Panel 2: Gender, Violence, and Development

Location: Heritage Room

Time: 10:45am-12:00pm

Moderator: Dr. Colleen Murphy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


Guest Practitioner:

“Representing Immigrant Victims of Domestic Violence”

Rebekah E. Niblock, J.D., Immigration Attorney, The Immigration Project

Rebekah is a graduate of The George Washington University Law School and completed her undergraduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She joined the Immigration Project in 2013 and currently manages the satellite office in Champaign, Illinois. The Immigration Project is the only immigrant legal service provider with attorneys on staff offering services to immigrants in the 85 counties throughout Central and Southern Illinois. While the agency provides various legal services to immigrants, attorneys work extensively with immigrant victims of domestic violence, the vast majority of who are women. These immigrant women in particular have a myriad of needs that must be resolved before they can legalize their status. The attorneys advocate on a client’s behalf not just with the government, but also work with domestic violence shelters, police departments, and other social services to get the required documentation to build a case. Throughout this presentation, Rebekah will share her experiences working with immigrant victims of domestic violence as well as the challenges she and other attorneys face in advocating on behalf of these women to secure their legal status in the U.S. and ultimately their independence from their abusers

Doctoral Students:

“Community Responses to Violence against Women: Grassroots Efforts for Empowering Women and Capacity Building in India”

Suvarna Menon, Department of Clinical and Community Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Violence against women is a serious violation of human rights and has the potential to result in significant negative consequences for women affecting their physical and mental health, social mobility and well-being. Concerns regarding women’s safety and their risk for violence have become increasingly salient in India. The latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau of India (2014) suggests that over 300,000 cases of violence against women were reported in 2013, indicating an increase of close to 27% from the previous year, and 51.9% from the year 2009. The current presentation utilizes two case studies from New Delhi, India, to provide exemplars of grassroots efforts aimed at empowering women and girls and creating opportunities for capacity building within local communities. The first example will focus on a national level non-governmental agency that operates various crisis intervention centers to assist women experiencing intimate partner violence, engages in advocacy and capacity building for survivors. The second example is a grassroots effort to help young girls reclaim public spaces and negotiate their safety. This campaign uses a youth-led framework to help girls advocate for better infrastructure and facilities that take into account their safety concerns and issues of mobility. These examples will be used to explore how community-led initiatives can help to create counter-narratives of resistance to violence and oppression, and can lead to mobilization of resources to meet the needs of women affected by violence.

 

“Riding the Pink Tide: Feminist Strategies of Resistance in Post-Neoliberal Ecuador”

Rachel Lauren Storm, Department of Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The history and future of the feminist movement in Latin America has been examined and imagined by numerous scholars interested in mapping the relationship between the political landscape of Latin America and its social movements. While feminist and Latin Americanist scholars have frequently charted the relationship between the women’s movement and political landscape, the growing ‘third wave’ of Latin American feminism has impacted the way feminists have been organizing to address policy and social justice in the wake of the Left Turn (or ‘Pink Tide’) in Latin America. Utilizing participant observation, qualitative semistructured interviews with feminist organizers and policymakers, and discourse analysis, this research explores how trends in organizing strategies of the ‘third wave’ of feminism is being shaped and re-shaped by the Pink Tide to answer how ‘third wave’ activists are agenda-setting for sexual, gendered, and racial justice through shifting tactics in order to sustain the project of advancing a feminist agenda.