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Goalkeepers Event
PPRI DIRECTOR WELDON RECENTLY SERVED AS AN INVITED PANELIST AT GOALKEEPERS 2017
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Bill and Melinda Gates pose with Dr. Laurel Weldon and other Goalkeepers. Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
On September 20th and 21st, world leaders, scholars, Nobel Laureates, artists, and many more gathered in New York City for the first ever Goalkeepers event hosted by the Gates Foundation.
The focus of the event was to bring together great minds to share ideas on how to tackle some of the world’s greatest problems.
Speakers and panelists included former U.S. President Barack Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Nobel Peace Laureate and Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, philanthropists and hosts Bill and Melinda Gates, Queen Rania of Jordan, H. M. Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, and many more including PPRI Director and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Purdue Dr. Laurel Weldon.
Director Weldon (with Melinda Gates) speaking at Goalkeepers 2017.
PHOTO CREDITS: GETTY IMAGES
Director Weldon served on a panel entitled "Still I Rise: The Power of Women's Movements” moderated by Melinda Gates. The panel’s discussion included two-time Pulitizer Prize winner and foreign correspondent for "The New York Times" Nicholas Kristof and Nobel Peace Laureate and Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee. Their discussion focused on women’s movements and in particular, Director Weldon spoke about how women’s movements are defined and what is known about their impact on women and girls. Director Weldon was inspired by many of the speakers and their passion and dedication to tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges, but she was also reminded of how each of the Gates Foundation Global Goals is a wicked problem and how much expertise there is at Purdue that would be useful for achieving these goals, whether it's achieving sustainable communities, or quality education, life on land and life on water, climate action, or meaningful work or gender equality.
As part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the 2017-2018 research project, "Movements, Markets and Transnational Networks, " aims to deepen our understanding of women’s movement impact and women’s economic empowerment in the developing world and should assist development agencies, human rights groups, and other international funders in deciding how best to allocate resources to advance women’s economic rights.
~DR. LAUREL WELDON
Women’s movements significantly advance women’s human rights in every region of the world and across a wide variety of issues, including violence against women, family law, reproductive rights, and women’s legal status at work. There is evidence of women’s movement impact both in the Global North and the Global South. Why are these movements so important for change? Feminist movements- especially autonomous ones- place women’s rights issues on public agendas and articulate women’s distinctive perspectives; they resist rollbacks in women’s rights. Such movements also have indirect effects, catalyzing the development of international norms and the establishment of women’s policy machineries, strengthening the impact of movements in later years.
PPRI will investigate the relationship between women’s movements and economic empowerment worldwide, expanding the evidentiary base to allow a greater focus on the Global South, especially sub-Saharan Africa and the poorer parts of Asia. The project explores the role of feminist movements in sparking change in new policy areas such as market access, financial inclusion, and land rights.
MOVEMENTS, MARKETS AND TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS
~DR. LAUREL WELDON
