Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI)

Time: October 21-24, 2010
Place: Toronto, Canada
Deadline: April 22, 2010

We welcome submissions from scholars, students, activists, and workers, artists, mothers and others who work or research in this area. Cross-cultural, historical and comparative work is encouraged. We encourage a variety of types of submissions including academic papers from all disciplines, workshops, creative submissions, performances, storytelling, visual arts and other alternative formats.

Topics can include (but are not limited to): the economics of maintaining sustainable family systems; mothering, appropriate technology and economics; mothering and microcredit; mothering and economic activism; mothering and economic activism through the arts; mothering with reduced resources; social and economic supports for mothering; mothering within the neoliberal context; motherwork and valuation of motherwork, mothering and the economics of unpaid labour; mothers-as-providers, mother-led cooperatives; the effects of privatization/commodification on women; mothering and the economics of raising children with disabilities; the economics of maternal mortality rates; the “selling” of mothering and the economics of consumerism; consumption and the marketing of mothering; the economics of reproductive technologies and surrogacy; structural adjustment policies and mothering; the financial implications for mothers of family law reforms and welfare state developments, the economic impacts of environmental degradation on mothering; quantifications of mothering/caregiving/parenting as a part of the base structure of the economic productivity of society; children as economic assets/burdens; the actual value of domestic/unpaid labour; motherhood and the gender pay gap, mothering and the feminization of poverty; mothering, occupational segregation and the wage gap; the impacts of economic globalization on mothering and kinship networks; the envisioning and articulation of more human-centered economic systems and policies to enhance mothering/caregiving practices; transformations of male breadwinner-female caretaker models; the economics of caregiving/parenting in nontraditional households; mothering and the “new home economics”; mothering, feminist economics and social justice; mothering and welfare policies; mothering and health care costs; the commodification of domestic labour; global and transnational motherhood, transnational families in the new global economy; the economics of the second shift; global care chains; mothering/caregiving/parenting and economic justice, motherwork in organisations; mothers’ economic transactions; mothers’ labour paid and unpaid; mothers in enterprise and mothers in alternative enterprise; mothers and non-monetary economic flows; mothers in the workplace; homeschooling mothers; mothers as consumers; mothers and Marxism; mothers and neo-liberalism; mothers in a capitalist economy; mothers in a diverse economy; mothers and food economies; mother’s milk and breastfeeding; the economic roles of mothers in undeveloped economies; the economic roles of mothers in non-Western cultures; mothering and economic subjectivity; mothers as alternative economic activists.

INVITED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

• Martha Albertson Fineman, author of The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency
• Eva Feder Kittay, author of Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency
• Nancy Folbre, author of The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values
• Bonnie Fox, author of Becoming Parents, Creating Gender
• Sally Miller, author of Edible Action: Food Activism and Alternative Economics
• Marilyn Waring, author of If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics

If you are interested in being considered as a presenter, please send a 250 word abstract  and a 50 word bio by April 22, 2010 to: info@motherhoodinstitute.org

One must be a member of Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI)  to present at this conference. Membership will begin May 1, 2010. Forms will be available on our website.

Motherhood Institute for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI)
140 Holland St. West, PO 13022
Bradford, ON, L3Z 2Y5
www.motherhoodinitiative.org
info@motherhoodinitiative.org