 Good morning, we're just giving some extra minutes for more people to to attend This is gonna be the the first workshop of a series of workshop The quality unit 6 to co-organize throughout the academic year in conjunction with the different departments of the university as well as the PhD school and the idea is basically To provide more information to provide role models on how to mainstream gender into research The gender dimension is actually one of the pillars of the European research area. It's an Integral part of the European Research Council and the funding schemes So it's very beneficial for everyone to Know at the early stages of the PhD or at any stage of your research Position to get to know how to mainstream gender Addressing the gender dimension into research has to do with taking into account how the different political social economic phenomenon health issues technologies effect or potentially affect differently men and women right and by including this Sensitive approach research becomes becomes more useful for society For our society, right It is my pleasure to you have the chance today to introduce you to professor and Phillips. She's professor of Professor at the Department of government at the London School of Economics and political science She's a very prestigious political theorist. She's made several contributions To to the study of democracy representation equality and and difference She has an extensive publication Record with book sites the politics of the human the politics of presence in gendering the democracy she's received several awards and and These very first workshop focus on on theory even if it's political theory is also Related to the fact that the integration of the gender dimension into research affects all phases of a research project so it also affects the ideas we have when we Start conceiving a research the research question the Hypothesis then it will have other consequences on on the methods and a knowledge transfers knowledge transference But since it also has to do with how we do use ideas to organize our research questions and conceptualize our Research, I think it's very appropriate to start with one session on on theory I said this very first session is sponsored by the department of political science at the UPF Maria Jose Gonzalez the coordinator of the PhD program sends her apologies. She was out of office today in a project meeting outside Barcelona, so she couldn't Make it So without further Delay I leave you with Dr. Anne Phillips. The floor is issues. It's very much done Sorry Mr. Dr. Phillips will talk for about 40 minutes and then we'll have an extra 40 minutes for discussion with questions comments Etc. Thank you. Yes. Thanks. So and and we're a good-sized group I hope to have good discussions. So I'll just start with some general things that I want to say and then Then we can talk not just about those but about a range of other things that you might want to talk about so I wanted to start by Saying something about recent trends in political science and political theory And I'm speaking. I mean I'm I'm as as Tanya says I'm at the government department at the London School of Economics I'm speaking very much from my experience within my department more broadly within UK universities and perhaps a bit more broadly within English language speaking Political science But these seem to me to be kind of major trends in current political science which pose certain problems Additional problems. They've always been problems, but some new problems for thinking about gender mainstreaming There's a move more towards quantitative research. Well, that in that in itself is not particularly a problem except that in terms of gender specialisms a lot of gender researchers Have expertise in qualitative research either as well as or instead of quantitative research So that's one problem. There's a move towards more Formal political theory for example the use of game theory, which is a kind of way of understanding what's going on in politics in which You don't actually study politics But you you study in a sense you engage in more Trying to understand basic principles that might apply in any conflict or you know decision-making situation a move towards the use of experiments To test out claims about the ways people operate in political situations. So a move more towards a kind of sort of using Aspects of behavioral psychology almost in order to try and make sense of political developments and changes again much less grounded in Knowledge of what's actually going on in any political situation I think some of the kind of the consequences of this It seems to me that There's less focus on what I would call the bigger picture so that a lot of people doing research in Political science nowadays are They're not asking really big questions about why you get You know certain kinds of trends or developments within the nature of politics There's much more of a kind of preoccupation with adequate testing of hypotheses So if you know when you get you know or you may already be at this stage of sort of sending journals articles to journals In a sense having a very precise hypothesis a very clear way of testing it These are the things that so many of the journals now look out for which is great in terms of rigor But it does mean it favors smaller and less ambitious Hypotheses so I think there were all these kind of general trends going on in political science at the moment Some of which pose additional problems for the issue of gender mainstreaming now political theory Which is my field is to some extent insulated from these trends But there's a kind of parallel shift and again I'm speaking very much from my knowledge of the Anglo-American literature away from more broadly defined political theory Towards a more narrowly understood political philosophy often closer to moral philosophy so that so that it for example kind of questions about How one might Questions about how one might kind of think about a kind of major political dilemma Being reframed as a kind of extension of how as an individual you might address a particular moral dilemma, which is then generalized up to the political level When political theory becomes more political philosophy of that kind it becomes more focused on defining concepts And ensuring rigor of argument ensuring rigor of argument absolutely is a good thing defining concepts Not always because in my experience a lot of what one is trying to do in political theory is to work out You take something like equality democracy representation You're trying to kind of work out the ways in which these concepts work and operate and often the kind of the tensions and The kind of contradictions embedded within them So if you start in advance by saying when I say when I say democracy, I mean X Y Z It doesn't always help the progress of your argument, but anyway But the thing that I particularly want to focus on today is that the way in which what happens in this is increasingly an abstraction for purposes of rigor From the kind of complexities of actual politics, which comes to be known in the political theory world as ideal theory And in the process very often an abstraction from gender or race I mean, I think if you look at classical political theorists, you know going back, you know kind of Plato onwards Actually talked rather more about gender Than became the case in later political theory. There's been a kind of movement towards greater abstraction So just to give you some kind of examples of the So John Rawls whose book a theory of justice in 1971 was a really kind of major major Influence and shaping a great deal of political theorizing from the 1970s onwards and His project was to Illuminate the nature of justice, right? So he was doing a big project. This isn't someone who's applied who's you know You know addressing some very very small set of issues But in order to clarify the nature of justice he said well, let's assume that people are generally law-abiding Let's assume Reasonably favorable social conditions and within those let's try and work out the nature of justice And as both feminists and critical race scholars Subsequently argued if you do that you're assuming the way the history of misogyny You're assuming away the history of racism You're assuming away colonialism and then you're asking us about the nature of justice shouldn't we start with injustice or Inequality in order to try to get a better picture There's an example by a former colleague of mine, Cecile Farber who wrote a really interesting book called whose body is it anyway, which is Addressing among other things the question Is there anything wrong with having markets commercial markets in human organs? You know like a kind of a trade in in spare kidneys and so on human kidneys Now as she points out many of the kind of the arguments that people use Against a commercial market in human in human organs depends on what she says our contingencies depends on if you know if you look at the kind of the illicit trade in human organs There's a huge amount of deceit people are kind of drafted into they're persuaded to Undergo the operation to sell an organ without being given real information about the risks of the operation Without being given any kind of aftercare Cheated in terms of the kind of the money that they're given Many people dying from illegal operations And of course what drives somebody to offer a kidney for sale is almost always it's it's economic desperation Why else would you do it and so? So she says well All of these things are true But if you want to really try and work out what's wrong if anything with a market in human organs You have to abstract from this so let's imagine a world in which Nobody is driven by economic desperation a world in which there is kind of you know a sort of everyone has access to what they need for a minimally flourishing life and a world in which the market in kidneys is legally regulated and In that context, would you still be opposed to a market in human kidneys and you can see what she's doing there You can see the point of doing that kind of abstraction, right? But one of the problems with it is that it kind of leads political theory in a direction in which we don't actually engage with the actual inequalities and injustices of our world So in terms of so what I'm saying there is basically in A lot of contemporary political theory a lot of political theorists will argue that it's precisely through Through abstracting from what they might describe as the contingencies or the differences of gender race class That we arrive at an understanding of what justice equality or freedom requires and I think one of the things that's very characteristic of Feminist work within political theory people who are trying to kind of ensure that gender is taken very seriously within the development of political theory Very typically the argument is that these abstractions Obscure or solidify existing inequalities So basically if you just add in your gender later And I'm sure this is going to be a theme throughout these workshops because the kind of you know It's a problem that comes up in gender mainstreaming in any area of Of research if you add in the gender later Rather than trying to find a way of getting it in there at the beginning You're adding it to theories and concepts that have already Legitimate it not necessarily intentionally, but have already legitimated gendered understandings of key concepts within a political theory man human individual citizen They've already got gender kind of written into them in a problematic way. So just adding it in afterwards. So a quote from An essay by Susan Moller-Oakin 40 acres in a mule in which she was criticizing some of John Rawls work Which I think captures some of this quite well liberal political theory is deceptively individualist It claims to have as its subjects human individuals who can exist independently of each other So it starts with the individual and then it kind of develops out what you know what kind of Politics we should think of they're never helpless infants. They do not suffer from major or less than passing disabilities Mental or physical they do not seem to pass into any kind of dependency on others All of this fictional portrayal of persons as autonomous self-sustaining and even self-created beings serves to disguise a giant ambiguity While liberal theorists claim to be writing about individuals Scratch the surface and you will find they are almost all actually talking about male heads of household And then there's a very similar argument that you find in the literature as regards race. So this is from a American theorist Charles Mills who's who's written Very very parallel work about how how you address the kind of the the way in which the Refusal to engage with race or the history of colonialism or the history of slavery has kind of has distorted the development of Political theory. So this is from an article of his on decolonizing Western political philosophy And he says the abstraction. He's particularly a political. He's very clearly a philosopher, right? That's political philosophy the abstraction from the empirical which is the defining feature of philosophy Is generally taken to justify the ignoring of such real-life Deviations as racism or colonialism as as is implied in what I said about John Rawls's work Because the important thing is the concepts involved The aspiration to the timeless and universal then rationalizes an Idealized form of abstraction which through its obfuscation of the distinctive political experience of people of color in modernity Makes the representative political individual European whiteness as racelessness becomes abstractness becomes philosophical representativeness and and this is a very Parallel kind of argument to the one that you get among people trying to explore the issues about gender in political theory the representative individual You know who is presented as gender neutral the individual the human the citizen You know the distinctive political experience of women Is obfuscated and this representative political individual Becomes male by which I by which when when I say male. I'm not talking about real men But but a kind of a way of thinking about what it is to be male or a way of thinking about masculinity That kind of gets into our understanding of the world. It's not necessarily corresponding to the actual practices of men so This is this is the problem that seems to me to be Absolutely the central problem that has to be tackled in mainstreaming gender in political theory Particularly in the kind of liberal theory that's very much dominant in the kind of the fields that I've that I've worked in What what you've what you're faced with again and again is this very abstract Non-gendered individual so the when people talk about the individual The individual is imagined as gender neutral, but turns out to carry characteristics that are coded as masculine or That assumes Background structures that are themselves gendered so in the literature there There's a whole range of different versions of this not everyone has the same kind of argument But you know it might include so some people argue There's a tendency within political theory to think of the individual as driven by self-interest And then you get an argument which says self-interest is a kind of is it's an extrapolation From a way of living which is which is kind of like ignores which in a sense It assumes a world in which somebody else is taking care of the others, right? I mean in order to be free to be self-interested You have to have somebody else in the society who is taking care of the others So it's assuming a kind of gendered division of work and in that sense the self-interest is very much It's a kind of coded as a masculine masculine quality Self-ownership. There's a similar kind of argument that you find in the literature There's an idea that when political theorists talk as if as if we own ourselves Which is something that becomes very important when you're addressing questions about Questions about prostitution questions about commercial surrogacy questions about the sale of human organs The idea that you might think of yourself as owning yourself again There's there's quite a lot of argument in the literature that this is this Talks about the individual in ways that writes into the characteristics of that individual things That are really only possible if you think of a kind of archetypical masculine experience one of the Springing up like mushrooms is a phrase from Thomas Hobbes and It's been picked up by a lot of Feminist political theorists about the way in which political theory Imagines people just coming out of nowhere, right kind of completely abstracts from the fact that we are all we're born into Into a familial context in which we are cared for by somebody or other in which we are dependent for long periods of our of our Existence on the care of others And this idea that somehow the individual just springs up like a mushroom Without any any any people around the individual creating us who we are or Put that another way the idea that you can think about that you can think about what kind of Employment practices do we want or what is what is equality in the world of work? in which you ignore the fact that Historically the assumption was that men went out to work not all not all through history Through a period of history that men went out to work and had a wife at home Taking care of household children everything else to simply generalize that and make it equally Available to women just ignores the fact that the initial workers have these wives at home So, you know unless you have a wife what and so on so forth now So there's a lot of arguments in the literature about which are attacking the way in which the individual which seems to be gender-neutral Actually carries with it him all kinds of assumptions which reflect a very gender-structured society So what's the solution to this right? Now this is where a lot of feminists then then disagree at this point because a lot of feminists quite a lot of feminists will say You know, let's identify the ways in which these kind of very heavily gendered characteristics have crept into Our understanding of the individual or the citizen or the human and let's get those out and Let's strive to a genuinely gender-neutral conception and that's one possible strategy I think one one of the problems it seems to me about that is that I Don't know if this is a kind of psychological point or what but it seems to me that I Mean is it possible? Given that we do live in gendered worlds. Is it possible for us to actually Imagine an individual who is without gender. Is it possible for us to imagine a human being who is without gender? I mean, it's an extraordinary act of imagination. Maybe there will be some time in the future When we can indeed do this, but it seems to me that it's the part of the problem is that given that we do live in Societies that remain very much structured by gender both in the way the institutions are organized and in the ways We've kind of come to think about ourselves Actually, you use a notion like individual human gender and some gendered characteristics Rush in and fill the vacuum So I think I think part of the problem here is that just identifying that there's been a history of You know, Elysian between Seemingly gender-neutral individual, but actually Masculinized individual and then saying now we've noticed that we can get rid of it That may be that may not be so readily available So I think That so this I think I do I have a quote Yeah, let me just go forward to this quote because it deals particularly with this this again is a quote from some early work by Susan Moller-Oakin and she's saying you don't solve this problem just by Changing the terminology that you use so At the time that she's writing so this is the late 1980s It's already become the case that a lot of political theorists and philosophers have They've noticed that you know There's this long history of talking about human beings and using the generic term man Right and people have become quite self-conscious about this and they've realized that this there's clearly a problem about you know Saying man and an imagining that it's supposed to include men and women or that there's a bit of a problem about always saying he whenever you talk about individuals or citizens and Assuming pretending that this applies to both of us so increasingly if you look at contemporary political theory a lot of Moral and political philosophers now are very careful To try not to use this very gendered language and indeed if you look at the instructions of journals When they're giving you advice about things to think about when you're I mean I'm just pausing here because I'm thinking is this very specific to which language you're writing in and of course it is but anyway So her comment most contemporary moral and political philosophers now use men and women not man Or he or she or they talk about persons Or the increasing the ubiquitous self But they're merely terminological responses to feminist challenges in spite of giving a superficial Impression of tolerance and inclusiveness Often strains incredulity and sometimes results in nonsense Gender-neutral terms frequently obscure the fact that so much of the real experience of persons so long as they live in gendered structured Societies does in fact depend on what sex they are and one she has this one very nice example, which is Taken from a book by Bruce Ackerman In his book social justice in a liberal state and he's he's an early Advocate of this attempt to be gender-neutral in his language the problem. He's discussing his abortion, right and So he he talks about parents, right? So that the kind of the issue is about kind of, you know, the rights to abort and the relative rights of the fetus versus the rights of the parents and And as Okin says the impression the impression is given that there is no relevant respect in which the parents differ in Relation to this fetus so that I mean it's a particular context in which you know I mean to try and think about the issue of abortion without acknowledging that but it's women who get pregnant Yes, I was I was just thinking as I was going on. Yes, do carry on Yes Yes Oh have they right yes, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes Yes, because that I mean I know that being a kind of shift from What would be examples did people used to just say Professor and now people say professor or professor Am I right those there's been a shift so a number of words that have now have both a feminine and a masculine usage But that that but whereas initially there was just a kind of masculinized or it might have been feminine But that's very so do you know how recent is that? Oh, okay, right Yeah, yeah, so a traditionalist that is Okay, that's a very nice example. Okay, so just oh, yeah, just to go back to some of the some of the argument about why What why this abstraction is is so significant? I mean, I think I Think one of the things that's quite striking is that The capacity to represent yourself as without gender or without race Is itself a mark of power and what I'm thinking of it when people talk about gender, you know, you can't you I mean It's quite true. You talk about gender here. Am I I'm talking about women, right? I'm not actually just talking about women because what I'm talking about is The construction of femininity the construction of masculinity, you know, male-ness and female-ness are part of that But if you see the term gender we take it as signifying women Similarly, if you take if you if you use the term ethnicity Which all of all of us have an ethnicity, right? And you know every human being in the world has a particular kind of ethnicity, but very very commonly It's taken to refer to groups who constitute a minority Ethnic group within their society so that you know in in Britain people don't People have become a bit aware of this but people used to talk about the ethnics, right? referring to people of minority Ethnicity, right? So that kind of part of what's going on there is that in a sense Those who are in the positions of power Whether it's gendered power or racialized power Don't touch they need to perceive themselves as having a gender or having a race that it's always attached to the kind of ones who aren't in a position of power so there's a very nice quote from a book by Nirmal poor who says When a body is emptied of its gender or race This is the mark of how its position is the privilege norm its power emanates From its ability to be seen as just normal To be without corporeality its own gender or race remains invisible a non-issue and I mean that was And the study that she did there was a study of I mean the book is called bodies out of place and it's a study of It's a British study of Women and people of minority Ethnicity who were in positions Unusually were in positions of high influence within within the civil service within universities I can't remember what a third area of study was So so people who were hyper visual Everyone was very aware of them as women or as black people whereas the the The others went perceived in terms of their gender or in terms of their race because they were just perceived as normal So I think very much part of the challenge for a feminist political theory is to try to get beyond These abstractions, so there's that that quote from Okin that the solution is not just to change the terms I mean political theory The kind of political theory I do is is very much What you can call normative political theory that is trying to work out not just how we do think about questions of equality or justice or Democracy but actually how we should think about these and and I think the the other aspect is that You know at a normative level the kind of the abstraction from gender Which which of course in many contexts is exactly the right thing to do But in many other contexts can be an evasion So the context in which it's the right thing to do so forget the quote at the moment right the context in Which it's the right thing to do many many kind of aspects of Equal opportunities or you're you're developing a policy against discrimination What you want is to get people to make decisions regardless of gender, right? So you want people to a ploy employ people not on the basis of you know Do they fit in with the kind of the dominant group at the moment? Are they male? Are they female? Are they of the kind of dominant ethnicity or not? You don't want that you want people to sort of just decide on the basis of do they have the right qualifications for the job? You don't want them to kind of decide on the basis of gender So that's a context in which you would actually like people to abstract from gender or if you were Admitting people to university as students And you don't want them to be making their decision on the basis of what kind of name you have or On the basis of what what sex you are So that there are lots of context in which you really do want a kind of gender neutrality Or you want people to abstract but though even in those contexts, right? If you're trying to work out if there is systematic discrimination You need the information about You know people's gender or people's Ethnicity in order to establish whether there is a pattern of discrimination And if you were trying to apply some form of affirmative action you might actually be in the context of Choosing people or giving people a preference on the basis of gender or or ethnicity in order to counterbalance an existing problem so So there is it's contextual But the particular example that that I want to kind of talk about this is this comes very much from my most recent work on the politics of the human there's a very powerful impetus behind saying What matters is not whether you're male or female or white or black or straight or lesbian or gay Right, what matters is that we are all human beings and it's a really that's a really powerful statement of equality inclusion Which you know in you know as I say very I Mean it's very much meant as a kind of a statement of as far as I'm concerned You know, I don't attach significance to this because what matters is that we are all human beings However, there are some contexts many contexts in which that very generous Impulse towards inclusion and equality actually is better understood as an evasion of reality and this this is a quote from Hannah Arendt Political theorist who she had Jewish political theorist who'd fled Germany in the 1930s eventually Made her way to America, which is where she then wrote and taught until her death in the 70s and in 1959 She returned to Germany for the first time since she had left it In 1933 because she was she was given award the blessing prize and she made a speech in that context which reflected on in a way the Emptiness of the notion of us all being humans together in the particular context of the politics leading up to the The Nazi regime so this is a quote from that In the case of a friendship between a German and a Jew under the conditions of the Third Reich It would scarcely have been a sign of humanness for the friends to have said Are we not both human beings? It would have been mere evasion of reality and of the world common to both at that time They would not have been resisting the world as it was In keeping with the humanness that had not lost the solid ground of reality a humanness in the midst of the reality of Persecution they would have had to say to each other a German and a Jew and Friends right and that I think comes back to kind of some of what I was saying right at the beginning that if you kind of if You try to think of a notion of inclusion equality humanity That that simply kind of ignores all the ways in which there are injustices and inequalities Then that very generous gesture of saying as far as I'm concerned all of those differences don't matter Can contribute to an evasion of reality there are contexts in which it's the right policy But not not by means all of them. Okay, so What I've kind of focused on in what I've said so far is very much this critique of abstractions, which for me is Is an absolutely central feature in attempts to mainstream gender and political theory? I mean, I think you know, I mean almost all of I Think almost all of the different things that I've done and different kinds of issues that I've addressed in my own writing all in some way revolve around the challenge of addressing the abstractions which Not gender out of the picture but without In a sense in the process simply installing gender difference as something that we end up kind of stuck with so That's kind of that to me is is the really kind of central challenge in terms of mainstreaming gender and political theory um There are there are others and and you know we can of course You know feel free to sort of talk about these others in our discussion the critique of essentialism so as I say you want to criticize abstraction without installing gender as As something that is kind of like a sort of an essential difference between us another very major part of what it is to mainstream gender and political theory is to challenge the ways in which we operate with We operate with kind of generalization stereotypes Sort of notions of what it is to be male female masculine feminine Which which distorts the kind of both the kind of Understanding we have a society but also distort our image of what what a future society can be like and I think I think these Essentialisms, it's not just about gender. There are essentialisms of culture essentialisms of nation These these also are kind of very much need to be thought through A third aspect that I'll just mention I think generally in those who do work on gender in Political theory or in political science Tend to be much more open to interdisciplinary work And this kind of goes back a bit to what I was saying at the beginning about some of the recent trends within political science which Which which kind of in a sense narrow down the field of understanding of what politics is I think a great deal of Gender-based work Tends to be much more open to interdisciplinary at work to drawing on insights from history sociology normative political theory Trying to kind of think about interconnections You know so that that tends to be one of the kind of the features and also something something I mentioned right at the beginning There tends to be a much greater openness to qualitative work rather than the quantitative work And this is particularly within political science, so we can talk about those But for me Focusing particularly on political theory. It's been the critique of abstractions that has been the kind of the central challenge The others are also an important part of what's going on. So I just want to end with a kind of just a Just There we go Yes, so I suppose this is Something of particular relevance for those of you who are Engaged in your PhDs or reaching the point where you're beginning to think about Submitting articles of publication recent research shows a Very pronounced under-representation of women in the the journals that are regarded as the top politics journals again I'm drawing very much from the Anglo-American literature The exceptions interestingly are journals focusing on political theory and comparative politics those those areas of political science have tended to be more open more open to publication of articles by women and in fact The American political science review which in political science departments is kind of you know commonly regarded as the lead Journal got very very anxious at one point quite rightly about how few articles by women were being published in the journal and And in the in the end they decided Actually, the only way they could address this That they could see Was to decide that there should be a higher proportion of articles by political theorists Which then very significantly increase the the proportion of works by women so I've got Just some information here by a recent article by dawn teal and Kathleen Palin Which was based on their study of gender in the journals, which is kind of quite interesting So they did they analyzed output from the top 10 American political science journals, so this is very you know, this is very skewed to American journals and Compared the proportion of articles published by women to the proportion of women among recently qualified PhD students Or the proportion of women among the membership of the American political science Association, which is kind of quite an indication of You know those those who are in the profession and And they basically they suggest two explanations One is the under representation in these journals of the kind of qualitative work that More of the feminist researchers are using in their analyses, right? So that relates to the kind of the trend that I've said to more and more quantitative work or formal theory But they also Note what they what they see as a problem within co or own co authorship practices that You get if if there's a kind of I mean increasingly Political science articles are Authored by groups of people. It's not just single authors You might have a group of you know two three four five people who've worked together contributing different aspects of the work Where women are Co-authoring articles It's much more likely to be a mixed group of men and women But when where men are co-authoring articles, it's much more commonly likely to be an All-male group, right? So this there seems to be something going on in terms of who gets invited To form part of the kind of the collective that is co-authoring An article and that that they suggest is one of the one of the issues there So just just to sum up the way I kind of see the current period. I Think particularly within political theory Thinking of now compared with when I first started out as a kind of post PhD student and you know starting on my Academic career. There's far more willingness to accept Feminist work as legitimate, right? I mean you can be a feminist political theorist and it's not regarded as a joke, right? So there's much greater kind of willingness to accept this I think there's more recognition within Politics departments generally About problems such as a gender citation bias a kind of ways in which The kind of the Articles by men tend to cite other men Whereas articles by women tend to cite women and men and that you know that the kind of the cumulative effect is a Significant gender citation bias or the journal publication bias, you know and in my own department many of my male colleagues are you know You know read the material on this and you know are kind of troubled by it and you know Think about what they can do in relation to their Curricular in terms of trying to kind of address this so much more kind of willingness to accept feminist work of legitimate More a ignition of problems such as gender citation bias But also in some ways less receptiveness to feminist approaches so that in terms of integrating the mainstreaming them So that it's not just those who think of themselves as feminists who actually use gender in their analysis In a way the transformative work of gender in Some ways is becoming more difficult because of what I started out with in terms of some of the current trends Within political science and political theory towards greater abstraction and away from more interdisciplinary work interdisciplinary it is a kind of odd one because some I mean again, I'm talking particularly about my at my own University context in the UK all the kind of the You know the major organizations of higher education and and my own university are always saying how important it is to do interdisciplinary work and They're all kind of calling on us to to do this and yet Actually, you don't get much credit for doing work, which is interdisciplinary So it's it's an odd kind of moment and I think final point Just thinking about the experience for yourselves as you you know work your way through academic institutions The institutional pressures can translate into a kind of self-censorship. I mean, it's quite hard to It's quite hard to kind of feel embattled in your research work against dominant trends, right It's it's I Think in a way certain forms of kind of self-censorship work begin to kind of operate in terms of the issues that you decide to work on I mean, it's kind of I mean, I'm very much aware of this myself that Though I mean, I mean I define myself as a feminist political theorist But I don't I don't want to be just talking about gender all the time, right And that's that's partly because Everything around me tells me if you just talk about gender all the time Actually, you're talking about something rather peripheral and rather marginal and nobody wants to be peripheral and marginal So there are those institutional pressures I think Continue even though I think we're in a period more generally in which there's much greater recognition Of the importance of mainstreaming gender I think perhaps there's more recognition of the importance of mainstreaming gender But possibly less recognition of the difficulties of doing it and that that's kind of part of the challenge that we face So that's I think yeah, that's think all I had to had to say so so open for discussion really microphone even if we could hear because the The present the the workshop is being recorded and it can only be recorded if we use the microphone, okay so if any of you Has a problem with the recording does Just tell us it's only be academic use to provide others with the opportunity to follow the So I can pass the mic But good morning My name is Anna Costa. I'm doing a PhD in law from the Department of Philosophy of Law at UPS I'm studying regulation of prostitution. That is my top right. Yes Can't avoid gender on that one Well, I I'm originally from Portugal, but I spent most of my adult life in Brazil And I think that made me see questions of inequality on a very different way, right? my interest on my topic Well, it was born in Brazil because right now there's a proposal to regulate prostitution and Well, that caught my attention for all the specific circumstances in there and so my Question with somehow broadly and I'm not sure I can put it in the best way, but we've been talking here about how In political theory many of the questions We treat we study are kind of masked as if they were Neutral in many senses and of course in gender terms And we we of course want and we think it's very fruitful to have a gender approach But when I in my topic start studying feminist Literature and of course connecting with the background Of Brazilian society what my impression my first impression is that many times feminist literature also departs from abstract notions such Who is the woman we are talking about and that becomes very? Clear to me at least in this very beginning when we talk about prostitution because talking about Prostitution in Europe is very different from talking about prostitution in Brazil for instance and The specific social legal conditions. We have there Are very different from the ones we have here in general of course and When I see feminists treating the topic as if that treatment could be applied University That means very problematic and I came I come to think that the problem we have in general in political theory in law About this abstract subject that we Obviously see everywhere. I also see it in feminist literature and and that became the huge problem Quality and to equality Policies so I don't know I would I would like to to ask your your help. I think that that's a kind of excellent point and I mean it relates to the kind of the the second issue which I just indicated but didn't say Anything substantive about about a further problem is needing to challenge essentialisms of gender of culture of nation I think that I mean I think within the feminist literature There is growing awareness of precisely the point that you are making about the kind of the the dangers of you know challenging Challenging the kind of the abstract individual, but then putting in place of the abstract individual an abstract woman and an abstract man which which then both completely Obscures all kinds of crucial differences in the different location of women and that's the whole literature on Intersectionality in particular addresses that but also the point that you're making about the way it obscures The specific national context particularly for anyone who's trying to work in relation to policy Areas, you know one one really has to kind of think about those so I very much agree with the the observation that you're making that this kind of You know this this critique of abstraction if it only goes to the point of replacing You know the kind of the supposedly gender-neutral individual by some kind of abstract Category of women from which we derive What ought to be the appropriate policies is is it's is it's not It's not exactly kind of moving this forward I do think that there's a very rich Debate about there's some literature on this now within the kind of the the feminist literature But but I think the point that you're making is is very well taken. Yeah, and definitely needs to be added into this discussion Yes You turn it off So So, so thanks, um, I need to explain a bit of my background so that And and then I will maybe make a small comment or person but so I work in a in this department computer science Technologies and my my research. I mean one big part of my research is about Fairness in predictive modeling, right? So we have many applications of artificial intelligence or machine learning that they basically analyze data And they produce a prediction using this data and we look at ways in which this prediction can Be disadvantages to a certain group can be discriminatory in the sense of present consistently Reproducing historical patterns of discrimination, which is the most obvious way of understanding this is that well If you are learning if you are having a computer program learn from past decisions on how to emulate human behavior Then it can also emulate things that you maybe you don't want to to continue doing and even reinforce those right so and there are many examples of that in hiding in access to university access to education and Also in in criminal justice and so on and then there have been studies showing how Artificial intelligence or a basically a data-driven Algorithm can reinforce discrimination. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now one of the one of the Interesting let's say advances of this field so to speak which has been going on for the last maybe five to ten years In computer science has been this this idea that If you don't capture The the attributes that you should not be discriminating on such as gender or race Then you will never know that you're discriminating and it will be very hard also to mitigate discrimination But at the same time there is a reason why when you go and ask for a loan at the band They don't ask you your race and and and so there there is a tension there between in one hand and one hand the need to Pretend that your outcome is gonna be neutral which from the data science perspective. We know it It will not so the fact that you don't tell the bank that you are white or black or whatever race Doesn't mean that a predictive model will know that you are black or white the the pretty boy can know very easily because your your Race and other protected attributes are heavily correlated with a lot of other values. You're disclosing so there is no point Technically computer in computing terms. There is no point Okay, yeah race or gender yeah, yeah, because the system will act as if it knows your Yeah, yeah, right, right with it with very high accuracy, right? So there is no point in hiding the variable, but there is a political point of hiding this variable Which is well, you shouldn't be asking. Yes, but there is also like the other side How how they how can I detect that I'm discriminating then how can I mitigate these things? It's a very complicated These things But but the but the current research goes into the data. I mean the current is such is heavy mistakes Okay, you we need to start capturing somehow this data. Maybe we are not in my seat Maybe we keep it separate so that people don't believe that we are using or not in decision But we need to start start capturing this now The Okay, that does the setting now the I find it I find it very hard to to find collaborators across disciplines to work on these type of things because of different rhythms and different concerns, so I Work in in this area because it is being done right now So it's not a matter of whether in 10 years or 20 years Hiding decisions or admission to university or whatever is going to be influenced by a mathematical model It is In many senses at right now. Yeah, so the very fact that you even things that don't look like artificial intelligence such as When you apply for a university, you have certain Scores in different tests and they have certain weights those weights are a mathematical model and the way in which you tune those weights Changes it has effects that are gender-specific. Yeah, so so for instance one I know of one case of a University in in Chile where they wanted more women students in engineering So what they did was to increase the weight of high school grades in the combination of the score that allows you to write Yes, which is and they will be very Very say open about this I would say we are changing this way because we want more women to be student students Yeah, and this has generated no controversy at all while another university decides to For instance reserve a few a block of positions for Even though perhaps the effect it has in distorting the original population is less. Yes, so there is a There is this there is this okay this algorithm that is embedded in a certain political reality in a certain data and It's has many many aspects and I don't I find it Again, I don't even know where to start to To find this collaboration across disciplines because the rhythms are different and because people what I mean We need to operationalize things. So I need to start creating models This is this is my my purpose. I cannot because the models are being created anyways And they are discriminatory so I want to propose my own that are not discriminatory or that they meet against it I think I see now what because now it's these things are happening while maybe more a philosophy as advances at another And and and Also, there is with this I finish there is also like the the a certain pretension of being universal Having some some algorithms that can apply everywhere. Yeah, while legal definitions and legal requirements Are Okay, right. No, that's kind of fascinating. So actually I would have thought that a lot of the people some of them would be in law and some in Political theory who work on the complexities of affirmative action, you know, who are precisely dealing with With that kind of that that tension between Ways in which one one simultaneously wants to kind of both ignore and incorporate Aspects relating to gender race Sexuality and so on it seems to me that that what you're describing Resonates very very closely with some of those concerns. I mean in in France for example where for from, you know, I mean there's this long tradition of not collecting data on race ethnicity because of a kind of conception that you know sort of citizenship in France is universal and You know a very strong statement about it does not matter whether you are XYZ if you're a citizen of France. That's what matters with Sociologically one of the kind of unfortunate consequences being that France actually produced minimal data on the distribution of inequalities within society the highly racialized character of of poverty and housing distribution and so on and so they've been You know quite a lot of people, you know working in the in the universities in France putting together the case for a different approach to data collection which will enable people to to to Collect that data without it being taken as a kind of now you are treated as a kind of different subgroup of the of the of the community so I I That that would be the kind of the the closest kind of parallel to me But I think I think what's I mean, it is really fascinating what you say about how much the how? the the the the gendering of our lives is is so pervasive that without Including the specific information about people's gender one can Basically predict almost kind of perfectly from all the other things about us whether we're male or female that really astonishes me that it's kind of quite that quite that deep But it's that's a very that's a very robust results in in in terms of In terms of data science with respect to gender and other demographic characteristics Even when the I the initial I would say the initial research project of this community was to to to take those things out Yes, and and the naive way of doing that was just to take the are you male or female? Yes And then it really it quickly Was very obvious for and this is across many data sets that this is this is not possible There is always a dependency so instead of trying to remove it You need to somehow measure it and try to mitigate it. Yes. Yeah, and it's not It's really not a matter of it's not magic. It's it's just obvious that many yes, absolutely Yes, the same as age and gender and race And socioeconomic status all of those value everything is related to everything in your life And the other attributes tell tell you very quickly what what you are. Yeah, even sexual orientation. Yeah So I think you you had another question in my right Thank you Yes, it's working I'm trying to yeah, I think I love that I I would very much like to know your your opinion about these other trends feminist trends I think theoretical feminist trends that comes from probably more from cultural studies which are very anti Identitarian and that questions the binarism of gender and As a consequence would ask for a very different approach which which is not To may to abstract and the subject but at the very same time it's It's also We could end in in this abstraction of of of our identities, I don't I don't know if this kind of debates In your department in your university have arrived and What's your position about it? Yeah? Yeah, so so these debates don't go on in my politics department Definitely not, but they do go on obviously among the gender scholars for example at the gender Institute at LSE and I mean, I think the I Mean there's this huge theoretical point to the critique of the of the binary, right Partly connecting with some of the things that you're saying about the kind of the the ways in which if we simply replace the kind of the individual by the the figure of the The man and the woman that this this kind of totally fails to kind of capture the the complexity of our You know multiple situation but also that the The ways in which it can encourage a kind of a Kind of a kind of politics in which you just situate yourself Within what you take to be your identity group which might get a smaller become a smaller and smaller Identity group, but that's still not not addressing the issues. The problem always comes down to actually Operationalizing, I mean translating any of this into useful policy work and and I think that that for me is the is the point at which A point at which the kind of in a sense the the quite powerful theoretical critique Seems to me to stop and very often the people who have been best at developing that theoretical critique Have not been terribly helpful in terms of then moving on to so what what actually is the implication of that in terms of how one How one transforms Laws how one transforms institutions what kind of policies one might adopt in relation to data or you know prostitution or So I so I think yeah, I think we're at a kind of point I mean, I definitely find this in my in my own work of a kind of a Kind of sharing of many of the theoretical concerns that's coming out of that literature But a kind of an awareness that I then fall back on something that is much cruder When it comes to thinking about policy, so I personally don't think that I have kind of managed to To marry those two. I'm not sure that I'm I'm aware of anyone who actually has and if you have then do tell me But but I think I think that that seems to me the challenge. It's and actually there's some very interesting work that's done about Particularly about law about the way in which law Seems to force us back into Kind of simpler categories and kind of binaries that somehow it's almost the way in which law operates is to And snare us in that And I think one could say that more generally in terms of policy not just in kind of the legislation though It's it's stronger with the the codifications of something in law and the codifications of something in policy Don't lend themselves very well to the kind of theoretical interventions that you're talking about So that's where we're stuck because we need law. We need policy and and trying to trying to work out a way of of addressing addressing issues so so if you think about I mean one example of this would be the way in which Equality policy gets translated into human resources terms so that you get so people raise issues about People aren't just male or female there's a whole kind of you know range of kind of Gender locations that we might identify ourselves with or people aren't just black or white You know, there's a whole kind of range of kind of ethnic Categorizations that we might make and the response the human resources response is Simply to multiply the number of boxes that you tick right so that you collect data Which is you know more and more diverse in order to try and kind of identify this and It seems to me that that's not that's not really solving the problem, but it's a kind of it's an example of the way in which a kind of a theoretical argument When you try to make the move to translate it into something that has some kind of policy impact Actually turns into yet another box and and and yet another kind of very Unhelpful categorization so So I definitely recognize the problem that you are raising Yeah, thanks for for your talk and We see an increasing Interest from colleagues or or students in Well trying to see how they can mainstream gender into their research, but there's still a huge Conflation between sex and gender right so they many people might think that because they have included the variable sex They are really complying with The basics of integrating the gender Mentions and So first of all what would be your advice? You know a very short answer to these colleagues that say I do mainstream gender because I Include both men and women in my samples or when I Produce a regression model sex is a variable include it there. I know it's a very simple question, but This is an answer we need to be able to provide very clearly of why one thing does not equal the other, right? The other thing is that And I've always find it difficult as well, especially in providing short answers English is a great language in terms of having these words that Are short but have a very complex meaning like engendering Regendering which in Spanish do not exist. You need the full sentence to explain what engendering means or regendering means, right? so even if it's You as an English native speaker, how would you provide a very short definition of engender and regender, right? That doesn't need these two or three sentences to explain. Thank you. Okay. I'm not going to be able to do that. All right, but so that's asking too much of an academic to kind of say everything in kind of you know one short sentence, but on on the kind of first point I'm not sure it's a matter of The kind of The elision between sex and gender maybe it is but I think what what you're pointing to in your first question is about the Thinking that you can treat gender as a kind of variable that you can then feed into your statistical models which To me really fails to see the way in which gender is structural. It's a it's about a whole set of relations and structures I mean this is confirmed by your point about the way in which if you just take out the male and female There are all these other things about the kind of the the institutions and the structures through which we live our lives that you know that that create us as masculine and feminine often against our will And and which have kind of extraordinary impact So I think I think part of what seems to me to be the the idea that you can That you can you can think of kind of of gender as a variable, right as if it could be kind of You know one of the things about the data that we plug in or we plug out To me doesn't really get to grips with the sense in which we're dealing with sort of structures of power which are Which go through all of the kind of the relations of our lives they have They have a sort of stronger impact on some of them than on others. It's not as though, you know gender is equally Significant to every single aspect of our lives, but so so for me that it's not Yeah, I mean maybe it comes it comes through in kind of thinking about it as sex or gender because Sex is a variable. Yeah It it sort of translates into something simple. Are you male or female? You know, do you have statistics on this? But it that doesn't begin to address What are the kind of the the multiple structures and institutions through which gender operates? Which is so so I think for those for those of you who work with much more Data-driven type research One of the real challenges, which I can't kind of say very much about because it's not my kind of field but one of the real challenges is Is it's how to kind of work out what is being captured in in data, which inevitably is is simply Is pulling out of a very much larger context certain bits of information which are then useful for the For the particular statistic so so that that's that's my in fact extremely long-winded answer to to the question about why I Mean essentially the reason why I think it's not enough to sort of solve the problem by Adding in Women as the data of women as well as the data of men is because it doesn't address the structural nature of gender and and the kind of it's it's paralleled in the in the more political theory literature by the idea that you address the problem by adopting gender-neutral language without actually addressing the kind of the the structural nature of gender in the way in which political theory concepts have been have been constructed As to Yeah, I I I don't know that I Think the thing about engendering or re-gendering I think probably what's what's important to convey is that it's not a matter of Putting in something that wasn't previously there, right? It's a matter of Making explicit I mean gender is there in if you if you're engaged in whether it's politics law whatever kind of area of You know the world that you're trying to understand gender is already there and the kind of the the engendering or re-gendering isn't a matter of putting something in that wasn't previously there It's a matter of making making more visible In a way that allows us to get a better understanding Something that is already there. And so I think that that's an important part of of what So in a sense, it's not optional. You know, it's not as I even say Well, I'm somebody else can put the gender in I work on doing other things because it's it's it's if it's already There in the material we need to be able to kind of make sense of that and understand it and and recognize the way in which It's kind of distorting our analysis But yeah, sorry, that was definitely not sure Yes It was perfect to to explain it to non experts or Yeah, colleagues not the ready sensitive or With skills to apply gender sensitive research. I think it worked very well. Thank you. Are there any? Other questions And I'll try to make it Higher sorry So the first a relating to the matter of language is well when we try somehow in our daily lives to Make a point about how the use of the masculine as neutral Actually Both men and women We are often perceived as this crazy Feminists in everything have to bring in the topic. No, yes, and for me It's difficult in the sense that I don't actually know from a strategic a Strategical point of view what to do So if we are engaged in these kind of topics, it's not something only that we keep In our research and we write about but we can attach from it in our Lives in our daily lives. It's something that we don't even want, right? Yes, but then how to do that when Well, I have the impression that in some places more than others there is negative reaction to the idea of feminists not the idea of Feminist ideology So when we have such a negative conservative reply to the little I don't know if I can put it this way the little Results in terms of mainstreaming gender what to do about it. Should we just continue Pointing at it all the time or should we adopt some kind of other Strategies because in the end of the day, we don't want to keep Issues between ourselves on the opposite we want to somehow change people's minds And what is the best way to do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah Okay, so I Think I think Both in terms of what people can cope with themselves and in terms of strategy To be the person who in every meeting in every lecture in every kind of discussion Is the one who raises issues about gender is kind of is is very It's very undermining, right? I mean you kind of you feel that you just you're turning yourself in into their stereotype, right? And and that kind of in a sense what you speak is Diminished by the fact that people say oh, yes, she's always the one who raises these points so it's kind of It's it's almost impossible to be that kind of person because you just I mean maybe I think I Actually, there are some people who manage this, but I don't manage it, right? So I kind of very often find I Just sort of I really do not want to be the one who raises the gender issues in this discussion Because of the way in which you know that you get pigeonholed and actually what you say is taken less seriously on the other hand if somebody else doesn't jump in and and do it, which is the best solution Then Then by remaining silent you're allowing things to pass that really shouldn't pass so So there isn't there isn't a kind of an easy either either for one's personal kind of psychological health Or in terms of what's effective strategy. There isn't an easy solution to that other than you know Hopefully there's enough people around so that it doesn't always have to be you who raises the gender issues but I think I think being able to Being able to kind of formulate the arguments that you want to make in terms in which sometimes are much more gender heavy and sometimes are actually they're sort of You're making similar kinds of points, but you're perhaps framing them in different ways or you're kind of Is is one of the kind of strategies that people use but I think I think I think you're right that it's it's it's It's an inevitable commentary of the world that we inhabit that if you are the one who just keeps going on about gender all the time In the end you become less effective Yeah, and I mean independently of yeah, like the personal level Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, my my concern is also like on policy terms Yeah, a good example is the Colombian peace agreement in which a language was adopted that always include Not he but he and she and that's made the agreement much bigger in terms of page number. No, so there was a big Discussion on that and how it was perceived empty and silly just to have to add The she every time we were referring to a person just to make a point that included both men and women and how that in turn instead of having at least an immediate positive Consequence actually was the opposite because it kind of raises this Disattitude of how crazy and silly it is that we always have to include everything in terms of language Not only The she because we already know that in this kind of language The he includes the G and so what I mean is also in terms of policy In what comes to language, but of course not only there is sometimes a bad Reaction to the inclusion of the gender concerns and so in terms of policy I also asking myself what Could be done to address that okay that bad reaction Okay, I think at some point one there are lots of context in which you just have to face the reaction, right? I mean if one if one worries about the backlash all the time you never say anything so Personally, I think I think the language thing is actually very important and and and should be addressed. I mean I let me give an example that that I Think I'm right in saying that in in France was the the first country in 2000 to introduce legislation that required all political parties to address the question of gender proportionality in terms of the Selecting candidates at that point Primarily for municipal elections and the elections to the European Parliament now I have been for many many years a very strong supporter of gender quotas as a way of Addressing the underrepresentation of women in politics, but at that point so 2000 I Still thought This is a risky thing to do It's much better to work for Caucasus of women to work through their individual political parties to win support Among their colleagues to get their parties voluntarily to adopt some kind of action Much better to do that than to have a top-down insistence that all parties must do this so to in the year 2000 Yeah, absolutely because what I'm saying is I mean I I've changed my mind, right? so but and And it's it's now of course become much more common across across Europe a number of European countries Have now adopted that kind of legislation and I now very much wish that my own country would do it but I Think I was too preoccupied with worries about the backlash at that time To in a sense have they kind of the courage and the confidence to think that this was a necessary stage forward So there are judgments that have to be made I mean just the fact that there can be a backlash against anything that we want if it's if it's if it's important There will be a backlash, right? I mean if it's something that that disrupts existing Structures of power or privilege. Of course, there will be a backlash So it's not as though any time there's a backlash one stops, right? But so there are judgments to be made about About how to be most effective But they can't be just be whenever you spot the risk of a backlash then then you say well This can't be the right strategy something you mentioned at the beginning was about why political theory doesn't Say kind of abstract gender and race This is not my area. So sorry if the question is naive, but so What we look at if it if it does like and I was thinking like In the extreme like who the Constitution Have gender Have differential rights for different genders, right? So or have differential obligations different obligations for different gender So because perhaps the consequence of trying to create a political theory that incorporates gender is the fact that you may have an outcome Which have different rights and different responsibilities, and maybe that's not what you want. No, no Yeah, yeah, absolutely not what I want and so so that so that's the kind of the That's the complexity of Making gender a kind of something which is Which is visible and Which can then be kind of Can then inform the way in which you are analyzing the society and the kinds of policies that you're proposing Without the kind of essentializing of gender which lends itself to distinct rights and responsibilities for You know for men and for women And I don't I don't think that's an impossible thing to do and I think I think that's that's actually what Within feminist political theory that's kind of in effect That's that's the kind of the problem that is being addressed throughout Feminist political theory, and I think you know in in ways that I think are are broadly effective But that's always the kind of the that's always hovering on the edge of the anxiety And that's why of course there's so much appeal to the gender neutral position That's why kind of you know many many people would want to say the the thing to press is the Insignificance of gender right let's get gender out of the picture because then we can get rid of the idea of you know different rights and responsibilities But the problem is that if you just do that you simply don't address the fact that gender remains a kind of key structuring Principle of our societies so yeah, so that that absolutely is the challenge, but I think it's a challenge that is Very fully recognized in the literature and in fact drives much of the much of the work that goes on is You know how to how to make gender visible without turning it into another source of power over us Which is how I might put that That was short make gender visible without turning it into a form of power over us I Your search for slogans Thank you Thank you for the interesting talk. I'm a master's student in migration studies Mm-hmm. I found the theorizing attempt from gender perspective is quite rare in migration studies, right? There are many researches based on empirical studies on Violence against women or like victims of human trafficking or the child migration abuse cases Targeting young girls, but they are great contribution and step forward of course, but They tended to fall into a special topic rather than an approach. So they are The unit of analysis isn't a gender Yeah, the topic is women. Yes, absolutely. You can analyze like male migrants from gender perspective, but it's very difficult to find this kind of a Tempt or relevant to literature is something inevitable or why so difficult to reveal the the gender relation and power structure and Surrounding this and how the discourse emerged out of these Why you just mentioned why it's so difficult. Yeah, well It's it's similar to the kind of point about including Gender as a variable in one's kind of collection of data, which then Actually, it's slightly different from that because what you're describing is much more a kind of like a ghettoization of of gender issues that that operates so say within Within within political science. So there's an area. There's now a kind of legitimate area of study Which is gender in politics, but it's seen as a kind of a study of women in politics Or a study of political parties in relation to gender issues or a, you know And it's it just happily co-exists alongside all the other work that is done in political science as a separate matter so So it's not just in migration studies that you have that It's it's the It's the easiest way to start putting gender in is through that Identifying areas where it is obvious that you have to think about gender and the and but of course the problem is that if that's all that happens then it then it remains very much separate from the Major area. So, I mean that's that I suppose is what's behind the idea of mainstreaming is is precisely to think about how one moves from the being able to include areas where Anyone's going to see that you've got to think about kind of gender, you know, like if you're talking about human trafficking, for example to then the really challenging next stage of Actually mainstreaming gender through all aspects and I should say I'm kind of So say in international relations In the side I do any of you do international relations. So in international relations, there's been quite a strong Which connects I guess with migration studies quite well. There's been there's been quite a strong and effective integration of Gender issues into international relations so that there's a lot of gender research going on a lot of gender scholars Working in the field of international relations, but actually if you look at what they work on They work on questions of militarism Very very very commonly or they work on questions of Gender relations in conflict zones. So it's very similar to what you're describing that the the way in to Incorporate gender into international relations has been much more about defining Identifying certain areas of the work which lend themselves most easily to some kind of gender analysis now It's possible that there are aspects of Social research Where gender is not relevant? I mean I allow that as a possibility, you know that there's going to be variations It seems plausible that there will be variations about what places where it's absolutely centrally important and other places where It's significant, but in a different way. So I allow that as a possibility, but it seems to me It's it's it's kind of it's quite a remote possibility But I think I think that problem that you're describing is is characteristic throughout all of the The areas of research that the you know what tends to happen is that first of all gender researchers managed to carve out a space in which There are kind of the obvious obvious connections, you know like in international relations the study of militarism You know there are it's it's very clear that there's a very rich area there to talk about gender issues It it may be it works less. It's it's a much more challenging task In some other areas of international relations. So again, I do not have an answer to you I mean what you're identifying as a problem, which I think I think crops up in In much of much of the areas of social research that we're all engaged in Many thanks Dr. Phillips and many thanks to all of you That's okay if there and there's no other question. Maybe we could finish it here. Let me publicize As well the next event And Phillips is presenting it's in about an hour She's giving a lecture on feminism democracy and republicanism Very interesting topic The conference is not going to take place in the UPF, but rather well, it's one of the UPF Centres at Screech it's in the Aidec Carre Valma is in 32. So you are all welcome as well to To participate in the in the conference and now that they also have the microphone In the next few days probably next week or so the quality unique will be announcing the activities that Will be having for the International day against gender-based violence. So you are all welcome to participate and still you would be in time to Provide us with some ideas on specific activities. You would like to to see happening these days as well. So thank you very much and that's