News & Events    
Tuesday, February 26, 2008

In caucuses and workshops, Mount Mary
students at the heart of CSW work


          Addressing the Commission on the Status of Women delegates who had just spent an hour and a half analyzing the ways that women and girls are kept from resources necessary for fulfilling their basic rights, Mollyrose Mahoney found herself at the heart of the work at the CSW – the very role that she had been preparing for since last fall in her honors United Nations class at Mount Mary College in Milwaukee.

          Speaking for a small working group that included representatives from Africa, Armenia, Canada and the United States, Mahoney explained her colleagues’ concerns for access to education and health care to 100 participants in the interactive workshop, Financing for Gender Equality: What’s Race, Class and Gender got to do with?

         
          As participants gathered in 10 small groups to tell personal stories, the session presented an opportunity “to consider the inter-linking problems that women face because of their gender, race ethnicity, caste, class, national origin or citizen status, sexual orientation, age and other factors.”

          Mahoney’s group concluded that policies must include access to education and health care, a concern that was echoed by others in the workshop.

          “It was the idea of being economically able to support yourself, and certain things prohibit that,” she said. “You can’t be economically independent if there are cultural barriers.”

          The opportunity to participate in the sessions is empowering, Mahoney said.

          “It was taking the actual stories and giving face to and hearing dialogue from the people who were actually affected,” she said. “It created an atmosphere that gave dignity back to women because they were able to speak for themselves and not have to have someone speak for them.”

          Mahoney is one of nine students from Mount Mary College who are part of the SSND delegation attending the 52nd CSW, which opened on Monday at the United Nations. The students are accompanied by their professor, Dawn Fell, who taught their United Nations class in the fall.

          Another group from the class, inspired by the Caucus on Girls Issues and Concerns earlier in the week, arranged to meet with others who shared their concern about early marriage to work on suggestions for the draft of the CSW outcome document.

         Fell, along with students Christine Behn and Jennifer Treptow, met with international representatives from the World Youth Alliance and the Worldwide Organization for Women to work on language for the document. Their colleagues came to the CSW from Kenya, Australia, Switzerland and South Korea.

          The group sent their recommendations to the Working Group on Girls (WWG), and their terminology has been incorporated in the latest WWG draft.

          “I am so proud of all these students, seeing what they are doing and their interaction with the other delegates,” Fell said. “Each one of them has shown me in the past two days that they can stand on their own two feet and do this.”

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Notes from the CSW


Mount Mary College students take a break between sessions at the Commission on the Status of Women.

New understandings
           After listening to two speakers from the Sudan discuss international aid, Mount Mary College student Myriem Bennani realized just how critical change is. The presenters discussed how women had no say in the way the money was used.
           "As long as women are not part of the decision-making process, aid cannot be used as effectively as it would be if there were gender diversity in that process."

Keeping the focus on girls
           Sister Ann Scholz, SSND, has continued to work with the Working Group on Girls on new language for the CSW draft outcome document and will moderate a second caucus on girls concerns on Wednesday.
           "Girls were hardly mentioned in the document," Sister Ann said. "So what we have done is find places in the document where it is appropriate to expand the mention of women to include girls and women's organizations to include girls' organizations."

Reflecting on empowerment
           The theme during the SSND delegation's evening debriefing session on Tuesday centered on empowerment. The panels discussions, presentations, workshops and caucus and the CSW provide ample examples of empowerment on many levels for all participants.
            "I learned it is a very slow process," said Mount Mary student Myriem Bennani..
           "I learned how relative empowerment is," said Sister Eileen Reilly, SSND. "I heard one woman from Dubai explaining how pleased she was by the increase in the number of women in the workforce. But the increase was only to 14 percent."
           "We need to get cultures to realize that unpaid work performed by women is just as important as the paid work performed by men," said student Kate Calvano. "Changing this way of thinking could lead to a culture shift."