Women of color to hold conference at Northeastern

Vidya Rao

According to Robin Chandler, few opportunities exist to bring women of color across generational, class and ethnic lines together to discuss issues that affect them on a day-to-day basis.

On Saturday, September 24 Chandler, who heads Northeastern University’s Women’s Studies Program, will be co-hosting a conference solely for women of color, titled, “Breaking Bread: A Day for Us,” to begin to fill this void.

The conference, co-facilitated by Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, director of Women’s Studies at Boston College, will not have any famous speakers or academic papers presented.

Instead, the conference is aimed at attracting everyday women of color and encouraging them to talk about issues such as race and sexual harassment, issues which many may not have had a space to speak out about due to the “culture of silence that surrounds women of color,” according to Chandler.

“The whole field of women’s studies has historically been associated with white feminism,” she added. “There are a lot of issues that women of color have as women, as ethnic groups, and as women of color collectively.

“In light of that I thought it might be good if we had a purely nonacademic opportunity for women of color across ethnic groups, bridging the gap between academics and women from the community.”

The conference will begin at 9 a.m. with brief introductions, going into an open forum session in which women can bring up any topic relative to their experience, followed by an hour of breakout groups to discuss these various issues further.

Every woman of color is encouraged to attend, and the facilitators hope to see at least one-hundred women participate.

However, they stress that the event is for women of color only, and anticipating that some may see the conference as exclusionary, Chandler states that this is the only way to provide a “safe and comfortable environment” for women who have historically been silenced from such discussions.

In order to accommodate other interested parties, an afternoon session sponsored by the Graduate Consortium on Women’s Studies will be held beginning at 1:30 p.m. There will be a panel of four women of color reporting on what was discussed earlier in the day and talking about how to create change.

“We are encouraging women to bring their husbands, friends, and family members of all races to the panel discussion, for them to hear the experiences of these women and express their thoughts on them,” says Chandler.

Those interested in participating in the conference can simply show up at the Raytheon Auditorium on the Northeastern University campus.

For more information on the conference, contact Lihua Wang at 617-373-4984 or via email: l.wang@neu.edu.