Global Women's Rights Forum: Sisters in Spirit: An Interfaith Dialogue

I attended the Sisters in Spirit: An Interfaith Dialogue event at the Global Women's Rights Forum and the event focused on three women, all of different faiths reflecting on how their faith frames their work. Toni Battle, Bhawana Kamil and Mary Waskowiak all reiterated how faith framed what they did. For Sister Mary, she talked about how faith, spirituality and how making a connection with others and work was important. Bhawana talked about how a form of worship was to do what you want to please God while Toni Battle focused on her multicultural background and her focus on maintaining community through oral traditions. 

Throughout the event a couple of specific points were made that really stood out to me. One was by Bhawana who talked about the relationship between reason and emotion and how that also related to masculinity and femininity. She explained how in today's society, reason is often associated with men, while emotion is associated with women and how we often view reason as supreme while downplaying emotion. 

I thought this forum and more specifically, the point made by Bhawana really connected to the readings and work we have been focusing on, especially the topic of masculinity and how it related to femininity. Her points really connected when she talked about how because emotion is often connected and associated with women, we often downplay the opinion and viewpoints of women which is what we have been focusing on recently. For example, with the Kronsell case study about how men were chosen in favor of women when talking about national security and defense.