Volume 1, Number 3
October 1995

Birth Announcement Gender and Property Rights: The Email Conference

Gender-CG also gave birth this year. On September 5, we officially began an electronic conference focused on gender and property rights. We now have 152 participants from 26 different countries. It functions much as a face-to-face conference would but we do it electronically and over a much longer time period. The conference began on September 5 and will run until December 1. Following an introductory first week of discussion, we moved on to a more focused discussion on three commissioned papers (see resources sections for paper details) covering gender and land tenure, gender and water, and gender and trees. Each paper is launched with a set of introductory comments by the author, followed by two sets of discussants' comments. Discussion is then open to all for three weeks before moving on to the next paper. We have just finished discussions on the first paper by Susana Lastarria-Cornhiel on gender and land tenure, and commenced discussion on gender and water rights focused on a paper by Margareet Zwarteveen. On October 29, we will move to discussion of a paper by Dianne Rochleau on gender and trees. One notable advantage of an electronic conference over a face-to-face one we can all talk at once.