Major Plenary Sessions

Transgressing Sex Segregation: The Law, Social Science, and Social Policy

Friday, August 11, 12:30–2:15 PM

Organizer and Presider: Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Graduate Center, City University of New York

“Women’s Progress at the Bar and on the Bench”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice,
Supreme Court of the United States

“Social Research and Social Change: The Case of Gender Work”
Deborah Rhode, Stanford University

“Law’s Migration”
Judith Resnik, Yale University

This session will explore the work of law, lawyers, and the judiciary in changing conceptual and legal boundaries defining the rights of women, men, and social groups. These speakers have all played prominent public roles in the United States and internationally, using the findings of social science to effect social change.

Transgressing Distinctions of Gender and Race

Monday, August 14, 12:30–2:15 PM

Organizer and Presider: Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Graduate Center, City University of New York

“Breaking Out of Invisible Prisons”
Gloria Steinem, feminist activist and author

“Race and Political Divides”
Lawrence Bobo, Stanford University

Inequalities of race and gender are not only institutionalized in society but are deeply rooted in public and private consciousness. Attitudes toward people in these categories are deeply embedded in our social and political systems. The shifting nature of the collective response to these issues will be addressed by these speakers.