WOMEN IN POLITICS:
PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE
A Conference Commemorating the Centennial of Women’s Suffrage in New York State
SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 2017 LECTURE CENTER SUNY NEW PALTZ
100 YEARS
NYS WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE 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 women’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 women. 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) influenced politics in NYS in myriad ways and will consider: movements for economic 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 emphasize 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 remain disenfranchised and unrepresented nearly a century after the legal right to vote, as well as strategies for challenging the remaining obstacles.
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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 policy 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, Perfectionism, 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, Polygon, 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. Though her primary area of study focuses on anti-social behavior online, particularly manifestations of misogyny and other prejudices in virtual spaces, she has also written on feminist politics more broadly, including feminist legal theory. Kathleen M. Dowley is Associate Professor of Political Science and Coordinator of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at SUNY New Paltz. Her research and teaching focus on comparative European Politics and Women and Politics. Her comparative cross national research on the role of political culture in the governance of multiethnic states has been published in a variety of journals including Comparative Political Studies, Communist and Post Communist Studies and the International Journals of Public Opinion Research. Julie Gallagher is Associate Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Penn State Brandywine. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, an M.A. in Education from the University of Michigan, a B.A. in Economics from Fordham University, and a Certificate in International Relations at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Her book, Black Women and Politics in New York City (University of Illinois Press, 2014) traces the evolution of African American women as political actors in various roles – as activists, as voters, as appointees, and elected officials – across seven decades. Professor Gallagher’s current research examines how, why, and to what effect members of civil society who engage in activism, especially in periods of state upheaval, tap into the discursive, policy, and normative resources of the international bodies, especially the United Nations, to challenge oppressive practices within their homelands. Susan Goodier studies U.S. women’s activism, particularly woman suffrage activism, from 1840 to 1920. She did her graduate work at SUNY at Albany, earning a master’s degree in Gender History and a doctorate in Public Policy History, with subfields in International Gender and Culture and Black Women’s Studies. She then completed a second master’s degree in Women’s Studies. At SUNY Oneonta she teaches courses in Women’s History, New York State history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and Progressive Era history. Dr. Goodier is a public scholar for New York Humanities and the coordinator for the Upstate New York Women’s History Organization (UNYWHO). She is also the book review editor for the New York History journal. The University of Illinois published her first book, No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-Suffrage Movement, in 2013. Her current book, Women Shall Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State, coauthored with Karen Pastorello, is slated to be published in September 2017, helping to mark the centennial of women voting in New York State. Joanna Grossman is the inaugural Ellen K. Solender Endowed Chair in Women and the Law at SMU Dedman School of Law. After graduating with distinction from Stanford Law School, Professor Grossman began her career as a clerk for Ninth Circuit Judge William A. Norris. She also worked as staff counsel at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C. as a recipient of the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship. Professor Grossman writes extensively on sex discrimination and workplace equality, with a particular focus on issues such as sexual harassment and 7
pregnancy discrimination. Her most recent book, Nine To Five: How Gender, Sex and Sexuality Continue to Define The American Workplace (Cambridge, 2016), provides a lively and accessible discussion of contemporary cases and events that show gender continues to define the work experience in both predictable and surprising ways. Jennifer Guglielmo is Associate Professor of History at Smith College. She specializes in the histories of labor, race, women, migration, transnational cultures and activisms, and revolutionary social movements in the late-19th and 20th-century United States. She is a recipient of Smith College’s Sherrerd Prize for Distinguished Teaching. Guglielmo’s courses include United States Since 1877 and Decolonizing U.S. Women’s History, as well as colloquia on im/migration, race and transnational cultures in U.S. history. She also offers an advanced research seminar in U.S. women’s history in which students work closely with archival records in the Sophia Smith Collection and other repositories. She is currently teaching this seminar as a community-based research course on the history of domestic worker organizing in the United States, in which students work with several of the leading organizations for domestic worker rights and justice to assist their use of history as an organizing tool. Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul is the 77th and current Lieutenant Governor of the State of New York. She served previously as U.S. Representative for New York’s 26th congressional district from June 1, 2011 to January 3, 2013. She prevailed in the four-candidate special election of May 24, 2011, to fill the seat left vacant by the resignation of Republican Chris Lee and was the first Democrat to represent the district in 40 years. Hochul served as the County Clerk of Erie County, New York from 2007 until 2011, when she assumed her seat in Congress. Previously, she was a deputy county clerk, a member of the Hamburg town board, a practicing attorney, and a legislative aide. The Lieutenant Governor holds a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University and a law degree from Catholic University in Washington, DC. Callie Jayne grew up in Connecticut in a predominately white town. Struggling with exclusion due to income, racial status, and high suspension rates, Callie began organizing around issues of gender equality, worker’s rights, and racial justice. Her focus began to shift as a result of her experiences moving to and living in low-income communities as a single mother in her early twenties. During this time, she discovered the institutionalized issues that were preventing her from success and put her focus into finishing her undergrad and graduate degrees in order to provide leadership and promote change for others facing the same struggles. Having experienced first-hand many of the challenges and roadblocks faced by the communities we organize, Callie is able to connect with people on the basis of shared life experiences, while simultaneously providing strategy and organizing skills to help people take action on the issues that directly affect their lives. Callie is the Lead Organizer for Citizen Action of New York’s Hudson Valley Chapter. Irene Jor is New York Organizer at the National Domestic Workers Alliance. In this position, Irene supports NDWA’s New York affiliates in their current multi-faceted domestic worker organizing efforts. Irene first felt the power of the domestic worker rights movement in 2011 when she was completing a fellowship with the International Labour Organization in Bangkok, Thailand. Upon returning to the U.S. she began volunteering with the CA Domestic Worker Bill of Rights Campaign. She worked closely with 8
Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employer’s Network to organize employers and subsequently wrote an academic thesis on the campaign’s engagement with disabled employers and the process through which they became allies to domestic workers. Irene is a graduate of Stanford University where she earned a B.A. in Urban Studies and M.A. in Anthropology. Susan Ingalls Lewis is Associate Professor, Deputy Chair, and Graduate Advisor in the Department of History at SUNY New Paltz, as well as an affiliate faculty member in the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. Dr. Lewis received her B.A. from Wellesley College, and her Ph.D. from Binghamton University. She teaches courses on American history, American women’s history, and New York State history. Her monograph, Unexceptional Women: Female Proprietors in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Albany, New York, 1830-1885 (Ohio State University Press, 2009) was awarded the Hagley Prize in Business History for the best book published the field (2011). Professor Lewis has also been named Liberal Arts & Sciences Teacher of the Year (2007-08) and won the LA & S Excellence in Scholarship Award (2011). Dr. Lewis is a Fellow of the New York Academy of History, and author of the blog, New York Rediscovered. Kate Manne is an assistant professor at Cornell University where she has been since 2013. She works in moral, social, and feminist philosophy. She has published or has forthcoming work on normativity, social norms, desires, moral psychology, and their inter-relationship, in venues such as Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Philosophical Studies, and Social Theory and Practice. Her writing has also appeared in the popular press, including two op-eds in The New York Times. She is currently working on a book on misogyny, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, which is under contract with OUP (Oxford University Press). She did her graduate work at MIT and was a junior fellow at The Harvard Society of Fellows prior to joining the faculty at Cornell. Meg Devlin O’Sullivan holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned her B.A. in Women’s Studies and History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her training and expertise focuses on American Indian history, and her current research examines Native women’s activism during the last quarter of the 20th century. Some of this scholarship looks at the role Indian women played in arresting sterilization abuse and defining the struggle for reproductive justice during the 1970s. A longer project considers the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 through the lens of American Indian women’s interpretation of how best to exercise tribal sovereignty. Dr. O’Sullivan has also published articles on the Cherokees during the 19th century in the Chronicles of Oklahoma and the Tennessee Historical Quarterly. Teaching for both the History Department and Women’s Studies Program, her courses address American women’s history, U.S. history in the 20th century, various topics in American Indian history, and the introductory survey in women’s studies. Ilgü Özler is Director of the SUNY Global Engagement Program in NYC and Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at SUNY New Paltz. Her research is on the relationship between comparative political institutions and civil society. She focuses on political parties, non-governmental organizations, and social movements. She has done research on the urban slums and squatter areas in Turkey, Mexico, and Chile. Her recent work has been on Turkish civil society organizations and the Justice and Development Party in Turkey. Her teaching covers the fields of com9
parative politics and international relations. Her recent work has been on environmental issues. Özler received her Ph.D. in Political Science from University of California, Los Angeles. Jessica Pabón is Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at SUNY New Paltz. She holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University and an M.A. in Women’s Studies from the University of Arizona. Pabón is an interdisciplinary scholar with specializations in Gender Studies, Women of Color and Transnational feminisms, LGBT/Queer Studies, Hip Hop Studies, Latina/o/x Studies, and Black Studies. She teaches courses including Women: Images and Realities, Feminist Theory, Gender and Sexuality in Hip Hop, Performing Feminism, and Latina Feminisms. My most recent publications include: “Ways of Being Seen: Gender and the Writing on the Wall” in the Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art (2016) and “‘Daring to Be ‘Mujeres Libres, Lindas, Locas’: An Interview with the Ladies Destroying Crew of Nicaragua and Costa Rica” in La Verdad: The Reader of Hip Hop Latinidades, edited by Jason Nichols and Melissa Castillo-Garsow (2016). She is co-editor of the special issue “All Hail the Queenz: A Queer Feminist Recalibration of Hip Hop Scholarship” for Women & Performance. Her book, Graffiti Grrlz: Performing Feminism in the Hip Hop Diaspora is under contract with NYU Press and due for 2018. Karen Pastorello currently chairs the Women and Gender Studies Program at Tompkins Cortland Community College. She is author, most recently, of Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State (Cornell, 2017) with Susan Goodier. She has published several articles and two other books: A Power Among Them: Bessie Abramowitz Hillman and the Making of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (University of Illinois Press, 2008); and The Progressives: Activism and Reform in American Society, 1893-1917. (John Wiley and Sons, 2014). She earned a Ph.D. in Modern American History from Binghamton University, an M.A. in American Labor History from Arizona State University, and a B.A. in History and Education from St. John Fisher College. Pastorello has taught at Tompkins Cortland Community College since 1990. She teaches the American History survey courses as well as 19th Century Labor History, U.S. Women’s History, and Women and Work. Her interests include progressive era labor history and labor feminism. Pamela Paxton is Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs and the Christine and Stanley E. Adams, Jr. Centennial Professor in the Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in economics and sociology and her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has consulted for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Academies. She has intersecting research interests in pro-social behavior, politics, gender, and methodology. She is the author of articles and books on social capital, women in politics, and quantitative methodology. Her research has appeared in a variety of journals, including American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Comparative Politics, International Studies Quarterly, and Legislative Studies Quarterly. With Melanie Hughes, she is the co-author of Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective.
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Kira Sanbonmatsu is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University and Senior Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at the Eagleton Institute of Politics. Her research interests include gender, race/ethnicity, parties, public opinion, and state politics. Her most recent book (with Susan J. Carroll) is More Women Can Run: Gender and Pathways to the State Legislatures (Oxford University Press, 2013). She is the coauthor (with Susan J. Carroll and Debbie Walsh) of the CAWP report, Poised to Run: Women’s Pathways to the State Legislatures (2009). She is also the author of Where Women Run: Gender and Party in the American States (University of Michigan Press, 2006) and Democrats, Republicans, and the Politics of Women’s Place (University of Michigan Press, 2002). Her articles have appeared in such journals as American Journal of Political Science, Politics & Gender, and Party Politics. She co-edits the CAWP Series in Gender and American Politics at the University of Michigan Press with Susan J. Carroll. Sanbonmatsu received her B.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Lauren Santangelo earned a B.A. in History and Political Science at Marist College; an M.Phil. in American History from the City University of New York; and a Ph.D. in American History from the City University of New York. At the New-York Historical Society, Santangelo will complete work on her book manuscript The ‘Feminized’ City: New York and Suffrage, 1870-1917. The project examines how suffragists perceived women’s place in the city, how they mobilized the diverse groups of women that the city attracted, and how they interacted with the city’s private, commercial, and public spaces as they vied for the vote. Santangelo will consult the New-York Historical’s extensive collection of newspapers, city atlases, tourist guides, and photographs. Jasmine Syedullah is an abolitionist, academic, and co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation (North Atlantic Books, 2016). She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at Vassar. Syedullah holds a Ph.D. in Politics with a designated emphasis in Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness from University of California Santa Cruz and a B.A. from Brown University in Religious Studies with a focus in Buddhist Philosophy. Her current manuscript-in-progress, No Selves to Defend: Living in the Loopholes of Legal Recognition, rethinks the protocols of modern domesticity, legality, freedom, and sovereignty through black fugitive practices of abolition that shift the sexual politics of the patriarchal institution from the margins of the abolitionist activism to the center of its critique of captivity. KT Tobin, Associate Director, The Benjamin Center, is responsible for designing, managing, and producing projects focused on regional issues and concerns. Tobin earned her undergraduate degree in Sociology at SUNY New Paltz, holds an M.S. in Social Research from CUNY Hunter, and her Ph.D. in Sociology is from SUNY Albany. Tobin is also an adjunct lecturer, teaching Introduction to Sociology, Social Inequality, Research Methods, and Women in Politics. Her research interests include: political sociology, with a focus on civic engagement, government transparency, and women in politics; community indicators, in particular sustainability metrics; stratification and inequality, with a focus on gender and poverty/cost of living; education policies, in particular taxation and standardized testing; and food systems, with a focus on insecurity and local/regional agriculture. 11
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Women’s Suffrage Commission Celebrating 100 Years of Women’s Right to Vote
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