Senior Program Officer in the Gender, Rights and Equality Unit of the Ford Foundation. Her research focuses on health and human rights, sexual and reproductive rights and health, gender justice, and environmental justice, with publications appearing in journals including Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, Health and Human Rights, and the Journal of Adolescent Health. Ms. McGovern recently co-edited Women and Girls Rising: Rights, Progress and Resistance: A Global Anthology. She has served on the Standing Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing and the UCL-Lancet Commission on Migration and Health, and currently serves as a member of the UNFPA Global Advisory Council and the UNAIDS Human Rights Reference Group.

Susana Martínez-Restrepo is the Cofounder and Executive Director of CoreWoman and a Researcher at Fedesarrollo, the leading Think Tank in Colombia and third in Latin America. Her expertise includes the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of education and labor market and entrepreneurship policies with a gender focus, and particularly about women's economic empowerment and gender-based violence. She has more than 12 years of experience doing applied research and consulting for governments, foundations, grassroots organizations, and international organizations. Before joining Fedesarrollo she was Research Associate at United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where she led the research about poverty reduction strategies in Latin America with a gender focus. She also served as a Research Associate at the Center for Governance and Leadership in Singapore (Think Tank). Susana holds a Ph.D. in Economics of Education from Columbia University in the city of New York, an MA in Public Policy from Sciences-Po Paris (Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris), and a BA in Political Sciences and Economics from the same university.

Mignon Duffy's primary research interests center around care work – the work of taking care of others, including children and those who are elderly, ill or disabled. She is particularly interested in how the social organization of care intersects with gender, race, class and other systems of inequality. Her first book, Making Care Count: One Hundred Years of Gender, Race, and Paid Care Work, combines quantitative, historical, and interpretive methods to analyze the emergence and organization of care work occupations in health care, education, child care, and social services. She is a co-editor of Caring on the Clock: The Complexities and Contradictions of Paid Care, which collects cutting edge research across a range of care work occupations. Duffy is also the co-chair of the Carework Network, a national organization of care work researchers and advocates. Her research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Gender & Society and Social Problems. Committed to connecting her research to policy, Duffy has worked in collaboration with other UMass researchers to document the care sector in Massachusetts as a tool for policymakers. Duffy is the Associate Director of the Center for Women and Work (CWW) at UMass Lowell. As the Founding Director of the Emerging Scholars Program, she works to match selected undergraduate students of the FAHSS College with faculty and support them in a year-long research collaboration. In 2013, the University recognized Duffy for her dedication to engaged teaching by awarding her the College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Service Learning Award. Duffy has also been involved in a number of interdisciplinary programs, including Gender Studies and Labor Studies. She loves teaching research methods to sometimes reluctant students, and also enjoys teaching gender, feminist theory, and social policy courses.

Zohra Khan is UN-Women's Senior Policy Advisor on Governance leading the Entity's work on gender budgeting and financing for gender equality. In this role, she has provided technical assistance to over 80 countries on planning and budgeting for national gender equality plans and strategies. Ms. Khan has 20 years' experience on gender equality and development in international and non-governmental organizations. Prior to joining UN-Women, she was Senior Policy Officer at One World Action where she conducted research on the impact of UK and EU aid and trade agreements on women's livelihoods. Earlier in her career, she served as Senior Researcher in the South African Commission on Gender Equality, a body established after the first democratic elections in 1994 to promote and protect gender equality, where she advised on legal reform. Ms. Khan is leading contributor and co-editor of the book Financing for Gender Equality: Realizing Women's Rights through Gender Responsive Budgeting, published by Palgrave Macmillan. She holds an MA in Gender Studies from the University of Natal and is a dual national of South Africa and the United Kingdom.

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Co-hosted with: SIPA DEICE Committee, Human Rights & Humanitarian Policy Concentration, Economic and Political Development Concentration, International Organization/UN Studies Specialization

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