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Read about workshops, lectures, and other events that have taken place at the Mexico Gateway.
Bad Girls Series
The “Bad Girls” series will host hour-long sessions every first Tuesday from June to November that will help researchers and service providers understand why girls are incarcerated and identify the interventions to break this cycle.
Description of the video:
Rotate Dave efforts then on punishment. So that's some of the very important pros of the series. But then we also have some cons. And one of them is that as we've already touched upon, with the profundity that is overemphasized. And to show, many people can believe that these girls are bad even though she was doing so much attract you. Show that it isn't that simple. It's and multifaceted problem. So if it's overly focus on this bad language, this can be detrimental in challenging the public's view that these girls are just that and no good. And last but not least at a con, would be that the series has a potential stigma and label at these girls might have to live with because they were in the show. So India-U.S. crimes committed as a miner will be erased from the record, which is very important because later when they're trying to get hired for a job or talking to a landlord, they might not accept anyone who has a prior conviction. So it's really important that those connections are raised from the record. But now that they have been in this show and they have participated with their full names and their faces. If a future employer, for instance, would look them up, they would see that these girls have been in Corrections. And although as an audience can see how these girls are improving and learning and meeting goals. And it's beautiful. And they also became recruit also captures them engaging in and negative and bad behavior and expressing sentiments that are contrary to the societies. Normal ideas of what is good and bad. So that can be a problem. So in the end it's going to be a question that remains about ethics. Whether this educating potential and that potential to softening and public's view of these gross. And is that important that outweighs the label and stigma that some of these girls might face in the future because they were involved with this. Wonderful Thank you. And it's interesting when you're talking about stigmatization and the labels that these girls were carried with them or the potential to carry with them. I know I'm speaking. You are from Norway and multicellular from Mexico. And some curious now about whether the portrayals of the girls in this show is at all similar to female juvenile corrections in your countries. A multi-cell. Please tell us about the situation for girls in confinement in Mexico and the public's perception of them as a part of broadening this conversation through our multinational perspectives. And I was good, I feel good, I feel seeing so much Kate in Great. Well, unfortunately, a lot of the vision we have is negative. The representation of these girls and any of these women in the media has to do with violent actions, with drug abuse, with gang participation. At this Gibbs, perception of them being evil or bad people, people who cannot change. And the fact that they are in one of these correctional facilities. They will learn more about delinquency and crime and will eventually turn them into a spiral of violence. Here, I'd like to emphasize the fact that there is another fundamental element to how society treats and looks at this female teenagers. As Ingrid mentioned, the stigma they receive is very strong and very powerful because of also always thought that one act cannot define you as a person. Last month, Dr. Teresa and Nicky talked a lot about well, that first episode talked about certain factors and they mentioned the evil girl. Hypotheses. Mentioned in aggression is a means adolescents use to satisfy their needs, where they show high degrees of violence in order to be seen. And they incur in harmful behaviors in order to call attention towards them. And to the fact that they are being victims of violence, of sexual abuse, and of crime. And we can only talk about the lack of values, although they do not say it that way. The way they communicate has a lot to do with this. There are many stories of success we have found of youth who has reintegrated positively to society. So we need to insist a lot on the fact that we need programs within correctional facilities in order to correct these unmet needs during childhood. Because when I have been inside this correctional facilities, I have noticed the great need this adolescence have to be accepted. But the story they have behind. We have seen that when this story is not solved, then there will be more violent conduct that will lead them to an adult facility where situations are much more complicated. So the treatment they receive can go from something negative. I remember a young adolescent or young female who lived near me. And everyone got scared when she came out of this Correctional Facility. And everyone thought you have to grab your possessions because she's out. So when she disappeared because she was once again arrested, Everyone was relieved. And that is terrible because the perception and the stigma, she had not only belong to her but also to her family members. Such a powerful point about the way it's not just the individual, it's the community too. Thank you, Madison. And now Ingrid, can you speak to that? I don't know if it's the same with the individual and communal on how the student stigmatization works, but about girls in confinement in Norway and the public's perception of them. Yeah. So the situation for youth in general in Norway is very different from Mexico and from the US. We only have two juvenile correctional facilities for Aldi is in our way. And in total data capacity for eight students. But of course that are more. Oh, and before it was for in those facilities, to the best of my knowledge, there's only one girl who's incarcerated there, but that's based on the media. So it's hard to know. And that's funny because when we talk about the BDA perception. But of course there are more used than hate juveniles in Norway, you can do commit crimes and their method, other sanctions, but they usually never set foot in one of those juvenile correctional facilities. So we have, for instance, institutions where you urinals can be placed for up to 12 months without their own consent or parental consent being necessary. But that is within the child welfare system. And in those institutions, there's only a handful. And each of those institutions and our social workers there with them. And in addition to that, they can be receiving you sentences. Use the profession and community service, which all of them will be fulfilled in their own community. Astronaut. And as we talked about with the labels and the stigma, Those are things with them. Keep them in a community is in order to try to like, keep that stigma and labeling away from them so they can easily be intubate, a normal even know that something has happened, so they won't be taken away or anything. But when it comes to girls, they're almost completely invisible in our way when they commit crimes. In Oslo in 2020. And between the between ages 10 and 17 who read rubor registered with a crime, out of them, 25 percent of the youth were girls. That is 338 girls. And they were mostly registered for shoplifting and assaults. That although these girls do commit crimes, it's 25 percent is one out of four of these juveniles. They don't get any media attention whatsoever. And there's a lot of media attention when it comes to the boys to commit crimes. And there's a lot of very negative media attention and a lot of it then the public discourse. And they're very worried about these voice, but you never hear anything about the girls at all, which is really worrying because obviously there are a lot of them and they need help. Well, and that leads me to one quick follow-up question for either of you about when thinking about invisibility, hyper visibility, and the role of the correctional facility. It Do you find that in some ways it does more harm than good? I mean, you brought up such an interesting point, Ingrid, that there are many teenagers who are committing crimes, but so few who were sent to the correctional facilities. So as soon as you said it's part of that is to keep within the community and to remove that stigma as much as possible. So for the work that you both do, you know what is the positive of the correctional facility then what is the potential, What is the need for the correctional facility if we separate it from that stigma? Well, I can answer this in brief if you're okay. What is the potential of this institution? I'd like to emphasize that in the year 2015, it Mexico, there was a change in our justice system and there was a change in law for teenagers. And I would not only like to portray the negative aspects, but I would also like to say that this change came from a concern fixed on what will we do with this gene natures in order to stop them from committing more crimes and violent actions. So this modification of the law allowed us to see and focus on what we need to do in order to help this teenagers. And once again, there is the point of the media portrayal. When the justice system change, we found that teenagers are no longer incarcerated as they used to be for minor crimes or not a recent for incarceration. And something interesting happens since there are no support programs outside the perception of society towards them is that this is a very complicated system. But the reality is that we have met and found a great opportunity to support and help take away the stigma from teenagers. Because the portrayals they currently have is that they had the worst part of society, especially the ones that are incarcerated. I don't know if you want to add something angry. Yeah. No. So when it comes to the institutions, just because in our way here, it's so different from us. We don't have any institutions at all, at least the juvenile correctional facilities, milliamp, eight spots. So for the people who are placed in those other youth institutions, they only usually stated for up to a month. And that is, as you already mentioned, came about trying to reduce the stigma and labeling. But I do think there's some potential in actually putting them in institutions and even correctional facilities as well to some extent, especially when it comes to kind of give them a break from the environments that the normal. And so if those other efforts that are being made are not helpful, maybe taking them away from a time to get them to focus, had a chance to focus more on the closer, get closer follow-up might be a positive. But in Norway in general, they're trying to have as few people as possible been taken away, those institutions and better give them the follow-up they need and the community as far as possible. Thank you both. And I I I have so many more questions myself, but the Q and a is lighting up. I know we have audience questions, and this is wonderful and so I'd like to open it up. Please feel free to share your questions in the Q and a, and I'm just going to begin. And so one of the first questions that we received, and this can either be not ASL Ingrid, you know, feel free. Whichever of you would like to speak to this. But the first question is, do women of color mistreat other women? So do women of color receive racist abuse from other women or only from men? That I've happening and I answer this. Ingrid, I've had the opportunity. Well, I'd like to say that in Mexico, we have eliminated we only call them teenage communities in order to eliminate this incarcerated stigma. And in my experience throughout the entire country, I have observed this. Yes, I've seen that brown women, indigenous women, are hurt and are in a certain way removed from this privileges. We do find this. However. We have also worked strongly here because this has to do with the belief system that is also portrayed by the media. So we'd have based this situation. And what we've done is precisely work in this programs that help us have a different vision of different perception of the people. Thinking about ASL. Ingrid, would you like to add anything to that conversation around the intersectionality of race and gender and the way in which that informs that we'll need the offenders but the victims? Can you repeat the question? I'm not sure I got it right. Yes, absolutely. So do women of color receive racist abuse from other women or only from men and women of color mistreat other women with racist issues as well. So the intersectionality as multi-cell, muddy soul spoke to in Mexico, do you find any of that intersectionality of race and class and gender with relation to crime in Norway? I think this is a hard question to answer here in our way, It's a router is called a homogenous society, where we have most people who are of the same, the same ethnicity, and we're more equality to you. So I think it's difficult to answer this question specifically. What I do know is that in also a lot of the kids who are who end up incarcerated, they are still there minority populations. So but I don't know if I can answer anything more than that. That's a good question. No. Thank you. Our next question is actually moving to Brazil. So I think this is wonderful and thinking about this multinational perspectives, medulla asked in Brazil, the media's prohibited from broadcasting news that identifies the names and images of the adolescents who committed crimes. It is only possible to talk about the crimes without identifying the offenders, because news here is always very negative about the criminals. So they couldn't even have a series like incarcerated girls in Brazil. Do the panelists think that this would avoid the negative effects of media exposure in relation to juvenile delinquency if this practice was available in other countries like the US and Mexico, Norway, or do you think it would just reinforce invisibility? I remember this guy. I think there is what we call a pros and cons of the situation. We don't want them not to be seen in Mexico. We also have this situation. It is forbidden to present. In the media. The face of the teenager names are changed. Phases are not portrayed, will only mention the crime. But we believe we don't have to present this news. But what we have to do is sum, deep work related to raising awareness in communities and in people and in the media. This is a very delicate situation because we don't know anything about them and they are committing crimes. But at the same time, I believe the message should change. The focus should not be on violence or in crime, but the focus should be on what are we going to do for them? What programs should we develop or which programs do we have today to help them? We have statistics that say 43% of teenagers, we are beginning to present violent behaviors in the meat, in the social networks, for example. So maybe we should focus on what can we do to solve the situation. I believe that is the change. The news and the media should have to make this people visible, but from a positive point of view. Yeah, so I agree with what you're saying. My disorder, we have the same situation here. In our way. It's not allowed to portray any of these people who are convicted of crimes, who are suspected of crimes with their pictures are their names, they have to be completely anonymous. But at same time, while that can protect that individual, there's still this other problem about how we view juveniles when it comes to crime or crime in general. So it's more about when this is present that in a wrong way to focusing on these kids are so bad at all these kinds of things, which is usually what is about this is what they did and it's terrible. Instead of focusing on, and what should we do in order to get a more equal society where we can help everyone in order to being conventional society because it's repeated oftentimes with both offenders and drug addicts that what they most deeply want it to live a completely normal life. So that's what we should be working towards. And when it comes to you. And this is different too, because in the Netflix series girls incarcerated, I think it's not even normal into us to portray, at least not all states to portray the the names and faces of these girls. So it's a special case then Netflix series that they did do that. It was surprising to me. I don't think that that would never ever happen in our way. Here. We don't even have that many statistics available on the juveniles who are incarcerated and the facilities. Namely because since there are so few, it will be possible to identify them, which would be of course not good. So yeah, yeah. Well, that brings up an interesting we had a follow-up question that really speaks to someone asks, has any national policy then developed on the treatment of information in the media regarding adolescence and conflict with the law. So as you're both speaking about the way in which different countries deal with Saying names or protecting identities. Or of course, the goal of reintegration into society. Are there national policies in Mexico or Norway to ensure that, you know, that the goal of protecting and destigmatizing is happening. Being Mexico. We have national policies that include what I mentioned before, that our constitutional reforms and the changes in the justice system or teenagers, it changes. We eliminate the name correctional facility to teenage communities. There is a public policy at a national level in which everyone who works with teenagers must have a different focus on restorative justice. That is to understand the crime, not justify it, but to reach a point in which we support these teenagers, we protect their identities. And this reform gave you more safety. So we do have these programs that is happening in Mexico. And I can say this is not something that is happening quickly. This training at a national level for specialized judges, we have specialized facilitators to promote this. Because we have people working within these communities who have been sense it ties to this special programs in order for them to handle these programs and to go one step further in order to integrate, reintegrate with adolescents and give them a vision that allows them to say, you made this mistake. This mistake has a cause, but that doesn't mean you are not responsible for your actions. Although with there is this or reformative process that has to do with the development of teenage brains. They begin to understand that there are certain responsibilities, but there's also a lot of support and they have to assume the responsibility in order to go out of this facilities and reintegrate into society in a positive way. And you feel that there is financial support given to the legislative piece muddy sold, that the people are literally putting their money where their mouth is and saying, we're giving the finances to those reforms. Ccc dilemma yes. Is not for you. We have federal support at which is given every year. It begins in January, where all correctional facilities at a state and national level mentioned their needs. With their work with teenage, perhaps they get certifications. And there is a special document that says you must cover a certain number of theoretical and practice hours in order to work with teenagers. So this specialized programs. We also have in this programs, a space. As I already mentioned. I recognize and I apply certain programs from the US and from other countries here in Mexico. But also these communities and centers are beginning to develop their own programs to work with teenagers. They received the necessary tools and help to develop programs to support these teenagers and to apply them. So we group of experts also generate, they're old programs for teenagers. Wonderful. Thank you. In a grid, I'm going to give you the last question before we wrap up our discussion today. But this really brings, I think everything home, everything that we've been talking about full circle. The final question asked is, how can media perceptions on crime BY change when these media companies often promote these perceptions and these really salacious perceptions to further their own interests. So to get more viewers, to get more clicks, how can we make the changes necessary? One that's kind of the reality on the other side. Yeah. So for as long as Jimmy yes. Going to be something where not only did they have responsibility of providing information, especially if their state run, but they also have some financial goals to meet. There will always lie. I can't see any hands. It is they are going to Dan Boyd is profitable for them. And it's just the truth that people are more interested in reading about the spectacular crime is although they're not realistic or not useful at all. So if people are going to read about murders before to read about fraud or theft. And that's just the way it is. But we can hope that more television shows follow in the footsteps of girls incarcerated, for instance, they did both good numbers when it comes due, the number of US, and they were well received by the critics. So if people enjoyed the show, us are actually more accurately portraying what is going on. And, and they can make money off of that, which is essential for the directors. And then that is going to be a positive. But I think the more pragmatic solution will probably to be to continue to educate the audience is and to consumers of media that they have to be critical of using media as a source and as they are critical of any other source that you're using. So I think that's probably the most realistic solution. Wonderful and multi-celled. Do you have any final thoughts on reflecting on our consumption of sensational information about adolescence? So kind of, as Ingrid said, thinking about what Netflix does well and how we can use that to really think about the way in which the news media will follow this and the way in which information will hopefully become more accurate. And as we balanced this hyper visibility in a sense, substance actualization, but also this invisibility of female offenders. Um, do you have any final thoughts on our consumption of the media specific to a female offenders? See me assume that. I like to say that it is really important that us as a society receiving information from the media. It is important to take a step back. Think about what has happened and to remember that we should try to understand rather than punish these actions, The media plays a certain number of questions that have not been addressed properly. So I believe the media should portray the best of these teenage communities. And trying to avoid this negative portrayal of information. We also know that information, when it's stronger and more violent has a stronger impact. So we must think about what we are consuming and the impact this consumption is having on society. We are at a moment in which we must think of solutions and answers in a collective way in order to solve and address the causes of juvenile delinquency. The media is a great platform that can help us change this stories seen from this perspective. We're just going to ask, yes, I have appreciated both of your perspectives so much and I liked the book names of those perspectives to Ingrid, you're calling on us to really critically assess what we watch. And multicellular calling on the media as well as us but the media to also critically assess what they portray and how these images come out. And I think that's very true, right? That balance of, it's the responsibility of those who put off those images, and it's also the responsibility of us who consume those images. And so I'm just very grateful today for everyone for attending for Indiana University for the second in this really important series for IU Mexico gateway for facilitating and translating this conversation and most of all to our two panelists, Ingrid urines and for your invaluable perspective and tomato salad familiar with Sanchez for your invaluable perspective, speaking on Mexico and Norway. And really taking us into the second part of this series and encouraging us to think about girls incarcerated and the media images out there and how that portrayal effects female offenders. We invite you to join us next month on August 3rd at 12:00 PM Eastern time for beyond the cradle opportunities and challenges of raising children of adolescent mothers deprived of liberty. Thank you for joining us today and thank you both for your time. Okay. I'm PNMexico Meetups
Mexico Meetups are interesting and intellectual weekly conversations between IU faculty and peers in Mexico and beyond around a specific topic of interest.
Description of the video:
Hello everyone and welcome to our Mexico. Before I begin, I would like you to know that you have an option of which language you would like to listen to the session. And there's a little globe on the bottom of your screen. And when you click that, you can click on English or Spanish as they Kyoto concept of a heap though and, and that'll zoom. I am going to be EIA with an a skull handle ideal. My they get him SDSC recheck as the practica ape. I then click on global ES English, espanol English or Spanish. So today's session is Moctezuma and Germany. Oswald Spengler is Decline of the West revisited. And my name is Molly Fisher. I'm the Director of the Indiana University Mexico Gateway office located on the nom campus in Mexico City. Iu BLA strongly believes that international engagement plays an essential role in building a more informed and inclusive society. And that, and that is integral to I use teaching, research and service missions. Because of that, I created the IU Global Gateway network with offices in Beijing, Berlin, Bangkok, New Delhi, and Mexico. One of the many things we do as a network of support our faculty and students by facilitating and accommodating them with international connections. Mexico meet ups is one of the many initiatives that does just that. Mexico meet ups are a platform for interesting and intellectual conversations between IU faculty and their peers and Mexico and beyond around the specific topic of interest. And today we're very excited to introduce our distinguished guest to you. Admire is professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the College of Arts and Sciences at IU. And we have with us said, I don't know who's an essayist and biologist, Professor of poetry in translation at Unum. And today we'll be talking about uncles Spanish edition of Oswald Spengler supposed to miss drama, Moctezuma. This work surprisingly critiques German colonial fantasy, is about Mexico and reveals the early fascination of the best-selling, best-selling author of the decline of the West with pre-Hispanic Mexico. The conversation will discuss the mouth and the history of Moctezuma and the wake of the 500th anniversary of his death. The merits of Spengler is drama and translation and the reasons of the lasting impact in Latin America of his later decline of the West. We are so excited to have you here today. And with that being said, I will pass the microphone on to the two of you. Thank you. Thank you so much money for for your introduction. And thank you. Move on. I love her basket weaving, Raphael to Taraki, going to be here with you. This is a great opportunity, right? Yes. Everything can be so easy. Well, I like very much the title of our talk today because so much is perceived in Germany. I believe. I, well, I'm going to tell you a fun fact, an anecdote. And it's very interesting how things take place. I was recently in conversation at the end it here in the university. And I talk about cilia and breast. And I'll tell you why I'm talking to you about this. We talked about something that you mentioned in the beginning in your introduction. How spender a basis his work on a BIT as very interesting ideas about the tree, about the plant world in order to develop his theory. At the same time. Something that you also mentioned in your introduction about how to place this in Germany in the context of a person who, when he writes, is playing this trauma, he is 19 years old. And what is the relationship between this 19 year old boy? The intellectual decisions he changed later to become what Spaniard became later on in his life and how he sort of returns. I mean, my first question would be more than a question would be something that I find interesting is the relationship between spender art and maybe a more theoretical way of thinking throughout his life. What is your opinion on this? It was really a discovery because Spangler and what's known as the author of the decline of the West Philadelphia Story, which is a fill off the historical philosophic work. It is how history works. And it is true that in the introduction he mentioned yet, but it is a very rich and theoretical work. So the interesting thing about the discovery of this manuscript and later on, the research and made from his notes found in spenders files. To me. The interesting thing is that he really wanted to be a writer. His interest was literature. So that step from a literature to historical philosophy was very interesting. It is true that he got his doctorate in the beginning of the 20th century philosophy. But he wasn't very successful. He had some trouble with his dissertation. And later on he retired. And all of his attempts to right up to that moment, up to that moment here for the decline of the West are literary pieces actually. So that is really very interesting. Why did he move from literature to the philosophy of history? Of course. And this has also given me the average humidity. I'm, I'm, I'm really glad we can talk about this now. I was able to dedicate a little bit more time to this. And for example, there is a book of Jeffrey, her name, reactionary modernism. I don't know if you've heard of it in Spanish. It was published by the funder economic. I believe it's sold out. But it is very interesting because it is a book where he mentions the Spangler. But there's also a big chapter about Gilbert, another writer I really like. And he is someone who made that decision to continue being a writer. So that's interesting. And also, I read the essay. I don't have about Spanner where he mentions the coarser. He says something that really left me thinking. He is a writer, cookie Mickey, and think after publishing his first edition, which was really successful, the second part of this book was not as successful as the first one, is, particularly in Germany, in the German context. So all this happens in the 1920s when what he says is actually what happens with the beginning of Nazism. But also, as I read his citations, I got spenders. About spender. I mean, it was really interesting to compare it with everything with sniffed right now with President Trump. I don't know. Mentions, says things before they happen about how the way radium substituting written press. And it is something that is happening today with the Internet. It's really, wow. It's chilling how this is happening today. But actually what interests me today is that at the end in his works, Spangler, also in men and technique. He attacks us. He defense culture before civilization. But also, however, he attacks popular art such as expressionism for example. Question would be for you to think. I mean, which this session I took him to leave literature to look away from it and to become a profit. At a sort of profit. Yes, it's very interesting. This whole reflection about decline, the decline of the West and the title of the book about cultures that are declining. One might wonder if this doesn't have to do with the fact that specular comes from the time, the beginning of the 19th century, the time of decadence in poetry style and in Germany also, they would be big. They are writers who begin to experiment in a radical way with language. But they also begin questioning the language down in the language of fragmentation in which a word and even language itself is coming apart without any possibility to control it with. So my answer would be that maybe specular wasn't the best example of this. A man of literature, he wasn't able to write a complete word. But his legacy is only fragments. And that is, that's what happened with Nietzsche. Also. He left fragments. He was fair and writer of his time, unquestionably. Yes, of course. And we might think of someone like bender, for example. There is a topic that you mentioned in your introduction which I believe he made a decision to become sort of says to speak a serious person. He doesn't consider art as something serious at the time. I think that that's something I believe I sort of make out from what I read. Because somebody who writes a complete drama inverse about characters, who, of course, when you decide to write about maps, the soma is you can take a historical position, but there is also at what happens with writing and art is that it can be locked up in a definition. So maybe his decision had to deal with I need to think in a serious way because beds will take me two things and that will not propose solutions. And this is a time that need solutions. Especially after the First World War. Yes, of course, I believe this has to do with that. He began writing the decline of the West in, around 1911. By it. Especially in the years before World War 1. I believe it is a really amazing What do you say? That in the middle of a context of a changing world, he feels literature or one he can, he can contribute, cannot be done through literature. And maybe that idea of beak morphology of cultures. And the deep line up at the culture which is taking place before their very eyes. That is a very strong idea, must have had an important impact. And he can only happen by writing essays and not literature. Which is why he never published exactly his staff about literature itself. As you say, that he made up of the literature of his time. He did not feel a part of faith. He did not want to be apparent effect. So that could be a limitation if his is a force. And another thing that I find very interesting, and you mentioned it also. I'm going to tell you my interpretation of what his Evolutionary writings, especially check it. And who writes about morphology in general. And also somebody I believe is very important and cookie surely read inspires me a good lawyer WHO is not a Darwinian way of thought. But there is, there is an interpretation of Darwin. Who was the use of Darwin to Bill ideas related to raise the superiority of certain races. Actually, a Darwinian evolutionary thought is a, really depends a lot on a B, ceramics. But heckle and basements conception is related to something that also has to do with something inherent. The idea of body that moves forward. So the confrontation between contests and mock-ups. So I don't know if this was my interpretation of your words or our my reading of your words. But thinking particularly on these two authors I mentioned and thinking about what came afterwards. You talk about the birth of German imperialism, the unification of Germany, and the economic and military and political strength, which finally became a World War one and World War 2 with all its consequences. So big concern, his concern and that I know is a German thought. The time from 1880 to 1930 is an idea. Where are we going? What will we become before it happens? Because, for example, now in the United States, we don't have a president Trump, but he might have continued. And we don't know what could have happened there back that star is something we cannot ignore. It could've been possible, although it did not happen. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. So in the case of Spain here, I'm a 19-year-old teenage boy. Has the fact that he writes and what will become his work and the decline of the West. This is a different title from the one originally planned, which was a lot more optimistic about what I understood is that he was considering the empire which America would become in the 16th century. And at the end of the 15th century, Spain is similar to what happened to Germany. It goes from a several independent kingdoms. Leon, guess. Yeah, I bought it becomes first of all, in one kingdom and then an empire and then columns. So this brings us to this encounter. And I was thinking today, look at this, a relationship with evolutionary origins. I don't know if he thought about this. Maybe not, because I don't know how clear that was at the moment. But what happens with vehicles? Talk genus, species, for example, when rabbits are brought into New Zealand and their SSL invasion, if an invasion of a species, it's the same thing as when the Spaniards arrived in Mexico. They destroyed. And well, something I would like to mention again before we end is how the machine perceived what they were. And this is something that is being passed today and there's a book of February, but now I'd read called Estonians mushy guess. And it is very interesting because he tries to reconstruct the thought of a Macbeth Suma before these Western thought, to which spend your answers. And to talk about different chromosomes. And what may be closer to the thought of Benjamin is history. It's been a different fabrics in the same way that the history of humankind. And it comes from Africa, but not in a linear way. It is inter, cross, a history of species, two many different things and in that same sense, the history of the world. What happens to the soma? What happens to them when she got them by? There is something that had already happened. Although for Spinler, it had not happened before because this was an isolated species. So that must have been really interesting, but I have talked so much, I have lot of questions. Yes, It's fascinating. I really love how many lectures and readings you have. I had not thought about all these. Reflections, but the first thing as my first reaction would be your emphasis. In fact, advisement. Work with this tradition that is opposed to that of Darwin. So let me find the different suspender inmates would be that emphasis on the cycle of birth and then later a decline in rows and a decline or death. That cycle will be a natural cycle which usually follows its own course inevitably. So that might be something that would look very different from utter when your point of view. In the sense that Darwin always considers human beings or species in interrelationship among everybody spring. And that perspective of Spangler following base of meetings would surely be different. That is exactly where his horizon of readings in natural sciences such as biology, but also he's a leader or a knowledge. His readings of get there. Everything is all. They always influenced by literature. So that is what gives his visions certain coherence. Even though that is, and that might be something fantastic or paranoid. But yes, that is something absolutely interesting. And Spanner begins very early. And what changes? If we compare that first word about the soma and then the decline of the West would be the degree of generalization. In the case of mock the soma. And he represents the end of her life. And in that early phase, anger is a completely fascinated by these important characters, this heroes of tragedies. Yeah. And then later on on a big decline of the West Cape Wind checks as a focus people, an individual's, his emphasis is radically placed on abstraction. He focuses on cultures and their growth. Yes, of course. And his rejection of the arts is actually a rejection of at the individual. And this is what happens in the play, which is something that happens to individuals. And a very interesting among the things you mention in the book is how he MBA, he returns to this character. The book, I mentioned, another thing. He talks about something that, of course spender could not know because it hadn't been started. That way. Is how in his own construction of his own Khurana TO be michigan already knew they were heading to the end. Towards the end. That is not the Summa was acting according to his own construction world, told him that he was going towards his own decline. And that might be part of what happens during his encounter with purpose. It's not so much that he was appalled by this in different species and that arise with tools that there's a, his species does not know. But at the same time, you'll knock the soma and talk to me. His thoughts and his thoughts tell him that be a mess she got empire will be defeated. However, at the Spangler, at the end of the play, at the end of his life, he returns to hit these are fragments, Moctezuma. And, uh, he, he returns to my scene view. And the fact that he once again thought about individuals is very interesting because the plate is made of individuals and there is a key character throughout the plate, which is the sub-culture called the normally. I forgot his name. Yes. Look through and was hidden. When you arrive at play, you are a state from the collective destinies, which will come later. And another, one of the elements present there is Shakespeare and his tragedies. We've got historical tragedies, which are based on written books, which he reads and then rewrites. And there is a Shakespeare play, Shakespeare, which I translated called King King John. Sorry, I did not see it, but there was a production where King John is represent that as Mach Bessemer. That's very interesting. And I believe he thought in that play, in order to develop his own. It might be. Shakespeare is mentioned in several of his fragments. And Sydney as well, I focused on the fragments that had something to do with Moctezuma. It is really probable that that connection was made. Both Shakespeare and get it were great labor remodels for Spector. But towards the end of his life, that fascination for fast drummers, heroes. And he in a certain way is trying to combine the impulses of those two works. More. Man, the individual and then the decline of the West, where he reflects on the decline of culture is because these costumers, heroes are people who are captive. For example, the last human Emperor. These are people who are leaders, heroes of an empire, but who also are aware of the fact that the Empire expanding to an end. So that is finally the topic of many tragedies, destiny and B, capability and human beings before that. So spender takes this notion and I, I always, I'm always tempted to think that this has something to do with is personal life at the end of his life when he is really isolated in Nazi Germany. So maybe it's that same feeling. Somebody who has had a public voice and some funny, but who is unable to intervene in a way or if he can't do it anymore. I don't know, but is very interesting. This link between the historical reflection with his literary inclination. Now that you mentioned that I believe that he identifies with Sando. Sando is the critical voice of the empire in this idea of imperial Germany. Germany do what, what do we do when it becomes an empire? What will it do with its power? And you write to compare it to the Spanish Empire. Germany was an empire for, we live in an empire for a few decades in Spaniards time. It's actually from 1871 that Germany exists as a unified nation. And after that, n is one heavy emperor wants to become an empire. So where will this take? Germany? So you're right, spender is a product of his time of those big questions. And a well, also, towards the end of his life, who you identify with some Dubai or Maybe with the militia knows it because I don't know. What do you think? Because well, he writes something at 19 then is a very successful than he is silenced both by intellectual elites because of Heidegger and, and, and ways of thought that are different from yes. But he is also isolated by popular power, the power which grew, but Max is so high. You ident robots. What do you think stagger identified with it? Towards the end of his life? Here? He is saying, I love this question and I agree Sandel would probably be this figure. He is somebody who observes, tries to have, but it's powerless and unable to do so. So yes. I was going to ask you, you have already spoke of Federico and history has mesh. And this is something that interests me. I am right now unable to travel to Mexico, but it is how these knowledge of the mesh Sica is promoted and to mention well, and then nursery among many others is a five centuries since I'm not so much that last year. And how do you revisit or celebrate machine culture nowadays? Well, when you say you can travel, why I'm here in Mexico, but I cannot travel. I cannot even go too far from my house. But this is a very weird reality. Now that is one of the people who I have read and he is my neighbor. So I have a stretch communication with him. And he would sometimes I follow him on Twitter. There is something he mention not long ago, that peak. They were not the beading, pretty minimal. In the beginning. The class can take out were the winners, of course, because they're alive when the Spaniards. But the Alliance of the Spaniards with a casket. And that gives us some cultural consequences. One might not know. There is a CD in the north side, which is very famous for, is this a tape, a stress, the Santa Rosa These are made by class palpate us. That is, there is an emigration of class that they guess there is. First, a minimum of a class can take us further aligns with the Spaniards. But later on they end up being, I don't know if, if they were relegated or assimilated, but on the other hand, there is the matter of, I don't remember. Name is add an American historian, but he studies capitalists have in the 18th century in New Spain. And there with a bread, there was a very strong capitalists to forest. And that is these monolithic idea of Hispanics, which was partly true, but then strengthens and is consolidated. And through the independence. Independence is what makes the reality is much more complex. Before then, before I, Y the independent, because the independence movement prefers to see a new Spain as a multiple reality, but as unity, as an empire and a naked, in a negative way. That is, there were certainly negative aspects of it. But in order to affirm what was positive about independence, they had to bring out the negative aspects of New Spain and put this and white. So in doing this, they build history in which we talk about the pre Spaniard world and then after three centuries. And that the independence. And what happens during this three centuries. It is precisely these stories that I'm telling you about the sign-up as inside your lungs are the trends that one region toward Acapulco, Mexico. So when you asked me what has happened in Mexico, there is an exhibit in a museum of France minor. This is a museum which was built by a German Jew who arrived in Mexico at the beginning of the 20 1920s. And he created this museum and there is an exhibit there which I have not yet seen, but it is the museum's collection of maps and photography, which is very interesting right now, but something that has been in the news sealed forever now is show you and I. And with maps, we can immediately perceive the complexity of these worlds. So what happens with the Mexican Revolution? Today? Rescue these rich, cultural and diverse alive, or just something that happened in the last decades. Yes, the human revolution reaffirms this history of independent Mexico. Well, actually what the Mexican Revolution and the culture of the beginning of the 20th century To rescue and consolidate Mexico as a nation. Rescue Mexicans historical past and pre-Hispanic path. As the base is the cultural basis where over which post-revolutionary Mexico is built. So I believe that nineteenth-century does not base itself on that so much, but on a national BIM. And that is how the 20th century takes the path to the pre-Hispanic past, but not the current Indian cultures. Mexico, the Museum of Anthropology was, focuses a lot. I'm Maya and ask their cultures, but not on the other ones. But yes, it's true. There is an artist called albedo or who has a work of art. He's a contemporary artist. And there is a video where he blows up be Museum of Anthropology as a representation of Mexican political power. So what happens now? I really don't know what is going on in these accommodations. Poly, politics and social, which is currently taking place in a span in a spectacular way. Comparing it to that aspect past I, what I would like would be that after this revisiting of these 500 years. And actually it's a coincidence that your work is written right now. I believe that's a good omen thinking and an optimistic way that the Mexico that developed after these realities and after these 500 years would be a much more diverse, complex. And Mexico and a which acknowledges and accepts all its diversity and richness, which is of course mentioned, but only in a historical context, not in diversity of everything that has Mexico. And like you mentioned, an example would be the Museum of Anthropology because it does not show Mexican imperial history. Yes, he also mentions and well summer in mind. The book, there is a credit, a Mexican Creek predict called dagger, who talks about the Germany at the end of the century and the beginning of the 20th century. This particular fascination with aspects, wave mach, the soma, the tragic hero. But what you are telling me is that in a certain way that is reflected also in Mexican history from the 19th century and even later, after the Mexican Revolution, there is a selective focus on the history and how history is narrated. How Indian cultures, indigenous cultures in Mexico, and their realities are perceived differently before the conquest and after the arrival of these failures. So this recovery of the multiple stories, histories and are realities of these indigenous cultures is a work of well rescue that is taking place right now. Yes, of course that is something be separate beast as mentioned, we are masked because either you can't even see it. Let us actually, what we wear a mask. We're not recognizable individuals to you. And until we are, until we are all considered an integrated in advanced and national identity. Then we will take off our mask versus what, a separate test set. And in that sense, I believe Mexican reality has to recognize the diversity of Mexico's the different realities in Mexico. And it has to include those Mexico, which are not here in Mexican territory also. Because, for example, what happens in, in the United States with all Mexicans living there. It is something that makes mexican reality much more complex. Right now, you mentioned the importance of aspects for the Germans in the end of the 19th century. Why did they think this happened? While my explanation is in the book, I have my theory about this. I believe this is a colonial fantasy. This idea how to face the unknown cultures which have nothing to do with Western cultures. How the Spaniards spirit. And that is something that began before. But basically in the second half of the 19th century, there are many books, popular books on this topic. It is not only something that rioters or l, or literary elites do, but there is a popular interest in this. Imagining these empires and these cultures. So, yeah, I think it is a generalized fantasy which can be seen in these popular history books with lots of illustrations. Germany was in a way open to the world. So that curiosity took them to that kind of fascination with cultures which have had a trajectory which had already appeared in the 18th century. So there are, there is one unless you put the soma had already been known and these became more important with time. Why don't you show us one of these images which will allow us to see this. Okay, Here we have the cover of the book. So you can perform on next slide, please. Okay. This is an American traveler who maybe went to Central America. Chiapas. You get that the south of Mexico. And heat rediscoveries the Maya culture. And he makes lithography drawings and he publishes them. And what we see here is he, his fascination with big artistic sophistication of these monuments. Without actually understanding what they represent. They appear as unusually rich and ornamented monuments. Most cathode. Now we have Catherine who made this illustration that represents a house in Berlin. And what is interesting here is a vegetation. It is the houses practically covered its entirety by these words. And it gives us B sensation that these houses are deserted. It gives us the impression of discovering something that has not been seen that is practically completely covered and hit Next slide please. And again, catheter work. Unless you here. This is the representation of a palace at Berlin get, and this is a wider perspective. This is practically landscape drawings. And as we can see, it is somehow influenced by this R, Romanticism nature and in the middle of that nature, a palace. Next slide, please. And again, we have a step, a monument for where the traits of the face are almost erased. It gives us this sensation of discovery for Western travelers. Next one place. And here we have the drawings which can be seen in popular history works in Germany. This was a discovery for me as I was looking for what spender might have read. Specular, did not speak Spanish. We know how well he knew English, but of course he read a German. So here, This is, Carl writes one of these popular works. And it is practically a copy of one of the drawings PMOS we just saw in the beginning. We do not know the author. So that is very common in those popular stories. But once again, we have this fascination with artistic sophistication. This is the image of an idol of an unknown religion. So there is an enigma around the Mayan culture space. We have a few more slides. Yes. And once again, this is a landscape or something is, is the representation of mine. This is what I call API Mexicans, simply this fascination with Mexico as a sublime landscape, those of the volcanoes. And then the pyramids and then buildings. This gives us a sensation of infinity, which, which includes a very ancient culture. Again. Next slide please. Okay. This is the cover of another one. Obese how Kepler stories they, it is a combination of art and nature and exotic nature. In this case, you have palm trees, cactus. Which are all plants you cannot fight in Germany. So this is referring to the exotic and one of the representations of what base and mock the soma. The soma is dressed almost like a Roman Empire. Next one, please. Run this once again, nature and compares. This is INK. And there is a comparison between American Indians, which were also very popular in German literature. One of those bestselling authors wrote about them. And here we have a comparison between the Indians in South America and those North American Indians. And also, once again, nature. Let's see how many more failures we have. Here. We have Hoffman, another one of these German popular authors. And a here we have seen representing Moctezuma. The scene is then, well, I don't know what you think, but this scene really isn't very Aztec or my hand, it looks more like from Babylonia, maybe. Yes, But the important here is how monumental it is. In classic, Yeah. Okay. And then next side, here in the cover of Huffman's cover, I, I, I found the color is very interesting. This red and gold, which are royal colors, colors related to very royal European tradition. And also here, the red mist stereotyped representation of Moctezuma with his feathered crown. But which is not really true to the Aztecs. And well finally, these precession, which is allegedly mock, there's so much precession as he received a product-based present. But once again, it is represented in a very European way, which really has little to do with what? With reality in Tenochtitlan. Yes. And yes. And this is the same which is Spangler decided not to represent. He was not interested in this. So in that sense, he's kind of original. He did not like this time of drugs. That's all. Thank you very much. No setup. And before we run out of time right now, when you mentioned that almost everything happens indoors and sort of labyrinths. Yes. That is also very different from what we just saw. So what I think and thank you so much, finito for this for this fascinating conversation. Yes, I enjoyed the book very much. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So Molly, I don't know if there are questions or didn't really have time. Yes. Thank you so much I can Pedro. We don't have any questions from the audience right now. And I think that's because you did such a great job with this conversation that was so interesting and captivating. So thank you so much. I know I learned a lot from, from listening to you and I'm sure our audience did as well. We're really thankful for all of your great work and your insights. And I really look forward to joining both of you in person, someday Anki, when you can get back down here and visit us in Mexico, We will be pleased to have you and and go for a coffee. I was imagining ourselves sitting on a sideway sidewalk coffee shop, kind of nifty studying during those. We will get there. They have a real coffee altogether? Yes. Yes. Hopefully you can come back to visit in Bloomington after that. And I know you have many friends, both beautiful and one you have friends. Yes, I will definitely let you know when I'm back. And I would also like to take a moment to thank our IU Mexico gateway team, who you don't see here in the background that that make all of these events or reality. So thanks to Sarah again, our program coordinator, Victoria at beta's, who does this amazing tell it has this amazing talent for simultaneous translation. Of course, our amazing intern, Leah, I know we are all really thankful. Again, Pedro, that you could join us here today and we could listen and learn from you, and we look forward to staying in touch. Thank you. Molly, can I answer one last question? I just opened. I happened to open one. It's from a colleague who is asking. Today, most women Auto Mask money. C. C will have an extra minute. Yes, of course, at the influence of Alexander Von Humboldt was important on Spangler. And to what point does he show this influence? We know he founded a project, yes, that is true. Among be what I found my home that was definitely a reference for him. His literature was available to Spangler. I haven't seen anything in particular. Not any mentions. That would be more sort of speculation. In what sense homework might have influenced. Maybe something about humbled that could be mentioned is his fascination and appreciation. Pre-hispanic cultures. So that the curiosity, curiosity is something we also see in staggered. But I don't know if you have anything else to say about this. No, I find that very interesting question because I hadn't thought about in this line of thought in Mexico this trade off indefinitely. At the first discovers of the Maya culture and who bring set and show the European people. But I haven't seen any other references. So that is my answer. So I think that at the end of our conversation, I really love talking to you better and I hope we will do it in person. So of course, with my name is Sarah. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, everyone. Ciao.The Great Inventions that Changed the World
This joint UNAM, Sorbonne and IU webinar series, held monthly on the last Wednesday of the month, brings together faculty and students from all three universities around interesting inventions that have truly changed the world. The series is hosted by IU’s Mexico Gateway Office located on the campus of UNAM in Mexico City and the IU Europe Gateway Office located in Berlin.
Description of the video:
Start recording. We're happy to have you here with us today. Before we start, we will let you to know about the translation service, services available today. So you can feel more comfortable listening to the language. Would you like to do enable dysfunctional? Please click on this model. So in the lower right corner of your screen, and then click on the language of your preference. For me. Thank you for being here and welcome one of the most brilliant that they said, Oh, good morning, good morning to you all watching us from America, the United States and Mexico come to all of you from brands. We welcome you to this fifth session of the webinar, of this series of webinars, the great inventions that changed the world. A series of webinars is our fifth edition. Today has tried to talk about processes, phenomenon, and the social dynamics that have transformed our societies, both in Europe and in North America and Latin America. We are here today for this practice and these joint reflections. Will you be Sorbonne University and unum we today where in which we will talk about women in science and we will talk about the importance they have always had in science. Our three universities, Indiana, Sorbonne, and I, convinced of this in relevant role of women and their importance for our contemporary society. I would like to tell you this is a very passionate subject. And thoughts have been very important for the coordination of Haram. And we are very pleased to be part of this project. And we strongly thank the team of the University of Indiana way and all be moieties in international affairs of the Sorbonne University. I would also like to thank the coordination of international and of course, also the center of Mexican studies in France coordinated by Dr. Florian. This effort, it has been a monthly endeavor. This is our session. We will go to a brief break because of the summer holidays, but we will return in September with our sessions. Then we will continue in September for a couple more sessions and we hope you will all join us. We invite you to write your questions or points of view we have right now of a specialist who will give you a great overview of the importance of women through history. And we are, we are all agree and the importance of the role of women in contemporary styles. To moderate this session, I present in S PASA know about Gonzales ethanol that is part of the professors up and be health public health school in Indiana. She got her doctorate, The University of MOD. And she develops her scientific knowledge around the topics such as nutrition. Also. Our diseases, emotional health. She has also developed and is very interested in research pediatrics and the growth and development of children. Also, global health topics. Such as health in a Latin American population as well as in North Americans populations. So now I leave the floor to MS. And a thank you once more to all of you for your presence here today. Have an excellent session in stress. Yes, Alberto, thank you so much, Alberto, me to moderate this event. I will let it become all of you to this panel, women in science, which as mentioned before, it's part of the series, the great inventions that changed the world. And I find it very important that they thought the topic was included. I am not a scholar like Albert dimension on the peak like that, b, are born and Schapiro who will be lecturing today are. My work is in health. But as a lay person in this area, I have not miss the multiple news articles highlighting the role of women sciences, changing the world, making it a better place. From black women mathematicians to help nasa and honestly humanity reached the moon to, for example, Rosalind Franklin, molecular biology's who took the chair of the molecular structure of DNA, which is also known as picture 51. And that picture later was used by Watson and Crick to publish that double helix URI. And they did it without acknowledging her contributions. And examples of the lack of recognition of the role of women in science and technology are unfortunately abundant. So talking about these topics and highlighting the role of women is extremely important. Today in this session, we are joined by two scholars who have dedicated their professional life to study science, women, feminism. We will first hear from the bead are born from Sorbonne University and then from and Mary Schapiro, the National Autonomous diversity of CPO. So let me first introduce the beat upon. And so Professor of History of Science at the Faculty of Science of Sorbonne University and member of the US. Berries left, Left Bank Mathematics Institute's at Sorbonne University. He created and continues to lead the thematic can disciplinary minor of the history and philosophy of science and technology. With his colleagues, wrote a chronology of the history of science, which was published by Bishop. Especially mathematics, the, and the physical and astronomical science. In modern and contemporary times, he is notably the author of the elite under the great shot, normal use mathematics and the Great War, 1900 to 1925. And also of women popularization and practice of science in the Age of Enlightenment. The dialogues on astronomy and the letter on the figure of the air by sea star Francoise, GSC needed. And today he will be talking about these. So maybe you. Hello everyone. Thank you for this. Nice words. About E. I'm going to be speaking in English today, but as you heard there. And so I hope my talk will be said about 20. I've prepared a presentation and my slides will be in French. So there will be a complement to what I will be speaking about. Some quotes by B, also in French, I'm going to share my screen with you. If I can find it. Here it is. And try to know doesn't work. Sorry. Okay. Here it is. So again, thank you again for the invitation. I'm very excited to be part of this, this workshop. And now I'll start right away just to, in order to keep the time and hopefully have a discussion with some of the participants of this, this meeting. My topic today is, unfortunately, in certain respects, not so much about women doing science in the, in the Enlightenment. As you, as you will see in this talk, it's not impossible to find women having an scientific activity in the indictment and this has to be has to be placed into the picture. But I'm more interested in images. Images of the woman, images of the Earth. Or the shape of the earth more, more precisely and how it indeed. So two very important debates in the period of the Enlightenment can be connected to one another. The two debates are the debates about the place of women in science. Whether or not the woman has the time intellectual capacities as men, and the debate about the shape of the earth. And unexpectedly perhaps those two debates, cross paths, cross path in the middle of the 18th century. And that's what I would like to, to explore with you a little bit just to try to advance in our understanding of the place of women in science at this, in this period. First of all, let me go at the heart of the debate and, and, and look at some of the, as one of the main contest and the participant and the debate of the shape of the Earth, which is the scientists. More Petrie, who was a member of the French Academy of Science. And as we will see a little earlier, a very important part of the, This debate. I will first concentrate on the debate on the shape of the earth. Before trying to understand why women were became participant and, and the image of the women was, was what I became an important issue in this debate. In one of the polemical article. More petri emphasize the defeat of the cosine about this debate of the Earth. So the Cassini's who were day, I will present them a bit, The, them in a bit more detail later. But they are the main astronomers in France at this, as the, as the, at this moment. And what the polemic book that we wrote to emphasize the defeat of the cosine was interesting in the sense that it like in the observatory to the opera. So I will just read that quote. I will read it in French and translators will be o. Yeah, I think the English version of it. If I have this quote, listen to the interests of astronomy where a very bad manage to barrier. Because teeny, more than one cosine, maybe through secret desire to solve the honor of his barons and buy as sentiment of self appreciation. He did everything to destroy the doubts. Are movements that confused observations necessary to measure the degrees. Maybe the Earth has a certain irregularities. It is surprising that MR. can see me wanted to sacrifice his art in this way in order to save his honor and that of his parents. It's a really a scandal. The disorder and the mystery. Or it is evident that if stars a jump from one place of the sky to the other, and if the Earth has irregularities, there is, and it would be ridiculous to be an astronomer, a sub two stars and the rigor. Those are issue in which one can make precise measurements about the shape of the earth. I will go into these details that will be a bit too long to discuss all of these important aspect which I can address in a paired question. In the question, the question period that you want. What I find most important, most interesting here, that I want to emphasize is the comparison that he makes at the end between the observatory and the opera. In that, in that comparision, E, of course, says that it will be demeaning to compare the observatory to the opera. One of the reason why does the meaning is that the price, the place for entertainment, and especially a place where you will find a female company. So this text by more pear tree has to be put in relation to another text that was published, not sorry, that was written. Cosine to the third at about the same time. Unfortunately, I don't know if the text was written before or after. Mopeds read his text. But this is not so important. The texts is by Cassidy. The third. It's a text about astronomy. And it's a text that doesn't address specifically the debate about the shape of the Earth. At the same time. My contention is that this tax is, however, completely overdetermined by this debate over the shape of the earth. It is a text that I have now edited and published in the book that you see here presented on the slide. It is a text that was never published before and is extremely interesting regarding the image of women in 18th century science. So this tx is, takes the, takes the form of a dialogue between an astronomer and a woman. And it is very original in certain respect, especially the fact that it is one of the rare texts of the eight observation, actual observation practice in the observatory. Our popularized, this is the entry point to dipolar polarization, as well as all of the mathematical practices, all the mathematical operations use to to make observations meaningful at that time. And what are the really interesting outcome is that it perhaps in fact, really lead to some increased women participation at the end. So what I'm talking here, basically, what I'm showing here is basically the summary of my expose a here today. I'm going to start first by discussing the author, then the context, then discussing a little bit the genre of this. This techs tried to show you some of the originality of this text. And then in conclusion, look at what happens much later around 770. So the author, third of a generation of Cassini's. He is the son of Jack Cassidy. I will show the next slide right away. Son of Zach cosine and a grand son of Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who was the first to come from Italy to Paris at the Paris Observatory. When the Paris Observatory was being built. He arrived in 1669. In Paris. The son of CSR Francois was also named John Dominic. And he also was an astronomer working at the Paris Observatory at least until the French Revolution in the 7900. And all of them were leaders at the French and the Paris Observatory. They all played an important role there. And they were all, they were all involve both in astronomy and in cartography. I will go back a little. Who says After the third, because he's my main, my main character here. Venice was a very young senior, was not even 20 years old. He started to work on is first geodetic mission with his father GOD C is a way of measuring precisely. And then the dimension of the Earth. Ten, to try to use both the star's absolute observation and as I will show you later, some sort of geographic geometric observation of the main components, the main, main objects on the surface of the earth to try to determine precisely distances on the Earth. One of the issue that what are the issues that came out from this work was that the Earth was probably not completely spherical. And, but the, the shade, the exact shape of the Earth was under debate. I will come back to that a bit later. For a city is therefore a very important participant to this debate about the shape of the earth, which will up your exact the at the time of his missions, geodetic mission in France in 732. In 744. A real big book about that. And you will then embark on a gigantic project which had no equivalent in the world at that time, will not have any equivalent until the 19th century. Trying to map out friends scale. This will, this will occupy a cosine, the cosine, even his son until 1793. Second City became, says our Francois cosine became the director of the observatory of Paris officially in 770 one, he was the first one to have this title. So let me a bit more precise about this debate on the figure of the earth. To authors. Triggered that debate in the early 17 30s in France. One was Voltaire, and the other one was more poetry which I already presented. More. Petri was a scientist and mathematician member of the French Academy of Science, I will tell, of course, was more like a philosopher. And he came back from England with a desire to also sparkle that, that debate. So two books in the 707, 730 is address this issue in more or less polemical way. Button emphasize the fact that the British saw the Earth like something that was flattened on both side. And in Paris had the shape of a watermelon as he sells. More petri presented similar arguments, but much more in style. But the shape was very complex. Idea about the shape of the Earth is simply to understand whether or not the Earth is flattened at the poles and therefore bigger at the equator. Or the R. R has the contrary, the reverse shape. Well, there are various arguments that, but let me just, let me just stay with them with this characterization. We have a lot of historical studies regarding this debate of the Earth and the wide cultural repercussions it had. I just want to point out a few of them, three of them to be and precise. One was written in French by Elizabeth. But then we replace this debate in a, in a very broad cultural contexts which is link for her to, with the emergence of intellectual debates in the public sphere. Both Mary Terrell, an American historian of science, and JB shank, also American also historian of science. Embedded that in an embedded the scientific debate in also a very wide cultural environments, very wide cultural scene. In those two book, The Man Who flatten the Earth about more Petri by Mary terror and the Newton wires by JB shank. Both of these, all of these books really TEI, study data get triggered in the, in the development of the Enlightenment, in philosophical enlightenment with the issue of the, the, the, the shape of the earth. And again, I'm forcing you to be a bit quick, so I hope you will allow me to move along. The debate about the shape of the Earth was perceived rightly. So as a direct attack, this dynasty of astronomers at the Paris Observatory, who were elite astronomers, part of a certain form of nobility. They had privilege access to the court. The court, and they were in charge of the instruments and the observations being done at the observatory. There were also people who produce a new form of cartographic vision of France and was very important in the control over the Theta of the cultural and knowledge of the territory, both of the, of the kingdom, as you can see here, an overt Empire because it was for establishing the, the, the places. Of, of whether with the location of ports, for example. But lessons let us focus on on cartography and geodesy and the role it played in the shape of the earth debate that starts early in the 17 sixties and 770 is when the observatory is not even completed. The beige on Peacock, who's a collaborator of cosine, starts to measure the, the, the, the meridian, the Paris meridian to the north. Who? First meridian towards that first. It was measured. That the work was completely completed by cosine are around 171683. And in the first decades of the 18th century, between 18, 7800 and 7018, more or less. Cassidy the second measure, the whole merely the hemorrhaging from Dunkirk in the north to the appearance in the South. So it's a very long line which is measured, not completely but measured through. Some, say, with the instrument. You see, if you look carefully at the map, you will see a lot of small triangles whose along this line, every angle of these triangles are measured precisely. And you use trigonometry to try to determine the length of disparity. And one of the conclusion that cosine drew from this measurement was that the Earth was elongated at the pole, so that he had a precise prediction about the shape of the earth. So you can see here in this, in this diagram what the operation looks like. So you have some, you will usually have a team. So it's not something that is done usually by two. So often more than two people with someone who has to look at the clock and someone who has to look through a spyglass. And this measurement is therefore a very important investment of time, skills and money by, both by the astronomers and indirectly by the state. In the first new geodetic missions. And in 730 334 cosine the third, the young one, went with his father and measured a new perpendicular in this case. And the the, the flattening at the, at the, at the pole. So the debate in, in 34, 35 became very important. With regard to this question. More petri use and Voltaire use mostly British results, especially results coming from the Newtonian science. In order to put into question some of the, what the conclusion Ru, drawn by the cosine that the Earth was elongated at the Paul. And rather I argued for the, for the contrary, that the Earth was flattened at the poles. Again, this debate is a very interesting and complicated debate has discussed by many historians and they involve many opposition. The opposition between newtonian, Cartesian in terms of what sort of science should be done. Different types of understanding of how the celestial motions are, are, are, are, are, are, are triggered for exams. Especially the fact that there's a debate whether or not the gravity is an attractive force, or rather the impulsion or the contact between forces that they create. This gravitational force. And the, the, the idea by conclusions were that they were huge eddies around the globe there. So some professional issues are working with, with theory. They have different sorts of mathematics. The astronomers use more traditional geometry, numerical computation, while the geometers, that's the way they are called. But they're usually, they're mostly using analysis and new, new forms of mathematics, the differential and integral calculus. And as you will see later, women also intervene in this debate. Both. We are real women and images of women, both scientists and non-scientists in thin way. But very complicated. I think it will be difficult to put opinions on one side or the other of this divide and this opposition. So to settle the debate and for other reasons. But, but really if to settle the debate, Academy of Sciences in Paris decides in 735 to send two expeditions to very far-flung places. One of them will be, will go to Peru, or more, more precisely, part of what is now Ecuador and part of what is now Peru. And the other expedition will go to Finland and Sweden. And it is believed that if the Earth is flattened at the pole or on the contrary, elongated, the difference between the measurements to the waiter and places we're closer to the pole will be big enough so that it can be precisely measured and then the result will be conclusive. Result of these expeditions will be conclusive. And more petri, as you can see here again on this picture, will be heading the expedition the north to Sweden and Finland. And you see here is, is dressed in traditional. Traditional. So the, the result, again, I will do, I will, I'll cut short the story and the result of these expeditions are clear. And the Cassini's are defeated. In that means that the earth has been shown very precisely to be flattened at the poles, at the poles and is already clear from more pear tree. Who comes back at on in kids the discord chat, the academy ions, saying that it is, especially, it is completely clear when you compare the, the, the measurement of cosine in France and the measurements that HE, they did close to the, closer to the pole, that the Earth has to be flattened. At the, at the pole. The Cassini's themselves. We'll confirm that measurement with new measures of the marriage in, in, in at least the early as the 17th, early earlier. In the public sphere. The defeat seems to be quite crushing. More petri wrote Newly that the Cassini's are now the laughing stock of the town. And de la bear, in these treatises of dynamics in 1743, we'll talk about Justinian, the Cartesian, as a sect that is now very weekend. It is a fact. Eight on the shape of the earth also is not only scientific, but it also takes place in front of public opinion. There are several diff, little booklets and tracks and pamphlets who are published about this, about the debate. Some of them sign, some of them anonymous. Some of them we know the author predict precisely even at the time. And some of them, it is difficult even today to know who the authors are in this, in this context. Again, I won't go into the detail over here, but I would just want to point out a few things. Is that in this debate in front of public opinion, women will be mentioned for the first time and will appear as important participant. Or the figure of the woman will appear as an, as an important element of the, of the debates in several text. Women I mentioned prominently is the anonymous tract. Probably published. In 1738 called an anecdote physics a Mahal. I'll come back to this text because it presents the dynamics, a very interesting giant, gender dynamics in the North. Second in, in, in, in 740 it to three texts in the form of discussions with women. One is the hostel I figure out, which is part of the book I published last year. And more petty wrote La Jolla. Cms is a book that is addressed to women. So one of the question we might ask is, why, why women intervene in this debate, in, in this form. As fiction? Of course, as a model. There's a very important model, very explicit model in, for all of those authors. It's a best seller of the early enlightenment. It is the output, yes, your plurality demand conversation on, on the plurality of worlds by fontanelle, who was published first in 1816, 86, but went through education up until the 17 forties. In this dialogue, this conversation fought. Nell argues that it is useful to have a woman as, as, as, as an interlocutor for the, for the philosopher who presents the way in which the world has to work because of several, several aspects and especially potent for the first of which is that having a woman as a, as an interlocutor in this dialogue forces him to simplify science. The science is presenting. So the women is a good means towards per polarization. And the second aspect is that the woman also forces him to adopt a more gallant form of, of, of texts and of tone. I think. And to make or agreeable, we can also see that it forces him push science into also some, some sort of public space. Women appeared also in the Newtonian war. They appear again symbolically or as form as literary fiction in a text was there was published in 1737. And ladies in which the philosopher Francesco karate tried to present philosophical Newton years, newtonian, Newtonian him to a wide public. And you can see here one of the frontispiece, one of the picture he published as a frontispiece. And this, this book where he represents himself in a discussion with a woman. And this woman has the likeness of a real woman. A woman he was in contact with, which is at the family. Also come companion of Voltaire had the time, but also real scientists who add the laboratory in her castle and see, hey, somebody who publish books like her institution on the physical 740 was involved in scientific controversies with members of the Academy of Science. She has a very important BC about the nature of fire in the 17 forties. And it will be very well be known after, later for her famous translation of Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. In fact, it will be the publication of translation of, of this book in, in any, in any language. So C is a true women participating to scientific debate at the time, and she's very close to B and an other. So at, in this conjuncture, the image of the woman both as somebody who was really involved in science, scientific discourse, and as a way to. Good science into the public sphere is very important. We can also find evidence that come, to, come back to this idea of great inventions of the woman astronomer was also invented in that conjuncture. As juncture in the early 1840s. There is a model, a model, an implicit model of that woman scientist, which is to me. And I'm, I'm just, you're mentioning a paper I wrote about her because she's a very interesting and, but also very elusive figure. But what I want to point out is that women were in Germany month Cathy's sister in Bolonia were well-known as women astronomer and, and Isabel lemme know in, in, in Paris. Defender just last year a very interesting dissertation on women scientists working in astronomy in, in the Enlightenment France. And she has very interesting findings about the way in which women were able to parties, astronomy, coffee. I was very interesting is the fact that it was also at that time that the image of the woman astronomer became part of a literary genre. And especially in, in one interesting review by La Chapelle, wrote in 1742 a review of a very big book on the history of astronomy. Wary ECE identified the women, women as fun as the specific category that he wanted to discuss. I want to, I want to point out that this takes place in a wider debate about the intellectual abilities of women. And we can just point out that it is, it could be the use of women are in certain, in certain, in certain aspect, in certain, at certain occasions. And for example, I'm just here. I just want you to, to, to, to mention, sorry the writing of Zambia now loop law who at the same time try to show that it is not serious to, to discuss, argue scientific argument with the, it has the level of the discussion. And one of the issues is exactly that, you know, whether or not this sort of argument as a place or not in scientific debate. And again, I'll go fast here if you allow me. What is very interesting again, also is that if you we can, we can enlarge our, we can look a bit beyond the, the argument just about the shape of the earth for it's for per se. And we can also realize that in fact, there is a tendency as well in certain polemical texts of the time to put the woman back to sexual role as, as the, the emphasis that is put on the relationship between immediate and Voltaire is very interesting. Be the whole story about the relationship between astronomers with more bacteria and more protein himself. With a few of few fin woman from Finland which are supposed to be called called the doctor. Did they say there? I have when I'm back to France, which is, which is very well, very commented in the, in, in the public sphere, show that it is not at all. Aside aspect of this, of this story. And again, we could, we could also discuss a little bit more the Peruvian expedition, where they are also very important. Issues with respect to the relationship between scientists tend to Peru and Persian women, as well as, as other women. And, and, and this is part of the, of the, of the picture. This whole network of images of women will have a very long term effect. If you look tree. The story. Very often the, the, the idea that women are our play a role in this debate. De-emphasize, I'm just quoting here from Louis Sebastian gave the writer from the early and late and late 18th, early 19th century who will discuss, well, we'll have this seed of science. Completely serious because women are involved in the debate. I might just read the quote and this will pay Newton that treble clef. We declared a vacuum, the cath lab, dip your thumb and psychomotor, Theodora, she may haunt the nose as we possibly can. Our backs on aesthetic do is login eclipse the lab. Allow present Tatian nouvelle OPIA. Again, the opera. Just to, i'll, I'll go fast now for 24 to reach my conclusion. The dialogue by cosine, which I published as years to me, seems to be shedding completely new light on this issue. So that dialogue was never published until, until last year. But it is a place where the image of the woman is, is very different. The image of the woman part of the Golan, because she dialogue is written in a direct way. The woman here is some, somebody who will read. She will not just get her information from the astronomer. She's very serious about her application to the science. She is somebody who's not afraid to observe at, not afraid to do mathematics. So those dialogue is completely different and very modern in some respects. So I wanted to, to show here one of the, the map of cosine just to, to see to, to, to, to help you see what was the result of his, of his research on the map of France. And I take advantage of this map to show you two villages to here and say, Why do I do that? Because is the SE need a third had a castle where you would go during his vacation sometimes. And Kobe said is a place where another Castile was. No noblemen were, we were staying and a noble woman, especially it was written, it was awesome staying there. And she was perhaps the first real woman in the story for cosine the third, because I found some evidence. They they were in correspondence. This woman and Cassidy the third have here we'll letter you have here a letter of cosine to this woman whose name was clerical opportunity. She, the book who engage in some astronomical observation at this, at this castle. The observations were not anything close to research observation, but it was they were very interesting in the way in which to me was a TCP. The observation of science. Not as professional astronomers, but has a practice that was worth pursuing. I just want to finish with a few conclusions that I want to emphasize here. First, that the image of women in the debate about the debate about the shape of the earth seems to be something that was really important to make clear a certain change of a with respect to the way in which science had to be divulged to the public. And it was, it is a key marker about the way in which you develop a scientific, scientific argument. We can see that it is linked to mutations in the ionization, the, of the Scientific practice, the fact that instruments are becoming more precise and more, more, more more costly. Mathematics is more, is changing the observatory and the expeditions are becoming, are, are, are, are, are becoming. The, are showing that science will be big, expensive, difficult to access. But at the same time of the intellectual capacity of the women. So in this juncture, the role of the woman was very important, too. Promote new forms of diffusion and new form of popularization of knowledge. As well as the relationship to, to, to, to, to, to, to fine tune the relationship between science and will be more and more professional and perhaps more and more masculine. And which is off, which has a specific role that has to be negotiation. Negotiation, negotiated in the, in these debates. So I will end up here. I hope I didn't go too much over time and I will Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. Thank you, David. That was a very interesting and historical perspective. But if you have questions, please enter them into the Q and a. And let me introduce our second panel is a nice Schapiro is a full-time research associate in the Center for Research and Gender Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She holds a master's in args and a PhD in political theory from the University of Essex. And completed a post-doc at the Hoover chair in economic and social ethics at the University of love in Belgium. Among, amongst our publications, we can find Ek, I see what that definite or so, gender equality anyway, gender. Let's set up a conceptual revision of the Me Too era, dignity and feminism. And the forthcoming article is neural theory of neoliberalism, bad for women. She is currently working on a book project on neoliberalism, family and subjectivities. Her current, recent research draws on the relationship between contemporary feminism, neoliberalism, and post feminism. Besides her intense expensive feminism research work, Dr. Schapiro currently lectures on Gender and Policy at the Faculty of social and political sciences. Of them num YOU science. Well, thank you. And thank you for this. I am going to be reading first in French, some initial remarks, and then I will get the rest of the presentation in English. I have some slides that I will share with you in a bit, and those slides are in Spanish. So as you can see, I'm trying to be very inclusive. Can think enough of our audience. So heads up. A parable, a trench media to sell them. Well, good afternoon. I'd like to welcome you all for the opportunity to have me here to talk about a subject I find fascinating. We have learned to keep a distance and to survive. And we do not know at the deepness of inequalities and how these inequalities between men and women have played an important role in knowledge and science. A role that is felt to be recognized as we approach a new era with vaccination, science becomes once again fundamentalists. And I would like to talk particularly about feminist science as the relationship between science. And it cannot be summarized in a 40 minutes. Therefore, I will try to summarize this. The role of women. The science and their main contributions to terminological knowledge. And now I will switch to immigration. I awake OR and wonder human nihilo, spirit of them is the last line of the Juana Ines de la training in this poem, populist in 1692, and consisting of 975 versus quantity, describes Humanity's quest for knowledge and passion or intellectual endeavors. Dream begins the pig in a beautiful yet obscure staring. Then proceeds into the dawn of day and finally arrives to the moment in which the light of day casts its underworld quantities awake to repurchase moment. To this boy shows humanity's journey into the creation and appropriation of knowledge of the Universe, knowledge of the world, and knowledge of human, humans ourselves. So metaphor and a luxury, quantums is a love letter to science and epistomology, to the meaning of knowledge and our capacity, discover and learn. Born in 1640. Next, psycho quantity was a self-taught child prodigy from a very early age, one, and I spent hours in the library learning Latin aspect. Now what two? As well as logic, music, literature, and philosophy. Just to mention a few subjects, she became one of the most prolific writers in Spanish Golden Age. Current legacy includes essays, place, letters, and of course poems. She was one of a kind. Indeed. Women at the time were not encouraged to pursue academic careers. So despite her insistence, quantity OF prevented from doing it, advances for advanced courses at university. She even suggested to dress up as men so she could be granted entrance to the university. Her mother said, No, reluctant to the idea of marriage. One of only two pads for women enrolled in a nunnery. She became ISR, sister and email when she had specific no noticed she was also allowed to pursue her academic interests. Although sometimes she will, she will be chastised and forbidden writing and reading. Let us focus briefly on this idea of punishment. Just Iceland, on the one hand kinda corner was targeted at the sort the parabola powder. A woman DR about things which is alien to the other. She was also Kim can self punishment. She had cut her hair short as she could not conceive of an a door, had a beautiful hat, which was hollow on the inside. This led to a difficult relation with the world. I want to suggest an unknown quantity. An expert suggests that this forms of punishment from the outside and the self-inflicted one are informed by specific notions of gender. That It's whereas outside punishment suggests a reminder to Juana and to all women in general that their place is in the kit Chen and are rare in children instead of writing books. Self punishment is also a withdrawal from dominant notions of beauty and womanhood. As though femininity and intellectual quality where mutually exclusive. Queerness, intellect, curiosity, and genius is present throughout all her works. For instance, in the eloquent and beautifully Great and requests that are sort of petals corner narrates her try and put him in at the money of the old faced during due to Farabundo suited to learn. One list style. Here is coin, or in today's poor mental terminology, says humble bragging. I'm in it with the most your respect. She has humbled when she says I have and I quote, I have never judged that I have the affluence of words and weight that the obligation of the right to require you to take a little bit clunky the status of Bettina open and honest about going abroad? I think yes. I quote again, I have never judge that I have the affluence, the boards and width with that the obligation on the right, that the obligation that the writer with buyers, end of quote. So she's saying to Dawson, thing of herself. As smart enough to become a writer. Yet, colon, it does not fall short in providing details of care. Impressive, intellectual biography for as a child. And I quote again, The desire to learn for us is stronger. And the desire to eat and of both quantity here tells that one of her guilty pleasures West case. But sometimes she would prevent herself from doing something for she would rather put heard of her face in a book. Hermes of coyness are humble, bragging works strategic because he's aware of where the role that women out to be. Women should be quiet and reserved. And quite importantly, women should not brag about their achievements or intellect. It is important to note that in the West asked what color there? There are several hints, two forms of disobedience. The act of writing itself is the best form of disobedience. And perhaps the more obvious one. But also there is a risk signification of space is historically attributed to women and thought of as less important or prestigious. Quantum states. And cooking is a source of scientific knowledge. That even when women are kept and philosophers, this space within the households shouldn't be taken for granted in the creation of knowledge. Later, feminists would add that it's important for the iteration of citizenship and subjectivity. Quadrangle glutes. And I quote, there's a beautiful quote, embarrass, thoughtful handbook. King would have great and even more. And the boat and perhaps better. Oh, yes, corner OF exceptional key. Well as a genius and mere mortals, current story is part of a wider blot where the notion of gender has central stage. In other words, quantity, biography is not circumstantial. Past and current restrictions on women and other subnets when subjects are common currency, the gender dynamics that don't see and treat them as epistemological subject. Alongside with other women in the history of science and humanities. Hi, Pat, Yeah, or tennis Arabella, or gender, male and female astronomers that David has just mentioned. Obstacles faced during her lifetime. Preparing to you that systematically considers women as capable of producing knowledge. So to view, call it massaging me, or patriarchy or sexism is embedded in our social beliefs and institutions are social beliefs and institutions produce and reproduce somewhat strict gender norms and stereotypes that in their most dangerous form. That is, a bubble. Biology is destiny. This is still rather common. Nowadays. We still hear arguments, arguments justifying subordination and injustice based on gender. That is based on whether you are a man or a woman. Object in such argument is not new. However, as we have seen, quantum, alongside an important number of scholars, how strongly, strongly questioned the status of women. And it's ontological systematization of what we can call feminist thought. Began in the 18th century Europe and not take long to expend. Authors like celiac models, for example, suggests that no other non-Western societies have their own enlightenment processes. And the European Enlightenment should not be seen as a mum, analytical, or particularly unique long story short, 18th and 19th century feminists and paved the way to question the place of women in society. Feminist political thought and folded to academic inquiry, but also political mobilizations in the streets of the world. 20th century Mexico in London as well. Women are organized and demanded rights. Political rights in particular, are to begin with, including the right to education. This historical fact meant access to scientific knowledge and more importantly, gave around the question, the very foundations of academia, universities, and knowledge itself. Now, I will share my screen in order to quickly point out something. In science. Impact on the formation of critical masses and the production of a biased moment that ignores women as well as father and me nice subjects. I will draw on some of the main characteristics of the image and feminist epistemology in 20, print it 21st centuries. So just give me a second. Okay, in there. And I wanted to focus on this notion of feminist homology, as I was saying, the story of Juana and as well as the story of number of women within the fields of science and humanities fields and are traditionally considered as masculine, has been questioned. And in particular, because these exclusion, this systematic exclusion of women from science forbids their participation in epistemic communities. And those epistemic communities are the site where knowledge is produced, legitimated, including knowledge about women themselves. We have heard many stories. Supposedly objective eyes of scientists, mostly men. They tend to produce IDS that considered subtexts without really considering them. And that is the case of women so much as being written about what women are by other actors that do not taking consideration their women's own point of view. So this idea of science is informed by the notion that what we consider what a particular given society can see. My space of epistemological produced, production, that it's space where knowledge take place. That could be, it could be minute would be research centers, to be universities, and also schools at different levels. And these has to do with an idea that has run out differences, but that has run out throughout history. That women are closer to biology, that women are closer to their bodies insofar as they demonstrate they give birth, they get pregnant. So this biological and stand in forums, Women's incapacity to become. Today's science finds its legacy in 19th century positives. Science, which has to do with this in Mato about rationality, the T and F functionality. So women are not seen either as Rashomon are functional. So all the qualities that we associate with femininity should be expelled from this nice spaces. Because masculinity is per se, rationale and functional. Hence, the location of space. Find that men have been historically conceived or within the domains of the domestic realm. And that also implies an anti-intellectual idea. We have seen that also in quantize worked for her. The only option not to become a housewife, wants to become a nun. That was the only place where she could have room for herself as a scientist, as being fair. And as I was saying, this is not the only case we have. That aesthetic is Zeus. Art that SLA Abhilash. He was also a nun. And even when she was one of the most important intellect, when mistakes are part time, as he was not recognized as such. And he also had to dedicate herself to not to be a nun because otherwise you wouldn't have been able to access knowledge. In fact, the story up there is ice even more interesting because she is the one who later on in the century were attributed to their cart and an advocate is known today as the father of modern philosophy. Whereas all his IDS came from, that is that what she is not recognized. As such. She was not even old philosopher. She had, because women could not be called philosophers back in the day. She was called a mystic. So pretty good writing this exclusion of women. It gives us this art about Larry dream portray of, of what to expect. Now, what we have here is that. Our niche or niche for a party. Third type of men. I will explain this in a little bit. And this is how universities are somehow built in the last five centuries. There was a moment in history and I think part of David's presentation also draw some bad women have always been present in different spheres of life. However, they have not been recognized as dark. And so it's not that women weren't legally spelled or even, for example, in the case of Mexico, there was not a legal prohibition for women to attend University. It was an implicit norm. There was never something in the law that would forbid them to enter getting our city, but there was a whole structure that would undermine any efforts. And those women who dare to pursue an education would face important obstacles in that sense. So what I'm going to here is to draw this idea of how universities, our historically based on an elitist notion in Venice itself, we're taking that us as university people must conduct. And I think that the entrance of women with the universities has more profound way. A change that dynamic, how ever steal the presence of women is problema within many academic environments because they are not fully consider epistemic subjects. Now, it's important to know that the entrance of women, which act into universities, which began in the early 20th century after big struggle and demands. Furthermore, this created a new stand for women within otherwise mosque spaces. The fact that women entered university not only provide them with a different standing socially, but also a permeated the creation of new fields of study in which women had a direct intervention. And here is where I want to talk about a feminist epistemology. The term feminist epistemology does not appear in academic literature until the late 1970s. With the advantage of our position today, we can see different elements and different works that we would consider at step towards the creation of feminist epistemology. Beginning, for example, with someone, they will wash them avenues. Plus six. Here we have a particular extend that tries to understand and outside the rigid notions of biologic biology. And Dick atomical thought tries to understand how and what culturally justifies the subordination of women. They will was, is philosophical treaties. However, she points out to the notion of poles toward there is something within our cultures that seems to be quite normalized and at same time visible, but it's so powerful that keeps locating women in a position absolute. From a particular law for waiting after bodies, as I was saying. So we have these instances of had different epistemological stand that questions traditional forms of epistemology. That question the very notion of objectivity, of neutrality and universalism that are cornerstones in science in questions this IDS because on a first glance, we see that the scientific world functions is full of white, cisgender, heterosexual, Christian, men. So this particular type of subject is the one that suggests that what they do is not related to gender. That has nothing to do with their own subjectivity. However, we can see that they are the Prima fatty subjects of a particular form of understanding the world that keeps justifying the mythological oppression of women. And old days has its roots in. In modernity. But also we know that the project of modernity is one that for poets, self-created system. So here is where feminists find a little gap to enter through and question the very foundations of modern Western science. And they understand that these notions of neutrality, objectivity, and universalism. Well so mydate into reproduction that rubber production of certain ideas that we have about who we are and what justice is. Now, I want to talk about how feminist epistemology that has, it's, I won't say boom in the 1970s though. I think it's that continuum of rigorous academic work. How does a feminist epistemology, and not only in English speak in academia, but also in Spanish speaking world and the French speaking world. They point out the thing consistencies of the head in Monaco model science. They understand that, as I was saying, science has been ignoring certain subjects for it because it's good, considers them non-human or not so close to humanity or irrational or attributes this up, this will pull that our feminized subjects, a condition of inferiority that prevents them from entering spaces of epistemic creation. Now, this scenario gives way to feminists to propose a different form of I'm addressing academic subject and also to insert themselves within academia. So we have here that on the one hand, some women scientists might not consider themselves feminists, however, they, they're very precedence is important in order to undermine this had to mommy view of it, EMEA and science. And on the other hand, we are, we have female scientists. We consider themselves feminists and they are actively, and it'll intellectually, but also politically, they're active. I am providing new tools for declaration of knowledge. So feminist epistemology has also with festooning patriarchy as a, has to do with questioning the colonial legacy. And it seeks to motivate infections debate and also controversies that seem to be embedded in, in scientific world. Also, it's important to recognize within feminist epistemology that women are not a tech. There's no one notion, one idea of women that we'll share. And they also focus on how plural, the notion, the umbrella concept of women is and the Ironman or inclusive scientific field. Now, it's important to note that feminist epistemology has certain goals that are important and that we are not there yet. It's very interesting thinking that some of the things Juana wrote in the late 17th century are still, still make echo in our lives as women in academia. And also for our students in the classrooms. One of the main goals within feminist epistemology has to do with humanizing or rehumanize and women. Within scientific disciplines, this idea that we are bad at math, or that women should not dedicate themselves to academic endeavors because they Children and marriage. All these things need to be the bandwidth and feminist epistemology sort of provides paths to do that or to somehow reconcile the division of labor. So it's not only on women will get the toll of time-varying and, and, and marriage. Also, it's very important for feminists. I'm epistemology to bring to the front the notion of inter-subjective experiences, the IDF's of the activity itself might be problematic for one expense because science is supposed to be neutral. However, what feminist epistemology hassle mailed is this notion that science has never been a drought. It has always been particular position informed by particular top texts and informed by their own standing in the world. So feminist epistemology tries to green on this bad rap that the notion of subjectivity has had historically. It's also important for feminist epistemology to reconstruct the construct or construct different forms of relationships between men and women. The first stance, since even the early days of feminists who wants to question why women are subordinated in regards to men. And we're still figuring it out. We're still trying to do particular actions and practices both at the individual and institutional levels in order to overcome this relationships up nomination that tend to be very common in the dynamic between men and women. Feminist epistemology also pain points at that. And another issue of force, this list is not exhaustive, but another issue that I find interesting in feminist epistemology has to do with validating the research made by women and about women. That it might not be the traditional research. But it has provided new elements, new tools, new methodological tools, in order to talk about specific issues that hegemonic traditional science with just simply ignore. Now finally, I want to give you a little example of feminist epistemology, epistemology and methods. This is the point of view theory. It refers to the point of view women. A little footnote here, I use the term women in a broad sense. To me, women are those individuals who embody notions of femininity, dominant notions of femininity regardless of biology. So that's why throughout this talk, I've been talking about women and feminized subtexts. So the point of view in theory takes into account this notion of soft activity is important to understand where we are syncing as individuals, as researchers, as people who make science or who work in the humanities. Because that informs a lot of what we do as scientific and moles. Once it's against per se and to the notions of rationality, it is against the notions of oppression, subordination that seemed to be the cornerstones of modern science. It doesn't want to do them completely. It wants to restore them and wants to work through them. And to show that the notion of subjectivity and the notion of inter-subjectivity are invaluable tools. In the sense. Through a theory like this, we can have a look at theoretical and practical knowledge that has to do with specific subjects and in their everyday life. Also, it allows us to get closer to specific realities and understand them in a more direct way by listening to the subjects involved. And also, it takes into account other dimensions of subordination that have to do with race, class, sexual orientation. So overall, us, as I said, I am not providing an exhaustive notion of feminist epistemology and just pinpointing somebody it's nine characteristics. In order to switch my solution. I would like to tell me too perfect to the seventh century. We know that when the West and intuitive and inquisitive and to lead time. She died in 1695, age 4046, during the typhus epidemic. Epidemics and pandemics have not would help humanity from progress. Including the ugly face of progress with weapons of mass destruction and the enhancement of inequalities. However, I want to finish this talk in a more optimistic note. Science matters, but it can never be complete if it excludes science match pairs. But it should also be a place for justice and self inquiry. And in order to achieve that, it meets all soft spot. Thank you. Thank you. That was an excellent overview of women in science. And and there are many that I hadn't noted, very interesting and important. And when you're talking about them, it's like, oh yeah, it's true. Like for example, you mention it is a statement to be a woman in science, for example, a feminist statement. And there is so many women out there working in the field and doing science and they do not consider themselves panelists, but they are. So I really like your presentation and your highlight. And if we can invite David back, maybe we can have a conversation between the three of us. So we can hear more about both of yours perspectives and in these topics. So both of your presentations were extremely engaging. I don't see that we have questions from the public, but if you have questions, the audience has questions. This is a great moment to to post them. In the meantime, I am ask you, well, we saw two very, very interesting presentations. One from a historical perspective in it was also shocking to see all the challenges that women face at the time and how they were seen. Like sometimes. There were these male scientists that even they didn't even interact with real women. If I understood correctly, they were just pretending to talk to women and watering down and trying to be, to make science more accessible. And then other times they were interacting with real women. And then the presentation for RNAs, which was more it started from, so why nobody was also were more bass in the current situation in and trends in and epistemology that we are facing right now. So let me ask both of you. So first, debate. Knowledge on what present that and how you think your work and interact. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the question. It is very interesting to me to have this sort of epistemology perspective in the sense that the, the way in which women are intervening in the debate for me is very complex. And one of the, one of the shoe, which I found very interesting is that the discussion of feminist epistomology always came back to the fact that women were assigned a specific role in the household. And to me, I'd like to challenge that a little bit because what I see in my essays I presented is that considering women is, is more about making the way in which we should talk about science in the public sphere. So it is true that science, that I'm sorry, that, that women in a certain sense are not considered as the natural, as naturally belonging to epistemic communities if you, if you want to. But the fact that you include women in the discussion is a sign that you want to go beyond these epistemic communities. And so that To me, it's very interesting to see that the presence of women in this, in the material presented is not necessarily about enclosure and about clothing science and closing the, restricting the, the, the place of women. It is on the contrary about opening, opening science to a wider public. So what are the issues that I wanted to, to, to, to raise this, this, this point is that the position of the OH, of women read either real or imagined, can be, it can be multiple, as I wanted to show. So it is part of a public, it is part of a public image of science. And at the same time, there is, there is. Another aspect which I mentioned very briefly in my talk is that when women are mentioned in, in, in, in their, in their, in their role, in the role as sexual companion to the, to the male scientists. They also represent some thing else again, which is very, the difference from household because then they become the representation of exoticism and the fact that when you do science in abroad and you, you meet other people, you meet different ways of doing stuff. And you meet different types of excitement that you can derive from bid on science and that it becomes another form of representation of that fabric type. And so what I'm, what I'm getting at is that two it's two, it is, it seems to me that it is a bit reductive to assign women to the household, overall time it over all period in overall situation. Because the role women can have very could be very much much more complex than that. Yeah. Can I ask the respondent to react also to the presentation? First, I would respond and then I will react to an excellent presentation, right, of it. I think that, that are of course, nuances that we have to engage with when we talk about the history of women. And that's why historical context matters. I do think that women have been in the public space throughout history. That has evident women have always been workin. We have not. We have this notion that the Western 1950's in the past century that women went out into the job market. However, it with a backed and probably, you know, this but our immediate work and history. If we go back, way, way back, we're good. We are always going to find women in different jobs doing different things within the public space. I think that that is the reality. And I really like that you mentioned this division between what is real and what is, imagine, you know, the social imaginary scenario subshell and the hand, which is gendered. That is very important because even went to reality does not respond to our legacy of nineteenth-century social imaginary in which women are part of the domestic sphere. We still being made are. And we said, in everyday life, we see, we see it when women scientists and I have say, women scientists in order to make these nuance. Because if I say scientists probably wouldn't, we need to specify, right? We have cases in which female scientists or female politicians are asked, how did you deal, how do you cope with your personal life? How do you deal with your children and how is no household? This up as two that are rarely asked to men because there is an implicit idea that men are very comfortable in public space, right? But things like child-bearing or house, what are feminized. And there are a particular type of subjects that has to do that is in charge of those chores. Now, I think that what feminist epistemology, epistemology and feminist philosophy and feminism in academia in general and in particular, historiography has been doing for the past, I don't know, 50 years is to unveil. These women have always been there in science. I think it's very telling that for us, your presentation gives us new information about this female astronomers. We supposed to already know that. Why are you familiar with those names and their legacy? And the same happens with one that won't always an exception. And he'll Mexico and misuse even in our, in our, in our fields and our nodes. And this is a very important figure, but she is still an exception of agar. And it has happened when many women in science, because names have been are just doing there to kill, sorry, or refill history. Because I'm very much agree with your stand that women have always been there. Probably it is problematic to think of them are smear the masticity. However, the force of the social imaginary is still there. And I think that's what we're struggling here with the, you know. Now I think that also your, your question and this challenge that the post is about how we shape science in general. It has to do. And here I love that in this is our moderator because she works on health. Madison and these areas that the plastics, though, it's most women who study Madison than men. Whereas a few years ago it was the other way around. But do you see that the presence of women shapes science and shapes the spaces. But that is not enough because we are still facing structural conditions that tend to withhold them. They tend to not be further in their careers. One example of this is that even when universities are quite feminized in the sense that there are more women are doing undergrad degrees. In the top scientific positions or academic positions, you have very, very limited number of women. It's, the ratio is like 70, 30. So you see that there's still a lot worse that we're shaping it. And I think also this kind of talk is a symptom. It's a symptom black. However, we are not there yet. And, and historiographical work and philosophical work will be the Import. And in order to see where we're heading, I don't believe I answered everything. Probably I wouldn't give them a full-on answered. Those aren't my thoughts. And I am going to react to maybe its present age and I really liked it. I more about these two mates. What we're seeing. I mean, do you pose the question there? What are the very max is here? What are the conditions of possibility that allow for certain women to be part of a scientific field that is traditionally excluding women. So I would like to hear more about, about cakes because I assume that it's not any kind of woman. It's a particular type of women that are able to enter. This display says, because they are already educated. So I wonder, do you have some, some thoughts? And, and before you answer that question, they need, I will add a question that we bought from from the people listening and it's on top of what a nice As in, I think it goes well. So what are the challenges and what's the future of women in science? Okay, Thank you. It's a big question. I'm not sure. I'm the I'm the most most well-positioned to to to to answer it. One of the issues I, I, I wanted to emphasize was the, exactly the condition of possibilities for, for women to be part of the scientific enterprise, or again, the image to be part of the scientific debate. But let's say that we can put image aside for a moment, although I think it's important. But the, the, the, the conditions of possibilities are both internal specific women specifically location-specific circumstances, but also in, and that's how the image is important. Also because of the specific condition of a time period than in a different socioeconomic condition. We don't mention class very much, but we also have 2 raised to a certain degree, which was mentioned, but a class is also very important. We have to understand that path. And it's even more difficult for lower-class women to be part of the, of the, of the, of the, of the scientific enterprise. So my emphasize, my idea of emphasizing the fact that women are always there is also to emphasize the fact that it's, it's, it is also a very much an issue of visibility. Sometimes it's very hard to, to find this information as, as well as by 76 of Florida of archaeology to do. And that's what Emily said. So the way in which women are able to enter science, I think, has been charted very well now by historians. And the fact is that obviously there are still a lot of issues, but the milestones have been I've been quite well identified. The fact that women are, were able to be, to receive an education obviously was very important because in the 18th century, it was not really clear whether actual abilities of women were the same as intellectual abilities of men. Though there were a lot of debates about that. And in fact, when you realize that when you give the same education to both sexes, you, you get similar results. It seems this, this seems to be good, clearly, clearly established by now the VIII. But, but, but you, you go, you need to go through the steps to be able to give the same it okay. Texas are. And then what is the future of women in science? I, I, I can see that more and more. We give a lot of attention to this issue. Whether or not some of the blocks that we still encounter will be surmounted or not. It's difficult to say whether or not, what are the nature of those block blocks. I don't think now we can attribute per se and we usually, we usually try to think that it's attributed to social conditions in which these things, these development are being pursued. So I think that there are several programs, several initiatives that try to, to, to remove those blockades more and more. And I think we have reason to be optimistic, although they're still forces that will, who will try to to slow amniotes? Closely denials. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, I want to hear Near East has to say on the future of women in science. And also there's one on it from, from the audience saying that. And I'll try to reflect what I understand from this question. But I think she's saying that women, we have to face all these barriers and really fight to, to succeed in science and to practice science. But on the other side, there, there's also these discourse maybe from these, the male scientists are the keepers of science. It, that make it sound like they're just giving us like they're just being lenience and opening these spaces. And they're like they're the facilitators of this process. And I think it would be great admiration. You can comment on these notion of the immense barriers that women have to face that author of them are invisible. And this notion of some people who are like, well now women can be like will allow women to participate in science and that's why they doing better. Okay? These are really interesting questions. I, I don't think I have an absolute answer for about what the future of women in science is. I guess in order to talk about that future, we need to consider our lattices and our precedent, and what our institutions aren't currently doing. And by institutions, I know only mean universities. I also mean governments. How they are encouraging young children to participate fully in science. In particular, when we have a very profound inequalities in the access to education. So I think that are, there are many studies that show how at certain points during childhood, women and girls are prevented from going further in their inquisitiveness. If they are good at math, they are sort of discouraged from pursuing certain paths because they are not considered feminine or because they are consider difficult. So that is a problem that ice gendered and that we have to make, you, have to make visible and you have to problematize in a very deep way. So we cannot have future women in science if we don't deal with what are legacies are and, and what we're doing to reproduce this sort of a system in which there aren't still kept behind. Now, I estimate that, you know, that you mentioned in this on the city of facilitators and the barriers that prevent women from going further within scientific fields. I think it's easy to fall into the trap that all men are horrible. And Ahmed want to keep this system of domination thing, but it's also unfair and untrue. And it doesn't allow us to mobilize that debate, right? I debate and justice and a debate on what we really mean by quality. I guess one of the key components of equality to question our privileges. And men have to question their privileges in order to pursue forms of equality. But also women ourselves do that all the time. And it has to do with the fact that I'm thinking of you and I MS. Wherever a privileged Right. We are Mexicans. We were able to have the opportunity to study and work abroad and to have higher education. And we are still the data Hobbes, we're still exceptions because we were lucky to have those things and it should not be a matter of luck. So also for women. In strategic decisions, it's important to question our privileges. And hence this notion of the point of view theory that I speak from a particular place. Having, having said that, I also think that the fact that we have at unum, for example, now we have the Center for Gender Studies of which I am so privileged to work at. And now we have a new post-war great program on Gender Studies. At the first one for num, which is historical depth at this university had all these things have happened because women have been very pushy about it. It was not easy. It was not a gift from a bunch of men. And I say a bunch of men because those are the ones who were holding positions of authority. So it's always the sobel term, Celtics who are struggling to get things done. So it's not surprising that the field of gender studies and feminist theory is mostly women or subaltern subtexts that are rationalized or that have specific social orientations that are not hegemonic. It's all these bunch of people trying to have a say, how about Award in the construction and the building up of institutions? I don't thing that people have facilitated that for us. I think it's a struggle. And I think it's a fight or flight signal one. And you know, it's a synth. Welcome to Civil War. But without horrible things. But it's, it's, it comes from, from the grassroots, right? It's never comes from the top. And that's the beauty and the exciting thing about social movements such as feminism. Yeah, I love that. It comes from the grassroots and the effort of women and male, male allies. And I think we are reaching the end of the presentation. So I thank you that IED and annuities for the amazing dialogue and for bringing up all these important issues. I thank the audience for being here and taking some time of the day. These series in on invention of the great inventions that changed the world will come back in September. So Kuhnian again, and as for the topic of women in science, we could be talking for months or years about that. So it's, it's very, very interesting and it's fantastic to have scholars like you to dealing with this topic. So thank you. Thank you to everyone. Thank you.Toward A Just Society: Global Perspectives
This series of conversations focused on international inequities and was centered on the United Nations' 10th Sustainable Development Goal: to reduce inequality within and among countries. Among the issues discussed were access to health care in Kenya and Mexico, migration and the urban/rural divide in China, and the challenges posed by resistance to state law and authority on religious grounds. The series was kicked off with a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson on "Race, Caste and Inequality" and a student-led discussion following the event.
Description of the video:
Good morning. We'll start in just a couple of minutes. Read and write at 930. Good morning. Welcome to toward a just society, global perspectives, global health inequalities, access to maternal child care and prenatal care. My name is Christiana Ochoa. I am the Academic Director for the IU Mexico gateway. I I'm here to welcome you to this second installment of a series organized by the in Indiana University Office of the Vice President for International Affairs on reducing inequalities in and among countries. These sessions are organized by the Indiana University Global Gateway staff. And this session in particular is organized by the IU Mexico global gateway. The gateway is, I'm the Academic Director and I want to really take a moment to thank the director, Molly fissure and the program coordinator who said again, who really were fundamentally important in organizing this session. Thank you very much. Molly said, Oh, are you has a number of global gateways. And if you are associated with Indiana University and you find a way that we can help connect you to the locations where we're organized. We will be very happy to do that. We have an office in Mexico and offices in India, China, an office in Bangkok that, that deals with the osteon region and also an office in Europe. Moving to the session, I really want to thank you very much for joining us. We're really, really excited to hold this side, this conversation. In 2015, the United Nations set out 17 sustainable development goals to be attained by 2030. As I mentioned, the semester or the Office of the Vice President for International Affairs through the IU Global Gateway network is focusing on the 10th of those goals, SDG 10, which focuses on reducing inequality within and among countries. Inequality is present when historical, social, and political factors result in divergent or discriminatory treatment and outcomes. Along lines related to sex, race, gender, physical abilities, as well as geographic, economic, and religious groupings. Underlying inequality is kind of course result in poor health outcomes. The expense and availability of health care can also itself have significant impacts on escalating or alleviating inequalities in our society. It's for this reason that the IU Mexico gateway is very excited to work with a terrific team of panelists assembled here today to discuss with each other and with you the importance of global health inequalities. This conversation will be deeply comparative. We've assembled a group of panelists from Kenya, Mexico, and Indiana to discuss approaches to mobilizing community health workers to promote maternal, neonatal and child health care as an effective strategy to reduce health inequalities. Jumping straight to the panel, It's my great pleasure to introduce to you Laura rule, who will moderate and facilitate the session. She will introduce the rest of the panelists to you. Laura rule is the executive field director of the acclaimed academic model providing access to health care, which is best, best known by its acronym empath, in which Indiana University has played a central role. Dr. Rule also cold leads and paths Population Health Initiative. She received her medical degrees from Indiana University and completed residencies at the University of Minnesota and the University of North Carolina, where she also earned a master's of public health. She spent four years in Kenya in the early years of her medical career and returned again in 2006, 17 to L direct Kenya, where she still lives in elder at she focuses on scaling population health initiatives. And perhaps population health work aims to support the ministry of health to improve access and quality of health care to its community through efforts that strengthen the health system. Interventions directed at improving social determinants of health such as poverty, lack of health insurance, and gender inequality in its communities. Dr. rule has also co-lead the initial phases and subsequent scale up of a mother baby group intervention in Western Kenya called traumas for change, about which you will hear more during this session because one of our panelists also works with China's for change. Dr. Rule, I'm going to have the session now to you. Enqueue Christiana. I am delighted to host and impressive panel of speakers who are passionate about improving health outcomes for women and children throughout the world. This webinar today we'll focus on improving access to quality health care for women and children. And how success has been achieved in Mexico, Indiana, and Kenya. As we work toward the sustainable development goal 10, reducing inequality within and among countries, we must ensure those populations who are the most vulnerable are not left behind. This is why we chose to focus specifically on maternal and infant health. High rates of maternal and infant mortality have a devastating impact for families and for countries. In addition to the personal loss created, a long range of effects cascade from each maternal and infant loss that prevent the world from achieving the SDGs. That push families and communities deeper into poverty. One of the first steps to improve maternal health is ensuring women are receiving health education that helped some prioritize their health needs, and ensures they will seek both preventive and curative care in time. Evidence shows us this is best done in the home, not in a facility. Is. It's done by using a cadre of health workers called the community health worker or CHW. Today we will discuss various delivery mechanisms that successfully utilize CHWs to improve maternal and infant health care. Discuss the challenges that exist in Mexico, Indiana, and Kenya with embracing the CHW model and hopefully gain inspiration from these health leaders. Incredible work. I'm thrilled to be able to introduce a panel of four experts who spend their days working to improve access to health care for women and children. Today, we will first hear from panelists from each of the three countries, Kenya, the US, and Mexico. Each speaker will help us understand their context and their work. We will then spend time listening to the discussion between our expert panel that is grounded in their experiences and work. Finally, we will take time to understand what questions our audience here today has for individuals within the panel. With that, if my colleagues could turn on their cameras. Is that make introductions. I'll first start with Mr. Justice. Ellen got it. Can marry. Mr. Gum areas, a Program Manager with the maternal and child health innovations team within the academic model providing access to healthcare or AMD pass. He has over 10 years of experience in maternal, newborn and child health research and care programs. Currently, he is leading the implementation of the traumas for change program in Western Kenya. A program that empowers women and health education and microfinance literacy in the community as a way of fighting health and gender inequities amongst the poor. He is qualified as a medical micro bullet biologists. In his training in public health from way University is from way University. He is also a champion of male involvement in reproductive health matters. He previously worked with Kenya Medical Research Institute, Camry, and the Global Health Network for Women, for the women and children consortium. Next, I'd like to take the opportunity to introduce Dr. Deborah, let's woman. She is a professor of medicine, the Director of Education for the Indiana University Center for Global Health, and the Associate Director of Health Services Research in the Regenstrief Institute. Her research interests focus on interprofessional education and practice, innovative health care systems, workforce development, and patient-centered behavioral change strategies. She focuses on the bilateral exchange of ideas to improve health and well-being of the medically underserved across the globe. Dr. Little Man leads the weak care Indiana program, a program focused on improving infant mortality rates in Indiana using a community health worker, using community health workers to implement community-based behavioral change interventions amongst high-risk women. Furthermore, she has expanded this work to focus on reduction of opioid use in pregnant and postpartum women with the weak care plus partnership. Additionally, she has expanded this work to care for geriatric populations. This work arose from her experience in Kenya where community health workers are widely deployed for improvement of Community Health. Welcome, Dr. Little. Then next we have Dr. Javier, months old, Ramirez. He received his surgeon training that the Guadalajara University. He's the general director of the health sector in that general direction of quality and health education. A member of the sub secretary of integration and development of the Health Secretary, the General Director of the National Institute of pairing an anthology, the General Secretary of the National Academy of Medicine in Mexico and a member of the Faculty of Medicine and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is a member of the board from the World Association perinatal medicine and executive president of the eighth worldwide Congress, a perinatal medicine. He was the president of the Mexican Academy of Pediatrics from 2017 to 2019. He is a researcher in health and medical sciences in the National Polytechnic Institute. He received the Miguel Otero of Clinical Research Award for his scientific trajectory as he has made several discoveries related to infectious diseases, inflammatory markers, and fetal bio programming. He has written numerous publications for his extensive work. Welcome, Dr. Ramirez. Finally, Dr. Vanessa, Italy's that's the SCADA among glia. Is the evaluation Director of Quality, which is attached to the General Director of quality in health. She received her training and quality of clinical attention at the, the Technological Institute of Monterrey and her Master's in Health Service Management at the University of Guadalajara. She has published several articles in different journals and, and government of Mexican forums and has participate in course is given by the health sector. So I welcome each of you. I'm very excited about the conversation that we're going to have. First, I'll ask Justice to say on camera so that we can hear about his work here in Kenya. Justice and I have no one another for close to ten years and have co-developed the Thomas for change program. Justice. Can you begin by sharing with us what maternal and newborn health outcomes at it and work is like in Kenya. And maybe perhaps share with us the life of an average woman in world, rural Western Kenya with several chat with children in a family farm. Just kinda give us a picture of what it's like in Western Kenya. So think Zoran, Thanks everyone, Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here to do this, to share my experience on how work is a kingdom. Under good school, maternal and child health. So good days, I thought a little country and then low-income country does. Most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are really struggling to meet the SDGs as you say. And we've tried as much as possible to try and meet our targets, that they can think of a bend and is that you set boundaries and be unlocked yet they're so based on. It has a maternal and child health indicators right now. So we are at 1,860,000 thousand as compared to the target that the Kenyan government and is the set of 147 thousand. That's maternal mortality rates, which is still high. So we also struggling in other areas, slave attending F4 and CPS of which we expect that to be high. But at the moment, we have the high fast and CDC data around 96 percent, but the wipe up an object and then all the buoyancy that are recommended for more. I'm actually 50%, which is still 0. So it means we still have some work to do. So when it comes to infant mortality, we are still at 39 by 100. I like bots, which is lower than they expected, is that we say to ourselves, which was that I wanted to buy a 1000 live births. So that just tells us that we still have a long way to go in terms of reaching the targets and just improving maternal and child health indicators. So in terms of how the healthcare system Watson, okay, Now, we've had challenges when it comes to strikes and that's not helping much kingdoms of making sure we reach our targets. In Western Kenya, for example, where we, where we have a lot of challenges. As laura, Michelle, you said that because most of the women, housewives to start with, they have a lot of work. They have to balance a lot of things that betting firewood, preparing a meal for the husband. And on top of that, most of most of them are not that educated. So they are limited. They are limited in terms of the education they have. And that's also a fact that when it comes to decision-making. So they are, most of them actually given the fact that they've been what they've been with their husbands to make most of the decisions when it comes to even their health. So that puts a woman in outward area web what, in a situation where they cannot make it, it's shown where they have a lot of work to do to get killed. That Shield plan, that is how difficult their life is. So what we're trying to do is to find ways in which we can try and empower this particular woman and went around to make sure that a buffoon, they can be able to actually make decisions. They can also be able to get some some of my knee to help them. I seek health care services. So basically life of a woman. Yet it's very, very hot. So basically that is what I would say generally more thinking. Thank you Justice. I'm going to just translate a bit for the audience is not everyone is in the maternal child health world. A and C means antenatal care. And the US, we use the word prenatal care. So it's the care you receive during your pregnancy leading up to delivery. It sounds like life for women in Western Kenya can feel quite isolating. And women face many challenges in their homes. So can you describe for me the traumas for change program and how this addresses the problems and challenges that women face in their daily lives. So probably thick and just give a brief on one determines switching programs. So as you've said, women out of the community need support based on the statement you say it. And, and, and the Germans switching program is a peer support model that tries to empower women in the community through provision of health education, social education, parenting skills, as well as giving them a platform for microfinance where they can see well-known, Basically they are investing in one another. So the program is putting away the superior longitudinal program. And, and we, and we call it cycles I0 is a cycle for us where in the first year of implementation of the program, women discuss issues around prenatal, as Laura said in Kenya, we call it antenatal care, prenatal care. So women discuss about postnatal care, we may discuss but exclusive breastfeeding, infant immunization and as well as participate in microfinance. So this, this model is not a teaching model, but a facility like a discussion where women discuss with one another about some of these topics facilitated by a trained CTP. So we train people actually facilitate the group. So and then in year two, you call it SQL too. In this particular phase, women discuss more things around I live. Parenting techniques they discuss around childhood immunizations are on the top. The top. Discuss about contraception and family planning and kind of start from there civic start to think about opening a bank account for that, that helps them. Then the idea of the cycle, which you could say, well, three, women are discuss more on positive parenting skills, so do we call it melisma? They also stacks of our process of applying for the audience are starting down business for sustained, sustainable purposes. So this female identified in the community back to our community worker dependent areas. So I'm a big identified in the community when they are pregnant in the fifth fast-paced that in February they're pregnant and their invited into our group by their community volunteer who they know from their own community. And then they visit to meet two times a month where they discuss this particular matters. And once they do that twice a month. So the decision starts by first having introductions, then discussing about one topic. For example, if they discuss about what this is, It's the clinic. They go out and discussing about that. Then after that we're going to discuss the topic. Assess your topic can be something like what? Like what is the importance of having a kitchen, getting you home. So those are some of the dusky then and that is that the municipal health special minutes for social extension. And then they go into microfinance where women save and learn from them. And the reason why we're doing this just to empower them so that in case they have to add back my density. Wednesday killed cats, self-care. They can get something from the book, the one actually get healthcare. So I think in brief that what I would say about how the channel works, I don't know if that answers your question. I think it says that it's an incredible glottal that really provides women at the pure support to help them improve their education around their pregnancy health and their children's health. But also helps them empower them to make these difficult decisions and have some financing to make those decisions. So it really does sound like an incredible program that that you've been able to scale up throughout Western Kenya. I know that we we base the chmod for change model on 990 for article written by its ADS and his colleagues called the m's, that that's describing the three delays model. The three delays model describes them any delays that women have that lead to maternal mortality. And so we, we call the first delay is the delay in making that decision to seek care. So a woman in her home deciding to say, oh, I need to see a health provider. The second delay is that delay that it takes it in reaching care. So why they're getting on a motorcycle, walking, getting in what we call Mei taught you, which is a public transport vein, to get to the health facility. And finally, that they're delay is the delay in receiving adequate care. So a woman arrives at a facility, she may sit and wait line, or they may not be able to find the gloves to deliver the baby or find other supplies needed for her care. And so there's a delay in her receiving the care when she gets there. And I know that we designed traumas with these in mind. Can you explain how Thomas has the dress, these delays? So solving, solving. So as you said clearly, so we're working out, our program is more than 3 delays. So if I may suddenly the first delay seeking care. So one of the things that are fundamental in terms of like giving a woman that I'd like to decide to seek care is first of all, do they know the importance of doing that? And that's why we try as much as possible throughout this discussion, having discussions that we might say it's important, food secure because that puts your health. So, and then as well, apart from that, we also try and B, we cannot seek care if you have no capacity to actually get transport, to actually go and seek care. So this particular model provide this particular indication of this particular room and talking to about the importance of psyche gas. So that will prompt the decision for this particular metric when actually seek care. In addition to that, when Steve talked about the first step. So we also have a microfinance modelling, as I talked about, that enables this particular woman had the power to actually go and seek care. It also gives a woman the power to make addition to say, this is something that I would want to because at the end of the day I know the advantages of when to seek care. When it comes to reaching gas or when Richard is determined by different factors as well. So number one is how far the facility is. Number 2 is do you have that much to actually go and seek health care services? That's why our module provides the tip of banking aspect where women can actually borrow and fro from the group to actually go and seek care. So the fabulae on getting appropriate care. We work with the Ministry of Health generally and we share a lot and say how to make sure that with this particular woman seek healthcare services. They actually appreciate because if they go and seek health care services and they're not treated well or they don't get appropriate care, it actually discourages them for gate. The next step to actually seek out there. So that's how weather works. Well, we have all these base, what the program working out this particularly to see how we can actually improve healthcare to this particular women. Thanks. And so I think anytime we think about empowering women, oftentimes in a paternalistic society week, we get concerned about what their partners, their male partners might think about this and it may create tensions within homes. And so can you tell me with the scale up of the traumas for change program, how had male partners responded and what have we done to respond to that reaction? So that's a good question. Jonathan, sort of festival. And when we started this particular one of the things in our mind was to have this particular women come, whoops, I'm at ten. And, and as when we correct men to actually accompany their partners to come for this particular meeting. But that didn't happen initially studied. So when I talk to, to, to, to, to men, most of the time they told me, you know, this kind of model, the groupings belonged women, not as we're not interested in doing that. And then we just talk to women to start that group. So when they started anger later when I actually went to the field to visit the groups and especially for women, I several times fallen men sitting side wanting to know what is happening. And after the meeting, I remember one of the sites. Men called me aside and said, Why are you best Men? Why, why did you like man? And I said, Why way of asking the question that said, you are only giving a platform a chance for women to have viscous and then have settings. And now we're seeing that a poet, why you again, it sounds like no, that was not the micelle in the beginning. I really wanted me to be part of the group, but you, as Matt said, you would not want to be part of it. And I told them I'm very ready. In fact, I would love that was that was our initial thinking to have you lag because it's at the end of the day, you need to know the districts so that you can support your BATNA. And that is how we started having. So at the moment we also have our mill group setting their men, asserting that one. And also the reason why we do not want them to join, because we also want to give men power in that when men make decisions, they make decisions on their own, the land of their own. And because Amanda studied, because I'm a Kenyan man, if you put men and women together in our village, what will happen is women and men will take all the positions, they will get money. So we also want women to empower themselves to lambdas list of leadership and meant to do that on the side. So men have, this program has been successful because men have actually seen the positive impact that program has had and the supporting them. And given the fact that men are the breadwinners, they are the ones that actually. Finance this without putting us to come and actually sit in groups. So at the moment, I would say men are really supporting that button mouse on that just did his own wife also want to be part of the egg? Just I know that that's a really important aspect of our traumas program is male involvement to you. And I think watching you grow over the ten years with three very strong women as your bosses has been fun as we hammered into U like this, awesome. We've got to empower the woman. But as you say, that the male partner is so important in achieving improvement in maternal and child health outcomes. Because in the end, even with the empowering of women, they have to have an equal relationship in their home and the male has to be able to engage in that in order to achieve these outcomes. Finally, before we move on to Dr. Little, making you just what's it what's in store for a traumas. So what are we going to see them in Mexico or in Indiana? So thin, so that is our dream. So we would love to do that because first of all, we've piloted it and then we validated it just to make sure that it has a positive impact on in terms of maternal child health and well-being of of, of women and men out in the community. We studied in one sub county we are now scaled to given the fact that we validated and now we're scaling it. So our next target would be to go beyond just Kenya. And while we're doing that is of the moment, is we're trying to expand it into the healthcare system agenda and just make it part of the healthcare system we can and we're watching different supported by I'll fund us HB and other people walking on a different button us to see how we can actually mentioned the system to make it even more sustainable than being that would love to expand this beyond that. So definitely that's something you're thinking about. Thank you Justice, and congratulations on all the success. I think. Next, I'd like to invite Dr. Deborah. Let's zoom in to turn on her camera. Dr. Little Man and I also go way back and she's been my mentor and teacher for well on, I'd say 15 years since I've been coming to Kenya, starting in 2002. And so the deck dualism and we're going to take this conversation to Indiana. And could you just help us understand what maternal and child health outcomes or like an Indiana. And if you had to choose just a random woman, the average woman with whom your program aims to reach what is life like for for that woman? Yeah, No, thank you, Laura. The program that we have in Indiana has been modeled in many ways off the lessons learned from Kenya. In particular, the community health worker model that Laura had mentioned earlier. Introduction. So we have the community health worker says that key members of our research and workforce team to serve women of childbearing age, but mainly pregnant and postpartum women in Central Indiana, which is one of the areas where we have our highest risk for infant mortality. And kind of at a higher level. To answer Laura's question, Indiana ranks 43rd out of 50 states, with one being the best and 50 being the worst in terms of their ranking for infant mortality. So it is a major concern and issue for our state. Now that we have such a high infant mortality rate, that is based on other important risk factors for infant mortality, we have a high rate of obesity, a high rate of a women's smoking through their pregnancy and postpartum food insecurity. We have lots of education still needed around the importance of breastfeeding and safe sleep. Add to that, that in terms of racial disparities and inequities, the statistics for our state, as well as the United States, show that African-American women have 2.5 to three times as high an infant mortality rate than our other races and ethnicities. So the population who were serving again, mainly in Central Indiana, are predominantly are African-American women. So it's kinda high level that. To answer your question, Laura, about the life and a day of one of our study participants. It depends a bit on the time with COVID, everything is turned on its head a bit. But these are very impoverished women. They are women who are, for the most part single mothers. On many of them have no high school degree or what we call a GED, a general education diploma, or equivalent to a high school degree. They are mainly an entry level positions that pay less than $15 an hour and many less than $10 an hour, barely enough to for subsistence. In the face of COVID, we've had many that are facing housing insecurity because of the eviction, inability to pay rent, inability to pay their heating bills. In our very, very cold winters here, transportation issues with the buses not always being available or fear writing in buses because of COVID and on and on. So the challenges are great. Visa and these are very typical challenges faced by our women in our care program. So that brings us to the we care program. Can you describe a bit about aids and the successes you pad with this program? Yeah. So again, it's really modeled after many of the programs. And Kenya focused on maternal child health and with the community health worker model to empower them by hiring, training, and supervising lay workers who are really often single moms who lived in the communities of the women they're serving. So they get the challenges they've lived, the challenges. They know what it's like to be a single mom. They know what it's like to be food insecure, et cetera, et cetera, diaper and secure you name it insecure. These are the community health workers who are then trained to provide services of support for women in the homes. Pre COVID right now we are doing mainly telephone service and a COVID safe drop-offs of any supplies that a woman might need based on a needs assessment that's conducted by our community health workers. And then have regular follow-ups with the women at their pre and postnatal visits. They may meet in a parking lot and do a safe drop-off with the pack and play a little safe portable crib that they may need so that their child has a safe place to sleep. And these are the ongoing services they connect the women to whatever they may need based on the individual personalized risk profile of a woman that's actually collected and documented in our database system by train community health workers. So it is a really women serving women around the needs that they completely understand and can resonate with. Thank you. Yeah. I think one thing that comes to my mind when I hear both you and Justice speak is that, you know, pregnancy in early motherhood is very isolating. And both of these models really bring support to women, either in a group setting or one-on-one woman to woman model. And I'm sure just that emotional support is a huge factor in in what is helpful to women. In difficult circumstances. It sounds like the model came from work in Kenya, and we call that model we usually an empath. We use the word reciprocal innovation. So I think that first step participants on the call have heard the term and path a couple of times and they might not know what it is. So since you've had such a long career with empath, would you mind providing a brief overview? All right, So and path has been a longstanding partnership between multiple North American institutions led by Indiana University in partnership with more university and elder at Kenya and the boy university teaching referral hospital in the service delivery system in Kenya. And it's born out of a desire to work together, learn together, and focus. With centered target being. I'm leading with care. This model has been now I think in its third decade of partnership. And it's organic. It comes from identifying what are the local needs? What are the local resources? How can we find new resources together in creative ways? Seek external funding, find the, the local talent, and grow the programs. It just in time and again in a very organic way. So it's just been a delight to be a part of this and to see how it's really evolved over 30 years in a way that meets the, the local needs by listening and learning and mutually sharing ideas across the continents, across the ocean. So really this reciprocal innovation ideas that no one has all the answers. In any one location. There are principles so we can all learn from and share and take back to our home institutions are home countries are home stays and apply them in ways that we build on the best of what's, what's being developed are modeled in one part of the world. And clearly we're doing that in Indiana with the weak care program and others other programs as well. I know that community health workers throughout low and middle-income countries have really been common for 30, 40 years now since Alma mater. What was the reception in Indiana when you began talking about community health workers, did you need to convince leaders, their governments, to embrace the model or was there an understanding of the importance of community health workers? Yeah, good question. Laura, I think on community health worker model has been in the United States with a very low penetrance. And I think it's been more often in the southern states where there's doulas, women who serve as a birth attendance and following women through their antenatal prenatal period and through the delivery. So that's in the southern states in Indiana, it there has had been some penetrants, but not a lot. And so I think it was a bit of a foreign idea. I do think that there was some resistance. I think it's always a little difficult to know exactly what's behind it all. I think some of it's just the uncertainty and the novelty. Some of it is the concern that you have somebody who is truly a lay worker and what are they doing in this medical or health related arena? If they don't have adequate training and supervision, those could be certainly concerns. I think there's concerns that we already have this covered wire is needed. We have excellent public health nurses, we have excellent community-based social workers. And it's not to take anyone's job away or to its to supplement and augment. And to again have that really deep rooted connection of somebody who, who, who knows me, knows my world, knows my connection. It can relate to me. When I'm afraid to talk to a nurse or I don't have transportation to get to a medical center. And this person is coming to my home and hangs out my community. So those are some of the things I think. The other thing is our reimbursement model and the United States, we are making progress. We work every day to get the data we need to show the effectiveness and efficacy of this work so that we can go to policymakers to move toward Medicaid reimbursement for the health care delivery provided by community health workers. And I don't think until that happens and it's starting. It is indeed starting, but it's kind of at a low level and certainly still insufficient in terms of totally covering the salary line of a community health worker full time. But until that happens, I think sustainability will be a challenge. Thanks. And one last question for you. You know, once you create a community health worker system, you create a service delivery platform that really can be embraced and built upon. And so I know much of your work has built upon this platform. Can you just explain a couple of directions you've taken it? Yeah. I think a dream would be working with others here in the state. We're imagining building a community health worker training and development institute where we will actually be able to provide the training. I identify the right people with the right skill sets and hiring, training them as those with core competencies that have been well-defined by others. And then specialty training as needed for, for example, for perinatal health workers or geriatrics focus query health workers or diabetes-related coming outwards. So that kind of specialty training could be provided by an institute. And then also the research OR, or an evaluation on for our state department of health or health departments who are always collecting data to provide back to whatever level of accountability they have at the state or federal level to show that their programs are effective. These community health workers are amazing. I mean, they are quite able to do that sort of data collection in a very careful way. And I think a training institute would, would be the kind of thing that would really help the community health worker model takeoff. And then I'm Ixx so excited about the possibility of learning from you injustice, about the trauma. Smile in terms of things that we aren't doing yet that I think have real potential for reciprocal innovation with the microeconomics and an economic empowerment of women in Indiana, which would look a lot different than it does in Kenya. But again, the principles are there and I think getting women to have decent paying jobs and a support system is really key to success. And bringing people, women and young families out of poverty. Thank you, Deb. Congratulations. You've done incredible work in Marion County and surrounding counties and I'm excited to see how it grows. So next, I'd like to welcome Dr. months yeah. Ramirez and Dr. B. Scam and we'll they would like to share a presentation about their work rather than an interview so they could go ahead and begin sharing their screen screen. I'd like to invite them to speak next. Thank you. Dr. Ramirez. I think you might be on mute. Thank you. Hi, everybody. Thank you, Laura. We really appreciate this opportunity to participate in a university program and we would like to share this. Passion. Department is a department is the NFL quality education. And we have an audio. Now these response, we will evaluate all the units from small bounce, natural none. So we would like to pay them enough to not be send your comments or questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Javier. I will cherish any presentation about the perspective qualitative got caret Mexico. Okay. Don't reproduce. First of all, we need to understand how important is to improve quality of how we put in the continuum of care for pregnancy to deliberate the immediate postnatal period and childhood continuing of carrying loads on surveys. Not only health facilities, it's important to focus on communities and they work for communities. The most common held demands for family planning just look especially that breastfeeding, vaccination for SP3 to Mantua are any, print it out care that Mexico have fundamental challenge. Our health systems in the term for quality of character empowerment. Because it's important to focus on primary care. What involves qualitative curve? This conceptual framework involves three key domains. Foundation of care on quality impacts. All models must address how people been a benefit for health care are requirements. This mobile involves several foundation to improve quality of care. In continuum of care on Mexican Health System show adverse similar outcomes. But our eyes look if we did, we did within agencies, we most French the role of quality in health systems. Quality of carrying the continuum occur most in bold, extra days to improve service delivery not only focus on instructor process or outcome, to adverse health outcomes in terms of health policy, in quality of care, who cares? Several component in instructor and process. We develop strategies to assure infrastructure. Human sources and supplies. In Mexico have more and mortality due to lack of quality Related for cardiovascular disease and your nav to let that and others amenable for mortality define a Z for an a collection of disease such as diabetes and appendices or potentially preventable given effect and timely healthcare I'm in and mortality by lack health care. All contracts have to be a political public politic to reduce the mortality, to prevent evil causes. The most important health challenge in Mexico in dental mcdr haven't got mexico have a tremendous burden of disease. First place in Madame and mortality 46 material debt for 100 related words. In this graphic and the mortality increase in LDL in the last five years. In this moment, specific 2020. Mexico fight several health challenges most of relation for quality of care. Because COVID, 19, that 19 cows country would we do any six maternal deaths. In this graphic? Show, all cow says for maternal death and the principles in 1990, it's copied positive 11 part of them, they actually query or a poly, a pool equalities is me. He could have indigenous population, a drug approved, the comfort principle in the sorts. Pregnancy ampere, a very curvy it in indigenous population only for COVID cases in, at, at December 2020 according to official data, where you part DDT tos and copy it. Nine cases in pregnancy or condition. That did 10 thousand wave positive for COVID, 19, 09. Only for a all confront 200 cases in coalition indigenous principle, you could thank, get rid of our hardcopy, the sort of Mexico in Baja, California and did not have any cases positive in Milgram put like population. During March. The fifth digits, a gradation versus word being focused on infrastructure evaluation, Crito, capacity, Safety, and Quality be in Kalkar to bring service to population without Social Security. Mexico has to start to Boleyn attention on quality of care system science. So any for degradation process has been conducted by the General Director of guo of care, care, quality, education. I pay attention conceits of their evaluation using validate tools on the medical facilities. And in 2019 degradation process what Lincoln Financial supplies. Currently, we're facing new challenges according to current public police for charges. Currently 90, around 10 thousand upgraded facility with terabytes focus on printmaker, represent around the percents to all healthcare facility disagree and service to the population with our social security. The next steps or processes of gradation have more focus on primary health care performance and integrate network for health salaries, patient safety and risk management in Hell card, focus continuing care and handcart delivery, and include get their perspective and non-discrimination. Kids helpful. Thank you very much for you to share this presentation and maybe have any questions about. Thank you, Vanessa. And by the end, could you just explain to us the weather? Mexico has a community health worker network that supports maternal and child health. Yes. We have primary instance system. This new government is trying to prove. We have many social workers, workers era units, and also we have the number of North America. This is one of the focus is government. However, we really don't have a very strong network. The commodity. And we are trying to bring forth his relationship to improve the participation of the community in the, in all the health services. Paley, rural audience. Yes, I have many many strategies to do. Refers to two, refers to the primary care principality, sort of Mexico in Chiapas and what haka Guerrero have many indigenous people and have increased, increased mortality rates in the song and have managed to work, to help workers and to help to work between communities. This government said, Javier, mentioned that the priority is the vulnerable population, indigenous immigrants, Elm, pregnancy, and all people that have and any vulnerable condition. And read this beginning a new model for Mexico for a to apply. All strategic focus on primary care and to construct and design a new network. It's integrate. But in this moment, don't exists. In all, in all states are really as French network its beginning. This, these focus for. Thank you. And just one more question before we go to the moderated discussion. Do most women in Mexico attend their all their antenatal visits or prenatal visits. And do they deliver in facilities or is home birth very common? And then could you just let us help us understand, is exclusive breastfeeding to six months very common, just so we can compare it to some of the other countries. We heard this song. Yes, they are. The months pregnancy, attendance in and depress the facility, nickel care facilities. But in any case, F like a jab bus or haka have community. It's a community model with work together. How can and people and women to paper in English, data or sister, mother, mother, mobile assistance. And to work together for the facilities to to follow the pregnancy. And in the cases where did have delivery has move it to the to the healthcare facilities like Morelos in this little little center of Mexico, have any problems that move the people, moved the woman's do instituted for a very natal OG, or others that follow the people that have a higher risk for preeclampsia. Eclampsia, eclampsia and the follow-up is very stretch for any kind of people that move to move to the woman, to the higher risk for attending. I would like to Laura, we have our great problem with pregnancies in adults is a real problem. Almost 30 percent of the pregnancies Mexico are under 20 years. Women. And we are focused on this. You know, the main solution to this. He said, if we are trying to get more training and education, audience recently, problem and also areas with high levels of over. Thank you so much. Next, I want to move on to a discussion amongst all the panelists. So if Deb and justice can turn their camera on and Vanessa and Javier go ahead and keep your camera on. You've heard I can keep asking questions all day long, but I think to start off, it will be interesting just to hear what each of you listen to one another. What questions did you have before we hear from the audience? So if a family has started, us also think you, my fellow panelists, those are interesting discussions on that and I loved them. So my question is, do we care program? I know your model is close to what we're doing when we combine, review from one another. One of the things that we have had a challenge in is what can you quintile they fall into? Yes. I know at me now I sit up in most of cases because the health system in Kenya is devolved in that different countries have different systems. So some count is actually given a step input that's coming to what he has done a lot. I'm kind of working with companies can cut kinds of tricky because in this particular county sub 0, the community volunteers are motivated when you're working in another county that morphed them. What do you get it? So I'm wondering how does what, because I know you've talked about community health workers. So Bourdieu kind of pay them. I just want to understand that that aspect of the program. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Justin. And it's a very important question and I have been in Kenya and they get really she occurred from paid or unpaid community health workers in them. I I I do think paying these individuals for their work is so important. I mean, day do such important work. And these are real jobs and these are real meaningful ways to impact health and health delivery. So these are the policy issues that each, each one of us faces within our own home, home institution at home country. So for me it is the ongoing challenge right now. Are community health workers are paid from grant money. So we have they are all paid. They are, for the most part all full time unless they choose to be. Otherwise they have health care coverage through their benefits. And they get mileage for driving to the homes. They get a, a mobile office supply to them, a laptop, a phone, and a hotspot so they can work wherever they're at. And they get a lot of support. So, you know, for many of these individuals, these are, are good jobs, desirable jobs, and ones that are for them are really life-changing and a career trajectory for them. When we lose community health workers, it's often because they're moving on to other higher level positions because of upward mobility, which is a wonderful thing on ultimately, I mentioned that I, I think for sustainability, just like you will work with the government of Kenya. We work with the State Department of Health and the federal government to move these jobs to jobs that will be covered by our national health insurance equivalent of Medicaid and Medicare. Medicaid. It's the one that covers women of childbearing age and services. So there is movement right now. Pay for fee for service if under a system where they have adequate supervision. And so we're making progress, but it's slow calorie. So so so thank you. Sorry if I'm allowed to just ask one source. So the DA via an Vanessa and so you need a description. One of the things you said is so we saw in Mexico, we also have formatted as well as soap. Lack of you have areas where you have a remote areas. So is there a kind of programs that provide kind of education in the community? Something like that in terms of just making sure that big because of the poverty levels. Sometimes it's also associated with probably a lot of education on something related. So do you have any programs that kinds of helps, like what we have in common depth, what guys, even the woman just programs that provide education out in the community. Yes. Thank you. Yes. We have, you know, Mexico account here. We credit to states and each state department that DC dependent from innovation. However, we are coordinated and we have many programs, painting. But, you know, we have all modes. If the town, some people in social services from different areas of medicine, patients, phonology, and some, some more. And we are responsible or general programs. And we have some facilities in these programs. As any. By Burma have many programs aim for omelets. We have these oxygenate the audience. I don't know if this is my answer. Of some good. Thank you. Yeah. Just something. Thanks. Thank you for for the distance. I just want to chime in quickly justice, you brought something to mind when you said motivated and you know, I always started like holding my head when I hear main Kenya, they often say the word motivated to mean money, to motivate with money. Whereas I think in North America off don't we? I mean, intrinsic motivation, the satisfaction you get from your job or from your work to motivate you to do a better job. And, you know, it was a real growing experience for me to understand that, you know, until you're paid for your work and your work is valued monetarily. You can't really begin to speak about intrinsic motivation because it's just not bear to the worker. And community health workers have gone through many stages over the last 30, 40 years, where ten years ago they all switched in many countries switched to community health volunteers and, and didn't pay them. And I think now we're getting to a point where we're realizing that we're driving inequity in the very workforce that we're trying to use to improve poverty. And we're causing community health workers to be more impoverished. And so I think Deb spoke to how they're really trying to create a very formal Workforce. Funding those workforces becomes really difficult. So I'm not sure if that brings any thoughts to the other panelists minds. I just want NOT. Yeah. So that's that's I know you and I have been good. I've gone to the soup and I'll just speak to some of the findings you've had because we have done a study generally to see something about incentivizing CHB is and what they find as motivating to them as related to PIE. So in most of the time when you took in Kenya about motivation, it took about monetary motivation. But something interesting is when we've had this program for a long time, for over 10 years now. And none of that actually quits. Despite the fact that our findings are what that display the program like the CHP program is actually making the poor because they, they, they are responsible because when they go to their community and they find a woman probably will want to deliver and they have no money so that they're forced to chip in and get something to take this particular woman with the facility. So that makes them a little bit back. When we had discussions with them and say, actually what motivates you. And they say probably because first of all, they have in that particular community. So when the doctors, they feel nice, they have that responsibility. Coming, that is what motivates them and I think as well do with the fact that they are involved in dumps of instead of getting money actually spend. I think that that is the challenge that I think we neglect. The governments need to start discussing and you know, with, with, with the government's right now a different context. For example, you can have, for example, Emery County, we're discussing around paying them 6 thousand shootings, anechoic developing them, 2006, that account, these are not paying them. Others are paying them today. We're not accurately in it, like it's not law. So it's very tricky, very tricky dynamic when it comes to community volunteers it again. So I think that it's just my input. This is changing the topic a little bit. I have a question for colleagues in Mexico here. We serve a, a large African-American population in the week your program. But we also have a fair number of of women of Hispanic or Latinx descent in our programs. And when we do our risk stratification for our Hispanic women. And we find many risk factors. What, what has been noted over and over in studies is that there's a, what they've, they've called and labeled in the literature as the Hispanic paradox. That even with the same risk factors, Hispanic women's birth outcomes seem to be better than a comparator groups. And, you know, I, I've been asked this question before and I have no explanation other than to theorize. And I always feel awkward about that not knowing, not personally being of Hispanic descent to, to truly understand and culturally. I do know that Hispanic women in our study tend to breastfeed more often. They tend to breastfeed exclusively more often and for longer. They are also less often smokers. And those are two extremely important factors. They do tend to have more diabetes. They may be, you know, I have as much obesity as our other population and have depression and anxiety and food insecurity and other things just like our our other risk factors for women. So I wondered if you could, if you would comment on that or not. But you say many virtual functions. And all the I will in families style supply chain every clean, any close to all the members of Amelie. I think this maybe is a good explanation for this is a redox. And typically these Mexican American, Mexican paradox, I don't know if I DO pockets. But we see this. Many orphans from, let's say, obesity. And these pregnancies, the majors. We are very worried about these scenes or pregnancy early pregnancies. But I think this is important social arenas. However, also we have identified a biological action microbiome. And, you know, Mexican women have lower colonization. I expect the purpose will be or the outcome of the pregnancy. And with our lower reasonable guess is really very interesting. I, I take now that allow this paradox. This is one of the big sell them for Mexico. And I am is educate family and involve all communities for it to include inter-quartile perspective. Because when people has any, you know, any, any risk, maybe to make decisions more easily. And in this moment, our work and communities is very short because his focus only and any estates, but it's, we need two refers to bulk commodities for all country, quality, pregnancy outcomes. And q for that. Another, I think a challenge maybe for all three of our countries is the birth spacing and birth control. Education around all of that. We are challenged by sometimes education, but also sometimes the expense of the longer acting birth control methods like the lark and, and implants and so forth. I wonder if anyone would like to speak to those challenges for your country. Yes. So probably if mom is generally in a vignette. So one of the problems we have here is a dump stuff. In terms of depth decision on on getting tops of child spacing. I'm one of the things that is interesting as well. In the discussion is probably that I've had with women in a mentoring in our groups. So one of the most important discussions they would want to talk about is actually from the planning and an n in the western, in the western area. So the more children you have that discipline sit at wealth. So that becomes, and given the fact that the man wants more children, is the decision-maker. So it makes it very, very tricky for a woman to say no. Because the moment you say nobody, no other Chinese dismantling look for another woman or like is it becomes a source of conflict in the family. So that is something that is these very unprofessional as well as very common in mostly rural area. So I think it's, it's not it's it's very common. It's very common, yes. So generally that's not just my comment, pretending that we share many of these challenges. Pregnancy bottle, we reject the null space of Mexico. With that recompile, Ireland's know about its original, Ireland's petri pupa. And I think we have many things. I'd like to state out to the schools in Mexico for horses. And they are trying also metrics. K1 parts. And we have many, many offices, will have very good training. However, if hospitals alone, by Moses's a refer the patient been since since. And we are fighting for this vehicle. We have more a bottom participation versus weakening can ensure policy. Many units are important, would be a very good approach to improve this. Unnecessary. Yes, they're worse off. Nurses is very important at this moment, right? To impulse to primary care, public policy. Public policy. At maybe the next jurors have any any, any challenges about any change about their most activate, Participate for nurses and collaborate with physician. And include. I remark, I should too. I, I need to include community's perspective because they're social graphic. An intercultural perspective is different in around Kong for the sewer is different to the, to the north. They'll many relationship for the mob we add on the people or women. That alone is different in part of Mexico and these inflows to to Kunduz, a good friend of perinatal care and good to make decision to move and all the other hospital facilities. In this moment, td, or 3% for all that Avery's are around 20, around 50 thousand, then reverse in Mexico, of course, in the house or in the community? No, no, in the facilities. I think this is a good focus on these people. That what what is the make decision of? Why do you say factor for don't move or don't access? Why does the access barriers to this woman S just quickly do octet that deprived occur. Vanessa, I think, Ed and juicy, I'm amazed at how that home births are 3% in Mexico. In Kenya, there are 30 to 50 percent, up to 70 present depending on the region. And so that's an amazing contrasts and I actually don't know the number in the US. So I think what I want to make sure we have time to answer the audience's questions and they've been writing them in the box. So please go ahead and write questions in the box if you have them and haven't yet. But I'm going to start with a question about how is perinatal mental health addressed? What are the rates of perinatal mental health in your different areas? And is there a significant funding towards addressing perinatal mental health? And so I think this question is really important. In this era because of COVID-19, the people I've never been more isolated. And, you know, I've done social media, I end and regular media you can just read article after article about what it's like to have a child during the pandemic and the lack of support women are getting during childbirth and early motherhood. And so if, if you all wouldn't mind sharing us kind of the mental health challenges in your areas and if funding is available to address those. So please. Thanks. We'll also probably if I can stop. I would say. So. We were kind of lucky because we work under the umbrella of population health. That mental health is part of the program. And our maternal, newborn and child health. And, and, and what we do is we do screening through phone calls given the fact that right now this COVID. So we have a number that we provide for women that, but split it up in our program that we can do screening. So we have, we, we are, we are watching on that. So that is very important, as I say, during COVID, I know there was an outcry in terms of suicides, in terms of domestic violence and all that, despite the fact that she stayed at home. People not working, so there's a lot of stress involved in that. So wha what involved in a lot of we continuously do screening through phone calls and also half on what the community of volunteers. So we had a session with community volunteers for, in terms of having a session, not really a training session to them, just to teach them how to do screening and also ask them to do referrals just there. If they realize that there's a woman that has a mental issue. At the same time, we had this message to say in case you feel like you want to talk to someone, we provide a line that this woman calls and then they have somewhat UGA talk to them to try and help. I think that is That's what I'll say. File. Sorry, Deborah Green. Thank you. There is a huge problem in Mexico is perfect because or down 50 percent of the women, a lot of pressure on Earth. We have not enough attention if however, there is a new program here. Also together with this problem in Mexico. And you know, now it's also Mexico. And this mental health problems as patients are our main focus for the collection of services. Also focus Feeding America, you Vanessa, if you want to comment about yes, this program beginning to response to COVID 19, 19 pandemic. This program is for all health workers and for families. Is that call center for the people or all people have all people be afraid about pandemic and maybe have many information about that or in their pursuit. Problem is the Agile is a relation in that house. Increase a lot or a little bit. Violins for house, because people have when we're working on layer, tied together with the child or where the husband and this line, it's fair need to identify any aspect for violence or four or six psychology is psychology disease and is how for always. And bcb looked at two, refers. The necessary work is attendant for hello. To mental health. Because always the health workers live, their life is very strong. It's very. Combating are very fight for emotional and to make decision and to take the scientific acceptable condition or decision and this line or this program PR need to BC bullseye, the necessity for her workers to attendant there tendon like and other human person than people that so far because people buy else suffers because don't stay with their families. And these Burnham ill-health is at the beginning. Maybe it's a challenge for mental health policies in Mexico. Let me just, we have developed several courses like how the attentional problems. I've only walkers, also, patience and listening. And we have we are making now, hey, therefore will conform. Or mental health services. We have in training hundreds people. He's young horses. So so workers in CPQ updates, you need to be prepared some visual problems. And we have a mouth opens up relation remote right now. And I would just add to what the colleagues have said that for the we care program, we do train our community health workers to screen for mainly anxiety and depression, but also more recently we train them and the use of SBIRT, which is the screening and brief intervention referral for treatment. So we have a documented that as many as 25 to 33 percent, maybe even more screen positive for depression and anxiety. Anxiety in particular is very high. That it, ie, it's not, they screen every so many months so that it isn't a once and you're done. You might have somebody who is doing fine and then they lose a job or they have their child and then they develop postpartum depression. So it is a roller coaster of mental health needs that have cross-sectional timeframes where there might be more or less likely to have these needs. And in our screening for substance use, illicit substances. And even in our earliest measures, we had 15% of our, we care women screening positive, even at the point of intake of use of illicit substances, which led us to create the program that was focused more on addiction recovery coaches, again, lay coaches for women with substance use disorder and opioid use disorder to prevent the birth of children with neonatal abstinence syndrome. And also helping mothers to get into a medication to treat, it says to treatment and or therapy. And the community health work again is the liaison. They can identify, screen and link. It's kind of this Flutter program that again I learned from Kenya is you find, you find Screen and link to treatment and the linkage to treatment. And it can be any thing that the women may be open to. A behavioral health counselor, a priest, psychiatrist, Recovery Center, you know, you name it. That the coach is really that go to to help them find something that's acceptable to them. Thank you to all four of you. I've tried to answer a couple of the questions in the chat as well. So of each of the panelists will just double check my answers to make sure I haven't given false information. And then for this final question, It's really pertaining to we know that exclusive breastfeeding is one of the lowest cost interventions that can be used to lower infant mortality and what services are available when breast milk isn't enough. So viper, a child under six months and I'm going to have you all answer those. It that in the chat. I can say for the US, there's a WIC program by in Mexico and and Kenya. My lady, I love you guys to share what kind of services are available for infants younger than six months who don't have adequate nutrition. And so unfortunately, that's all the time we have for questions at this point, but I'm sure the panelists are happy to share their contexts with anyone who might be interested in. So just get in touch with the IU Mexico Global Gateway program to connect to us. This has been an incredible hour and a half discussing really around the globe and Mexico, the US and Kenya on, you know, how we can improve the health of women and children in our countries and as global citizens. We often talk about improving access to care. But you, you know, you can get women to care. You can get them there and a timely manner unless the carriers of quality is not going to change health outcomes. And so I think it's always important if we're talking about making, reducing inequities and inequalities in maternal and child health. We need to be focusing on quality care. And for all populations and those vulnerable populations that each of our countries have, have, each of the panelists have described at the vulnerable populations of adolescents who are pregnant or the racial disparities that exist in all three countries with health outcomes for women and children. We, you know, in order to create a quality, you, we're not necessarily going to have an equal program for all those women because we need it to be equitable. So there are, these vulnerable populations need an added boost. They need extra help, and they need the best quality of care to be able to improve outcomes for these groups. And therefore c, reduced inequality worldwide. So, thank you all very much. Lastly, I want to just remind everyone that this series is a part of this talk is a part of a series and their upcoming events, including on Wednesday, March 31st, entitled from nine AM to ten AM Eastern time, precarious mobilities comparing immigrant experiences of migrants, migrants from China and the Philippines. And then the second upcoming talk is on April 7th. It's also from nine to 1030 Eastern time. I'm in is called a religion without the states can illiberal religion lead to justice. So we would love you all to join these upcoming webinars just to explore the sustainable development goals and further discuss global health. So thank you very much. Thank you to all the panelists as well. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you, Laura. Mm-hm.Democracy around the World Webinar Series
The four-part webinar series Democracy around the World, presented by IU’s Global Gateways as part of the 2020 Themester "Democracy", brought together experts from the Gateway regions to discuss modern democracy's most pressing issues.
Description of the video:
Well, good morning everyone and welcome to our webinar this morning, Democracy at Work. My name is Tim Hellwig and I'm the Academic Director of the IU Europe Gateway. And I also serve as the co-chair of Indiana University's Themester through the College of Arts and Sciences. And our topic this Themester is on Democracy. And of course, this is tied closely to the American presidential election. But one of the things we wanna do in this series, which is called 'Democracy around the World' is think about how democracy broadly construed, affects people's lives, affects the standing of human rights and civil liberties, or respect for minorities. And, and how political institutions work in the United States, but also in countries with different histories of political and economic development. And so I'm very excited to have with us today three individuals who our incorporate notions of democracy writ large into their work and their experiences. And we've had previous discussions about liberal democracy and the history of liberal democracy about the coronavirus. And our next one's going to be about social inequality. And this one really is about, about how we can think about democracy, not just in theory, but also in action as well. And so we have today Julian Quibell, in Quito, works the National Democratic Institute. Min Zin, who's in Rangun, and is a PhD candidate in Political Science. And Niki Drakos who is in Berlin and she is a project manager with Frauenkreise and, and also involved in political party politics in Berlin. And I'll give you larger introductions to each of them before we speak. They speak, but I also want to go a little bit over some logistics. We hope that people will participate and we can get some interactions with the audience and the participants in our webinar. And we welcome you to use the Q&A function in zoom for this feature, and I'll do my best to address the questions as they come up. And also, one other point is that this webinar will be recorded. So if you know, somebody who might be interested in this topic was, but was unable to join us. Then we'll, will make an announcement about how we can access that the webinar later on. Ok, well, great. I think I've covered all the sort of housekeeping issues. And so I'm I'm happy to get started. And I'm going to first introduce our first speaker presenter who is Julian Quibell. Julian is Resident Director of the National Democratic Institute. And I mentioned he's in Ecuador and he's served at NDI for many years. He was the institute's director, Nicaragua, as well as in Mexico. For a period. His work includes support for civil society and party strengthening, says citizen security, leadership, citizen participation, and election observation. He, his programs have emphasized political inclusion of marginalized groups, issue advocacy and strategic use of information technologies. And is working Latin America includes the facilitation or training processes, coalition to consensus building and Mexico, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Columbia, and Peru. And he has studied anthropology and foreign serve in government in Georgetown at Pomona. And I'm very happy to have him with me, with us. I worked for a while at IFIS, which does similar work to NDI. And so I'm very big fan of the organization. So Julian take it away. Things to him. And good morning everyone to really appreciate the invitation from Indiana University. Thanks to you and your team for setting this up. I want to make sure can you hear me alright? Alright. There were some issues with audio earlier. That's a little faint, but it's pretty good. Okay. I'll try to keep the microphone is close to my mouth as possible. And wanted to say it's really an honor to share the panel with men and Nikki. And I'm really looking forward to hearing your perspectives. And bottom line is I hope I can share some useful perspectives myself. For, for your audience are understand primarily young people thinking about their next steps professionally. And perhaps thinking about how to work their values in a context where these issues of democracy, human rights, social justice are, are really coming to the forefront in the United States. But certainly have been in the countries that I'm working in. The places where Nikki and men have, have worked in activism over the last decade. So Tim mentioned that I worked for NDI. I don't expect that many, if any of you have heard about the National Democratic Institute? I certainly hadn't when I was an undergrad and sort of thinking through my my next steps and what I wanted to do. But India is one of dozens of non-governmental organizations, NGOs working in what is referred to as international development, meaning that that sector includes everything from human, humanitarian organizations, environmental groups, groups working to promote education, global health initiatives, et cetera. But NDI specifically focus on the promotion of democratic processes and institutions, which can take many, many different forms depending on the country that we work in. India works with any or all of the actors and the democratic ecosystem from government agencies led as an elected officials to political parties themselves, civic organizations of all types, from human rights organizations, the democracy organizations to women's rights, LGBT rights, and others, even environmental groups looking too, too influenced through the democratic process, policy decisions and such. So with that, with that introduction, I was just going to share one of the questions that were posited as, as panelists was, you know, how, how have you incorporated your values and ideals with respect to democracy, human rights, civil liberties, freedom of expression, and so on into our vocation. So you know how it's going to just give a very brief background are sort of my journey to this type of work. I think I started from a place very similar to many of the folks in your audience grew up in the United States. Suburban kid, you know, with, with some deep sense of commitment to social justice. But that comes from a very particular place in my in my case, you know, my, my mother's family was, were victims of the Holocaust. The family was decimated, scattered. My grandparents ended up in Mexico having left Europe in the 19 forties. And actually my mom went to study at Berkeley and that's something I have in common with men. Suppose an end state in the United States met my father there. But yeah, that brought her perspective and my family's perspective brought some very deep values of social justice and human rights. Although I don't think I had as a child and he notion of what human rights really meant. But some early travel noticed rich cultural differences and common humanity admits stark economic disparities, particularly travelling in, in, in Latin America and in Asia. I had a vague notion of a desire to work in international development, promoting these values. And as mentioned, I studied anthropology, studied in the Dominican Republic for a semester, which many, many of your audience May have had an opportunity to do. And that really sort of started to focus my my interest in working internationally, which brought me to decision at an early age, I guess in my, in my twenties while still in undergrad to join the Peace Corps. And I came to Ecuador in fact. And so this, this current chapter of my professional life is sort of coming full circle because I lived here for almost three years and worked in civic participation projects. In fact, with young folks. So I was here from 1997 to 2 thousand. And for any of you who know anything about Ecuadorian sort of political, economic, social history will know that that was a moment of some pretty volatile times in hyperinflation. Bankaccount counts frozen massive, massive protests and repression. I didn't understand the larger dynamics that play. I was reading the newspapers about the IMF and the Washington Consensus. And and really all I saw was, was how decisions, political decisions were affecting the lives of, of neighbors, families, friends. Yeah, there was political violence, police brutality, states of emergency with curfews and utterly limits to basic freedoms in TEA grass in the streets. So I came out of that experience saying, you know, I really need to understand better what the dynamics at play are that have sort of created this situation. And I'd certainly like to be part of whatever in any way I could to, to, to see if we could, if I could add something to a world where, where these things were less common, where, where phot, basic liberties were respected, where the rule of law is respected, and where folks can live with, with dignity and in the context of social justice. So, so that's when I went off to, to study at Georgetown School of Foreign Service focused on political science government. And that brought me to NDI. And I'm sort of unique among the panelists in the sense that I sort of work for an organization that specifically is geared toward promoting sort of these, these values, but more importantly, practically promoting the processes and institutions and working with all these different groups that I mentioned earlier, political parties, civic activists, governments themselves. So the, that's where I've been for the last 18 years. That's brought given me amazing opportunities to work with folks like Nikki and men and support them. I don't consider myself an activist as such, but certainly hope to be playing a role in supporting pro-democracy movements and groups that have been historically marginalized from political process, et cetera. Based on the idea that, you know, that, that Homo sapiens, sapiens, again, putting on my, my anthropological hat, I've found many ways to organize themselves and it's my conviction and I think the institute's conviction that the best imperfect systems that, that we've discovered to, to mitigate conflict into to promote social justice, the rule of law, individual liberties, et cetera, is the democratic system. And there's no one model. And certainly the India does not promote the US model. And I think if we look at the current state of the US democracy, I think that's a good though. Make a good decision long time ago to decide that we were appealing to the higher values of democracy and processes that would promote those values. But certainly not looking at any one particular system as being the right system are the way to go. And I don't think anybody would, would, would expect us to promote an Electoral College, for example, in, in other, in other parts of the world. But certainly there are other institutions and other processes and other other ways of organizing within democratic system that we do share as best practices and lessons learned and things. So one of the other questions was whether DNA. We feel like our work has made the world a better place. I certainly hope so. Though, if at all, only indirectly through the activism and political participation of folks, that the institution I work for a supported folks. Imagine like men and like Nicki who are, who are really working sort of directly in the trenches on, on issues of women's rights, pro-democracy movements, et cetera. So you know, in, in my career in Mexico, Nicaragua, and other countries have worked with political parties and young leaders who've gone entrepreneurial. Major legislation, period, anti-corruption initiatives, transparency initiatives that I think contribute to, to that larger trajectory. Worked with persons with disabilities creating coalitions to help hold, hold the, the, the government's feet to the fire to make sure that they're implementing policies that ensure access for people with different disabilities, whether that's visual, physical, et cetera, to the democratic process. Worked with supporting the LGBT community to organize around strategic goals in a developing national allies campaigns with the intention of, of influencing public policy like discrimination laws and other things. And most recently, I've worked, had worked before moving to Ecuador very closely with the, the leading Nicaraguan activists from diverse social movements to develop strategic political objectives and form a pro-democracy national coalition. Bringing to bear on that process. Experiences from places like Serbia where we brought in the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action, who were former leaders of or youth movement that was very instrumental in bringing, re-establishing democracy in that country. Baby. At broad strokes, I try to bring a rights perspective to that work I do. There's a lot of international development that's sort of based on a charity perspective that, that looks to sort of think of it as sort of putting patches on problems that exist in. I'm really enthusiastic about working for India because it looks at sort of the broader picture and the broader institutional change that needs to happen in many places too, to ensure social justice. </