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Women standing with women is a beautiful thing – especially when the “other woman” is Mother Earth.
This year’s annual femme-centric celebration honoring Women’s History Month answers the question “Why Women Care About Climate Change” through a panel of local speakers and featured films.
The conference will include lunch provided by Taste Catering. It will take place Wednesday, March 30th, from 11:30 a.m. until 3 p.m. at Clubhouse 1. Planned Parenthood will benefit from $20 admission.
Women have been and continue to be the universal primary caretakers within the societies in every country – a social role that has not changed even in the modern context of dual-income households and women as world leaders.
As more women step to the forefront of climate action, like ecoactivist Greta Thunberg and New Zealand’s carbon-neutral Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the traditional legacies complement the modern female leader in her trajectory to the helm.
Dr. Kathleen Treseder, a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Irvine, will be the keynote speaker. She’ll be highlighting gender inequity, and the unique effect climate change has directly on women.
Beth Krom will be moderating the conference.
“I think women – because we are the child bearers, the child rearers and the future planners – see climate change in a more personal way,” Krom said. “Everything women do, we do from a place of nurturing, sustaining and protecting the world we want to leave our children.”
Krom, who served two terms in Irvine as mayor and more than 15 years as a City Council Member from 2000 to 2016, was a champion for green initiatives at the local level.
“It’s the work that we do at the local level – whether it be recycling or composting – that can have an even greater impact than what we do at the state or national level,” Krom said, speaking as both a resident and a former civic head. “There isn’t someone out there that’s going to handle everything; it really is the small actions that we take individually.”
Demonstrating how a global threat can live in our backyard, a screening of Guille Isa and Angello Faccini’s 10-minute documentary “Dulce” will be featured at the conference. An 8-year-old’s struggle to learn how to swim plays into not only her future role as a harvester in her village, but also the effort of Colombian communities that live in stilt houses along the Iscuandé River to preserve mangrove forests. According to the film, the forests act as a buffer against rising sea level and absorb carbon which contributes to climate change.
For historical perspective, event speaker Dr. Gloria Moldow, a Village resident and retired professor of women’s studies and dean at Iona College, will present a talk featuring Eunice Newton Foote, the first known scientist to have discovered that gasses in the atmosphere absorb heat, creating the “greenhouse effect” that would induce global warming.
Moldow stated that Foote is not widely credited and it remains difficult to find Foote’s name. Without Foote’s connections to feminist activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Emma Willard via the Women’s Network, she may have been entirely written out of history.
“It’s those connections that you have to explore with 19th century women – you can’t say they couldn’t do this and they couldn’t do that,” Moldow said. “But look at all that they could do – and did.”
To reserve a spot, email conference producer CeCe Sloan at [email protected] or call her at 949-683-1278.
