Hillary Clinton Center for Women's Empowerment

We were pleased to have Oumayma, Laila, Chaimae, and Hanna join us in receiving Her Excellency Ambassador of Malaysia, Astanah Abdul Aziz. The Ambassador was thrilled to engage our amazing delegates on various topics and issues.

On April 25, the HCC was honored to receive a visit from Her Excellency Astanah Abdul Aziz, Ambassador of Malaysia to Morocco. We are deeply appreciative of her time, knowledge, and consideration.

We were delighted to have female student delegates from AUI join us on this special occasion!

As part of our Guest Speaker Series, we hosted Professor Ellen Amster from McMaster University on April 21 for a Talk titled:

"The Politics of Birth in Morocco:
A History of Muslim Midwives, French Colonial Obstetrics, and Postcolonial Public Health"

Abstract:
A history of the traditional Moroccan midwife illustrates her many dimensions—medical expert, mediator between medical systems, female elder, and healer in a community of practice. French colonialism sought to transform birth in Morocco, first through French women doctors, then French colonial “social assistance” and Protection Maternel et Infantile. The French trained young Moroccan women as native birth attendants, muwallidat, in order to replace and thus eliminate the native Muslim midwife (qabla) and her “dangerous” knowledge. Obstetrical care was offered on scale to Moroccans after 1948. How Moroccan Muslim mothers utilized this new medical option and Moroccan midwives moved from colonial to global health is a women’s social history. This history provides a corrective to a dominant global narrative, which recounts the policy decisions of the WHO, the IMF, and the Rockefeller Foundation as “the history of global health.” The Moroccan example also illustrates what is at political stake in birth--not just a battle over medical turf but a war for the body politic itself. Birth touches upon the politics of reproduction, population, and the welfare state, but also political subjectivity, the moment a person is constituted as a legal and political entity in society.

“Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights”—Hillary Rodham Clinton, United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 1995.

As part of our Guest Speaker Series, we hosted Professor Lisa Fishbayn Joffe from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University, Massachusetts on April 14 for a Talk titled:

"Using Secular Law to Address Gender Inequality in Religious Law"

Abstract:
In both North America and Britain, religious family laws cannot be enforced by the state or secular courts, Nevertheless, individuals who identify as members of religious communities may choose to subject themselves to religious laws, including those that disadvantage them on the basis of their gender. This talk will explore how and why Jewish women are disadvantaged by Jewish laws relating to marriage and divorce and how they seek to use remedies from secular law to address this inequality.

In its 2nd collaboration with The Mimouna Association, The HCC invited the AUI community and beyond to a Moroccan Muslim-Jewish Interfaith event on April 12.

The event titled "Morocco as a Home for and Bridge between Women: An Interfaith Discussion between Muslim and Jewish Moroccan Women” was organized in the spirit of Ramadan and Passover which coincided for the first time in 33 years!

We hosted 2 amazing Moroccan women, Muslim and Jewish, who shared their stories of home in, and belonging to, Morocco and the event was moderated by the distinguished Abdou Ladino.

As part of our Guest Speaker Series, we hosted Professor Libe García Zarranz from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU, Norway) on April 7th for a Talk titled:

"Where are the Pixgirls?"Disability, Gender, and Race in Pixar’s SparkShorts; Feminist Intersectional Worldings in Animation.

Abstract:
Drawing on feminist film theory and critical disability studies, this lecture seeks to revise and extend my argument by analyzing Pixar’s experimental series SparkShorts (2019—) from an intersectional lens. While titles such as Purl (2019) or Out (2020) critically engage with toxic masculinity and queerness, the portrayal of women and girls has been almost absent, thus consolidating Pixar’s “highly successful male-centric fare” (Ebrahim, 2014). Turning into a promising direction, nonetheless, Pixar has released three SparkShorts in the last two years that center on Black women and girls, as well as women and girls of colour, of various ages and abilities. In different but related ways, Twenty Something (2021), Nona (2021), and Loop (2020) experiment with camera work, sound, and colour to stress the central role of repetition, transition, and reciprocity in the films. These visual and aural strategies, I argue, create feminist worldings where agency, friendship, care, and kinship are presented in intersectional ways, hence challenging recurrent disabling myths in film history (Markotić 2021; Dosch, 2019; Dunn, 2010; Garland-Thomson 2002).

In collaboration with The Mimouna Association, The HCC organized a Guest Lecture by Abdou Ladino titled:

“Singing the Taboos: When Gender, Religion and Singing Intersect"

The Talk highlighted the participation of Moroccan Jews, especially in the context of gender and women, in enriching the Musical Moroccan repertoire and their approach to never shirk from addressing the tabooest of topics in songs.

The discussion also focused on the role of Music in Jewish liturgy, the Jewish Moroccan Musical scene in the 1940s and the 1950s as well as examples of songs that were considered “avant-garde” and extremely liberal.

For the first time ever, the HCC collaborated with the AUI Debate Club on their weekly Rhetoric Café 🥳🎊

The Rhetoric Café: SPECIAL EDITION was on the controversial yet relevant question of “Are Men Afraid of Feminisms/Feminists?” 🧐🤔

Yes ! The event turned out to be as interesting and controversial as it sounds 😅 Cheers to a successful event, we look forward to many more collaborations!

In honor of March 8, International Women’s Day - celebrating women’s achievements, raising awareness against bias, and taking action for equality, the HCC organized a Roundtable Discussion on The Local and Global Importance of Gender Studies with none other than students at AUI!

What better way to invest in our future than engaging the current youth ?!

In collaboration with SAO, we organized our first “Movie Night” 🎉

Erin Brockovich is a timeless story based on real events. If you haven’t watched it yet, it’s a must watch feminist classic!

Julia Roberts stars an as unemployed single mother who becomes a legal assistant and virtually single-handed brings down a billion-dollar corporation 💪🏾🤯🤩