Plenary Speakers
The plenary speakers at the conference were:
Justice Yvonne Mokgoro, Constitutional
Court of South Africa
Zillah Eisenstein, Ithaca College and anti-racist
feminist activist
Pragna Patel, Southall Black Sisters and Women Against
Fundamentalism
Gwen Brodsky and Shelagh Day, Poverty and Human Rights
Centre, Canada
Justice Yvonne
Mokgoro of the Constitutional Court of South Africa
Justice Mokgoro worked as a nursing assistant and later as a salesperson
before her appointment as a clerk in the Department of Justice of what was
then Bophuthatswana. After she completed her LLB she was appointed a maintenance
officer and public prosecutor in the Mmabatho Magistrate's Court. In 1984
Mokgoro began lecturing in the Department of Jurisprudence of the University
of the North West, where she rose through the ranks to become an associate
professor. From 1992 to 1993 she served as an associate professor at the
University of the Western Cape. She then moved to the Centre for Constitutional
Analysis at the Human Sciences Research Council, serving as a specialist
researcher in human rights.
Throughout her legal career, Mokgoro has written extensively and has presented papers to and has participated in many conferences in South Africa and abroad, mainly in sociological jurisprudence. Her focus has been human rights, customary law and the impact of law on society generally and on women and children specifically. She has served extensively as a resource person for non-governmental and community-based organisations and initiatives.
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Zillah Eisenstein, Ithaca College and anti-racist feminist activist
Zillah Eisenstein is a well known activist and writer who guest lectures around the globe-- Bosnia, Cuba, Ghana, India, Egypt, Korea, Ireland, and Thailand, and Turkey-- while living in Ithaca New York and teaching in the Department of Politics, Ithaca College. A few of her most recent books are: Against Empire, Feminisms, Racism and the West which has been simultaneously published in England (Zed Press) (see http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/book.asp?bookdetail=3675), India (Kali Press), Australia and New Zealand (Spinifex Press); ManMade Breast Cancers (Cornell University Press); Global Obscenities (NYU Press); and Hatreds, Racialized and Sexual Conflicts in the 21st Century. Her newest book, SEXUAL DECOYS, Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy with Zed Press (see http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/book.asp?bookdetail=4119), is due out in January, 2007. In her spare time she is a runner and hiker, an avid cook, and parent of beloved Sarah.
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Pragna Patel, Southall Black Sisters and Women Against Fundamentalism
Pragna Patel is a founder member of Southall Black Sisters. She worked as a case worker for SBS from 1982 to 1993 when she left to train as a solicitor. She has remained active in the group and is currently chair of SBS. She has been centrally involved in some of SBS’ most important campaigns around domestic violence, religious fundamentalism, immigration and racism. She has contributed articles on gender and race issues to a number of anthologies and journals.
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Gwen Brodsky and Shelagh Day, Poverty and Human Rights Centre, Canada
Shelagh Day and Gwen Brodsky are leading Canadian experts on statutory human rights legislation, constitutional equality rights and international human rights treaties.
Shelagh Day has extensive experience as an advocate working with women’s organizations and other non-governmental organizations for the realization of Canada’s human rights commitments. She is the author of numerous submissions to United Nations treaty bodies regarding Canada’s compliance with its obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. She has appeared before these bodies on behalf of Canadian women. She was the first President of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, which has been dubbed the “litigation arm” of the women’s movement, and she was Vice President of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) at the time of the Charlottetown Constitutional Talks, when NAC sought to bring a women’s equality perspective to constitutional debates. Shelagh Day is a founder of the Court Challenges Program which funds equality rights test case litigation in Canada. She is a former Director of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission. Currently, she is the Special Advisor on Human Rights to the National Association of Women and the Law and the Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA). She is also the publisher of the Canadian Human Rights Reporter, the leading law reporter on statutory human rights law in Canada, and the author of a regular column in the Human Rights Digest, a periodical that comments on current developments in anti-discrimination law.
Dr. Gwen Brodsky practises, teaches, and writes in the areas of human rights and constitutional law. A member of the Law Society of British Columbia and the Canadian Bar Association since 1983, she has acted as counsel in leading Charter equality rights cases. She was counsel for the National Association of Women and the Law in Gosselin, the first anti-poverty case under the Canadian Charter of Rights to be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada. Currently, she is a member of the counsel team representing the Canadian Bar Association in a constitutional challenge to the lack of adequate civil legal aid for poor people in Canada. This legal challenge is of special importance to poor women in Canada because legal representation in family law and poverty law cases is severely restricted. She is also counsel in a Charter challenge to the Indian Act, claiming a remedy for Aboriginal women and their descendants who have been discriminated against by sex-based rules that determine Indian status. She has taught in the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law, and in the Akitsiraq Law School in Nunavut. She has an LL.M from Harvard Law School, and a Ph.D in law from Osgoode Hall.
Day and Brodsky, over twenty years, have written extensively about equality rights theory, social and economic rights, and the Charter, both independently and as co-authors. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back was their first examination of how the Charter’s equality rights guarantee works for women, and Women and the Equality Deficit is the leading study of the impact on women of restructuring Canada’s social programs. Their article “The Duty to Accommodate: Who Benefits?” was cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in Meiorin, a leading sex discrimination case which successfully challenged exclusionary fitness standards for firefighters.
Day and Brodsky are the Directors of the Poverty and Human Rights Centre,
whose central goal is to strengthen the human rights of the poorest women.
Currently, the Poverty and Human Rights Centre is a partner in an academic/
community collaboration designed to promote the recognition within Canada
of social and economic rights.
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