Abrahamic Programs for Academic Collaboration in the MENA Region

Abrahamic Traditions, Patriarchy & Sustainability
Monday, February 8, 2021  |  8:45 AM - 2:30 PM EST  |  Virtual

Are nature, the environment, sustainability, and ecology feminist issues? What is the link between different structures of patriarchy and the damage being done to planet earth? What solutions can activists working within the different Abrahamic religious and secular traditions bring from a feminist perspective to the pressing environmental and sustainability questions of our time? While eco-feminism has been a framework since Françoise d’Eaubonne coined the terms in 1974, its use has been limited within the full spectrum of the Abrahamic religions and more particularly the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region. This workshop aims to bring together perspectives from Abrahamic religious and community traditions on the relationships between gender roles, patriarchal social and political arrangements and environmental sustainability. Participants are invited to address any theme broadly related to how women movements within various Abrahamic traditions and institutions contribute new pathways for environmental sustainability, equity, and ecological balance through imagining new ways of organizing the family, society, and life on earth. Some questions to consider are as follows:

1. How women’s movements within different traditions contribute to environmental sustainability;
2. The challenges that eco-feminists and other groups face in their struggles for social and environmental justice;
3. Covid-19 and its effect on women and gender roles from an ecological perspective;
4. Experiences of women from different traditions working on projects related to economic, social, and/or
environmental sustainability;
5. Gender-based Violence and its relation to economic and environmental sustainability;
6. Policy and planning issues related to ecological justice, sustainability and women.

Organizers:
Nawal Ammar, Dean, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Rowan University
Hind Ahmed Zaki, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and Literatures, Cultures, and Languages,
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, University of Connecticut