WOMEN IN POLITICS: PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE A Conference Commemorating the Centennial of Women’s Suffrage in New York State SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 2017 100 YEARS LECTURE CENTER NYS WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SUNY NEW PALTZ 1917-2017 SCHEDULE 8:00 a.m. Check-in & Continental Breakfast South Lobby 8:30 a.m. Greetings & Theme Setting Lecture Center 100 • President Donald Christian • NYS Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul • Kathleen Dowley, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Political Science & International Relations; Coordinator Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies Program 9:00 a.m. Concurrent Sessions 1917: How Did Women Win the Vote in New York State? Lecture Center 102 Moderator: Susan Lewis, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History, SUNY New Paltz Panelists: • Susan Goodier, Ph.D., Lecturer in History, SUNY Oneonta • Karen Pastorello, Ph.D., Professor of History, Tompkins-Cortland Community College • Lauren Santangelo, Ph.D., Author, The ‘Feminized’ City: New York and Suffrage, 1870-1917 Women in Government Today Lecture Center 104 Moderator: Ilgü Özler, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Political Science & Director, SUNY Global Engagement Program Panelists: • KT Tobin, Ph.D., Associate Director, The Benjamin Center • Kira Sanbonmatsu, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science & Senior Scholar, Center for Women in Politics, Rutgers University • Pamela Paxton, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology & Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin 10:15 a.m. Coffee Break South Lobby 10:30 a.m. Concurrent Sessions After the Vote: Women in Social and Political Movements Lecture Center 102 Moderator: Meg Devlin O’Sullivan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History & Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, SUNY New Paltz Panelists: • Joanna Grossman, Professor of Law, SMU Dedman School of Law • Julie Gallagher, Ph.D., Assistant Professor History and Women’s Studies, Penn State • Jennifer Guglielmo, Ph.D., Professor of History, Smith College The Limits of Suffrage in a Liberal Democracy Lecture Center 104 Moderator: Kathleen Dowley, Ph.D., SUNY New Paltz Panelists: • Jasmine Syedullah, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor of Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, Vassar College • Amy Baehr, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophy, Hofstra University Kate Manne, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University 11:45 p.m. Lunch South Lobby 12:30 p.m. Keynote Address Which Way Forward? Freedom Organizing in the Twenty-first Century Lecture Center 100 Barbara Smith, Black Feminist Author & Activist 1:15 p.m. Women in New York State: The Unfinished Agenda Lecture Center 102 Moderator: Jessica Pabón, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, SUNY New Paltz Panelists: • Kelly Baden, Director of State Advocacy, Center for Reproductive Rights • Katherine Cross, Ph.D. Student in Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center • Irene Jor, New York Organizer, National Domestic Workers Alliance • Callie Jayne, Community Organizer, Citizen Action of New York K-12 Teacher Workshop Lecture Center 104 Incorporating Women’s Political History into K-12 curriculum Sponsored by Mohonk Mountain House 3 “Women in Politics” is a collaborative project of The Benjamin Center, the SUNY New Paltz Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program and Departments of History, Political Science, and Sociology, and the FDR Library & Museum, Hudson River Valley Greenway, League of Women Voters of NYS, and Rockefeller Institute of Government. The conference is supported, in part, by funds from the SUNY New Paltz Office of Academic Affairs, the New York State Women’s Suffrage Commission, the NYS Legislative Women’s Caucus, and Friends of the Benjamin Center. Thanks to Humanities NY, Mohonk Mountain House, and Shmaltz Brewing Co. for principal sponsorship. 4 PANEL DESCRIPTIONS 1917: How Did Women Win the Vote in New York State? | LC 102, 9 a.m. Why did the referendum establishing women’s suffrage in New York State pass in 1917, when it had failed two years earlier? Why was New York the first state east of the Mississippi to grant women full voting rights? And who (which individuals and groups) and tactics were most responsible for women winning the elective franchise in 1917? Three scholars engaged in new research will identify a wide cast of activists and actions and present the exciting saga of women of diverse backgrounds working toward the suffrage goal. After opening remarks, the panel will engage in discussion and welcome questions from the audience. Women in Government Today | LC 104, 9 a.m. Women are about half of the world’s population but in positions of power and authority they are severely underrepresented. A historical view indicates that undoubtedly wom- en’s participation in the political arena has increased remarkably over the last century or so. While in no country was the right to vote granted to women before the late 19th century, by the early 21st century women’s suffrage was nearly universal. Yet, at the top tiers of power across the globe, only about one in five national legislators are wom- en. This panel explores the current state of women’s formal political representation at all levels of government. After the Vote: Women in Social & Political Movements | LC 102, 10:30 a.m. The panel examines what happened in NYS after women attained the vote. Spanning roughly the decades of the 1920s-80s, the panel approaches its specific topics with the understanding that women (as voters, reformers, activists, and elected officials) in- fluenced politics in NYS in myriad ways and will consider: movements for econom- ic justice in the early twentieth century, post-WWII activism for racial justice, and participation in efforts to secure workplace equality in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Collectively, these topics span the post-suffrage twentieth century and empha- size political and social movements that centered on the ability to create or transform legislation as well as work for change outside of it. The Limits of Suffrage in a Liberal Democracy | LC 104, 10:30 a.m. This panel explores the limits of a movement that focused on acquiring the equal right to vote, participate, and be represented in a liberal democratic state, from a feminist theory perspective, taking on the concrete example of Governor Cuomo’s “Women’s Equality Agenda” (WEA) and what it achieves and fails to achieve for women in New York State. Women in New York State: The Unfinished Agenda | LC 102, 1:15 p.m. This panel focusses on the unfinished agenda of a women’s movement that initially emphasized acquiring the right to vote as a means to achieving women’s equality in New York State. Panelists address the women of New York State who continue to re- main disenfranchised and unrepresented nearly a century after the legal right to vote, as well as strategies for challenging the remaining obstacles. 5 KEYNOTE SPEAKER Barbara Smith is an author, activist, and independent scholar who has played a groundbreaking role in opening up a national cultural and political dialogue about the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender. She has been politically active in many movements for social justice since the 1960’s. She was cofounder and publisher until 1995 of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first national publisher in the U. S. for women of color. She served two terms as a member of the Albany Common Council and is currently the Special Community Projects Coordinator for the City of Albany, helping to implement the Equity Agenda. She is a regular panelist on WAMC Northeast Public Radio’s Round Table. PANELISTS Kelly Baden is Director of State Advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights where she oversees the Center’s state and local advocacy within the United States. This includes developing, implementing, and managing the center’s multi-faceted reproductive rights policy initiatives and strategies aimed at moving proactive pol- icy strategies forward and fighting against abortion restrictions in the states. Prior to joining the center, Kelly was Director of Policy and Strategic Partnerships at the National Institute for Reproductive Health and NARAL Pro-Choice New York, directing the Urban Initiative for Reproductive Health and the Strengthen Our States Initiative. Kelly has also worked for Physicians for Reproductive Health, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of New Jersey, EMILY’s List, the American Political Science Association, and the Close Up Foundation. She has a B.A. in Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies from The College of New Jersey and a graduate certificate in Women, Politics, and Political Leadership from the Women and Politics Institute at American University. Kelly serves on the board of URGE, Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, formerly Choice USA. Amy R. Baehr is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hofstra University where she teaches legal and political philosophy, and women’s studies. Her scholarship explores the possibility of a feminist liberal political philosophy. She serves on the executive committee of the New York Society for Women in Philosophy and on the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on the Status of Women. Her work explores the possibility of a feminist liberalism. Recent papers include “A Capacious Account of Liberal Feminism” (forthcoming in Feminist Philosophy Quarterly), “Feminist Receptions of the Original Position” in The Original Position (Oxford, 2015), and “Feminism, Per- fectionism, and Public Reason” (Law and Philosophy 2008). She is editor of Varieties of Feminist Liberalism and author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on liberal feminism. Katherine Cross is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as a widely published cultural critic and sought after commentator on Internet culture. Her writing on the politics of the virtual has appeared in Rolling Stone, Poly- gon, The Establishment, Slate, Wired, and Bitch Magazine, among many others. Her 6 academic work, focusing on a range of feminist concerns, has appeared in several journals and anthologies over the years and she has striven to effectively communicate the findings and theories of social scientific research to diverse audiences.