6^th Interdisciplinary Meeting of the

European Network on Conflict, Gender, and Violence

Vienna, Austria, October 11-13, 2001

 With support from

Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE) and the

Vienna Project Center of Women's Studies and Gender Research, University of Vienna

About this conference

The conference provides an international forum in which an interdisciplinary group of participants can discuss current work on gender-based abuse, its interpersonal, social, and cultural dimensions, and promising intervention and prevention strategies.  Interdisciplinary is understood as collaboration both between academic disciplines and between scholars, practitioners and policy makers. 

The presentations invited for this conference cover a wide range of topics and reflect an equally wide range of theoretical underpinnings and methodological choices.  Nevertheless, three conceptual matrices emerge that integrate the conceptual and methodological diversity of the program.

The first of those matrices reflects notions of multiple, dynamic power inequalities within international, institutional, and interpersonal contexts that facilitate and sustain abuse and are reinforced by abusive and exploitative practices.  On the international level, trafficking in women and children is an example of how patterns of abuse follow and reinforce economic inequality and gender discrimination.  On the institutional level, sexual harassment in schools illustrates how gender hierarchies are enacted and learned in the very educational institutions that aim to provide equal access to knowledge-based privilege.  On the interpersonal level and within the context of the family, the debates about child access for violent fathers, about the relationship between violence against women and child abuse, and integrative approaches toward violence against women and violence against men highlight the complex web of patriarchal entitlements, legal constructions of individual rights, and age and gender-based interpersonal hierarchies.

The second conceptual matrix reflects strategies to challenge, subvert, or redress power inequalities and work for social change on interpersonal, societal, or international levels.  Such strategies animate anti-trafficking policies, legislative and policy reform, community-based initiatives to overcome gender violence, work with violent men, work with survivors of violence, as well as innovative approaches to conflict resolution on the interpersonal, family, and community level.

Last but certainly not least, the third conceptual matrix reflects notions of definition, measurement, and explanatory power that are central to the theoretical and methodological workings of prevalence studies and evaluation programs, and underlie—implicitly or explicitly—all efforts to understand and eliminate abusive contexts and practices.

Conference goals

The goals of the conference are three-fold: 

(1)   To provide unique opportunities to network across disciplines and shake up established ways of thinking

(2)   To examine the “added value” of work generated within European cultural contexts and disseminate it to an international audience

(3)   To stimulate innovative thinking and serve as a springboard for joint research projects that benefit from cross-national or interdisciplinary collaboration

Conference format

The conference format is based on past experience that a relaxed, informal environment and a friendly, supportive atmosphere are particularly conducive to the creative and innovative discussion of work on abuse, struggle, and exploitation.  Such an atmosphere aims to ease the strain on participants created by the theoretical and methodological complexities of the work, its sometimes emotionally painful and politically controversial nature, and the added strain for most participants of communicating in a language other than their native tongue. 

With this in mind, the conference format maximizes time for breaks, networking, and discussion.  To facilitate the formation of common ground there are no parallel sessions.  Each session runs for about 90 minutes and is introduced by a speaker, or panel of speakers who may report on a specific research project or give a more general overview of interesting programs and developments.  Conference language will be English.  Multi-lingual participants are encouraged to pool their linguistic expertise and interpret whenever necessary.

The presenters should keep three rules in mind:   

1. The presentations will serve as the lead-ins into subsequent discussion and therefore should be relatively short (20-30 minutes) so that the remainder of each session can be used for dialogue and exchange. 
2. Presentations should be supported by visual aids such as overheads, slides, or flipchart.  Redundancy between what is said and what is shown is very desirable as it eases the strain on cognitive processing.
3. Presenters should give some information about the conceptual, methodological and/or cultural underpinnings of their work so as to facilitate the creation of common intellectual ground.

  Program

-- coming soon --