The Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI) (Web)

Time: October 21-23, 2010
Venue: Toronto, Canada
Deadline: August 1, 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.

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

• Andrea Doucet, author of Do Men Mother: Fathering, Care & Domestic Responsibility
• 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
• Bonnie Fox, author of Becoming Parents, Creating Gender
• 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 August 1, 2010 to: info@motherhoodinitiative.org

One must be a member of Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI)
to present at this conference: http://www.motherhoodinitiative.org/May2010MIRCIMembership.pdf

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