CGIAR Gender News

‘Seeds of Change’ update – Day 2

Seeds of Change participants Photo: Patrick Cape/ACIAR.

Wednesday April 3rd was the first full-swing conference day, including a couple of important plenary sessions. The delegates attended with much interest and engagement.

The 288 Seeds of Change delegates (photo credit: Sean Davey / ACIAR)

In the opening keynote, Prof. Katherine Gibson (Western Sydney University) told five stories that challenged everyone to consider our current ‘game-changing’ era of the ‘anthropocene‘ and to think carefully about the informal economy and the place of women in that – and crucially how to build gender equity from the bottom up.

Watch the keynote by Katherine Gibson below:

In the late morning and all afternoon, three sets of parallel sessions spanned over 50 presentations and panel discussions, keeping everyone busy, although networking was also at the center of interactions today, as the day before:

Networking at ‘Seeds of Change’ (photo credit: Sean Davey / ACIAR)

During lunch time, a projection of the movie ‘Fished: The fishing women of Mumbai’ was screened.

Then early afternoon, a ‘manel‘ (all-man panel) was exceptionally featured to discuss ‘Masculinities and agriculture‘. The panel conversation aimed at teasing out what these masculinities are, how distinct they are from specifically ‘harmful masculinities‘, and what can be done to involved men as ‘gender champions‘.

Watch both the film screening and panel discussion below (watch the latter from 31’42”).

Masculinity panel discussion at Seeds of Change 2019

Following the break out group sessions, participants had a chance to roam around close to 40 scientific posters laying out a variety of gender issues and research findings.

The final highlight of this rich day was the public lecture given by Professor Naila Kabeer from London School of Economics. The revered scholar took her audience back to the definition of what empowerment is. She invited us all to reflect on our work from both success and failures, and strongly advised women to consider collective action that invests in deeper connections and capacity to not only find practical solutions to every day challenges but deeper pathways to gender equality and access to public spaces.

This day was a very dynamic and intensive day, bringing the nearly 300 participants, and setting another inspiring stepping stone for the last conference day, Thursday.