ONLINE: United Nations Association-Dane County

press release: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83167023473?pwd=MkFpb2tHU2VuU2owRVl6UForUGJhQT09

Rescheduled from April 12.

Presentation titled: 

Perspectives on CSW66: “Achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programs”

by Stephanie Backman and Mary Rathbun

This event will take place on Zoom (link above). 

Mary Rathbun, a two-time delegate, and Stephanie Beckman, a first-time delegate, reflect on and share their perspectives on the United Nations’ 2022 Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66). This year’s CSW focuses on the intersection of women’s issues and climate action. Themes, trends, great ideas, opportunities for lobbying, and connection to UNA-Dane’s CEDAW work will be explored.  

Stephanie Elizabeth Beckman is a past board member of UNA-Dane and a CSW66 delegate. Relatively new to the world of gender equality and women’s empowerment, Stephanie has gotten more interested in these areas thanks to UNA-USA and Cities for CEDAW involvement. They are full-time faculty at Madison College and PhD student (ABD status) in International Psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Their research involves organizational inputs on community peace and healing in Bogotá, Colombia. They also serve as APA’s Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict and Violence Director of Student and Early Career Membership.

Mary Yeater Rathbun is on the board of UNA-Dane as the immediate past president of the chapter.  In recognition of Mary’s leadership of the successful 2018-2019 effort to get the Madison City Council to adopt a resolution affirming the city’s commitment to the principles of the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the national UNA-USA selected Mary to be a delegate to CSW64 in March 2020.  However, when the pandemic broke out that event was canceled at the last minute.  As a result UNA-USA asked Mary to serve as a delegate to CSW65 in March 2021, the first virtual meeting of CSW in its history.  This year UNA-USA asked her again to attend CSW66.  

A long time advocate of gender equity and women’s empowerment and a pioneer in the academic expression of these ideals, Mary taught her first university level women’s history course in 1975, but before that her doctoral dissertation was a political biography of a Russian woman revolutionary and she was a research assistant on the first biographical dictionary of American women. It was published in 1971.