Salon #49 – The Gift of Organizing Women’s Conferences

Salon #49 - The Gift of Organizing Women's Conferences

July 8, 2023

Featuring Genevieve Vaughan, Sid Reger, Angela Dolmetsch, and Letecia Layson

It is important for women in many parts of the world to gather together to form a common consciousness and solidarity as a 'class' of people who practice a significant amount of unilateral gift-giving work. In recent centuries we have been separated in nuclear families, providing the gifts of social reproduction for capitalism while throughout time in different social formations we have maintained the possibility of health and sanity of humanity in spite of patriarchy and its violent drives towards domination. By coming together in conferences, we can understand what harms us not just as the problems of individuals but as collective problems with solutions that can not only liberate women but change the structure of oppression generally. The gift of organizing these conferences makes giving these gifts possible for the many.

Genevieve Vaughan is an independent researcher who lives part time in Italy and part in Texas. She created the multicultural all-woman activist Foundation for a Compassionate Society (1987-2005) and the Temple of Sekhmet in the Nevada desert (1992 – ongoing) and she co-created the network: International Feminists for a Gift Economy (2001 – ongoing). Her books are For-Giving, a Feminist Criticism of Exchange (1997), Homo Donans (2006) and The Gift in the Heart of Language: the Maternal Source of Meaning (2015). She has edited Il Dono/The Gift (2004), Women and the Gift Economy (2007) and The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy (2019). A volume of the Canadian Women’s Studies Journal dedicated to the maternal gift economy has just appeared (2020). More information @ www.gift-economy.com.

Sid Reger Ed.D. is an artist, educator, and independent scholar whose passions are prehistoric arts, matrifocal cultures, mythology and animal mysteries. Now semi-retired, she still teaches, relating these topics to women's spiritual journeys. She is co-founder and president of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology (womenandmyth.org).

Angela Dolmetsch was born in Cali Colombia, she has a Law degree from La Universidad San Buenaventura and a Ph.D. from London University. Her thesis was on Maternalism in Colombian Politics. She met Genevieve Vaughan in 2001 at the Wise Women’s Workshops in Loten Norway and since then she has tried to put into practice the Maternal Gift Economy. The Eco-village Nashira, is a practical example of the Gift Economy where 80 mothers victims of the Colombian conflict received land to build with government subsidies 80 houses at no cost becoming the seeds for a community of peace. She is the director of a weekly TV program el Agora, and writes a column in the Cali news paper “El Pais. She has published several books. “La otra Cara del Dólar” (1985), “Of Governments and Guerrillas” (1988) “El Hombrecillo que se tragó a Dios y otros relatos (1999). She also has articles in several publications. The following books are forthcoming: “las Madres en la Politica Colombiana" "Nashira un Canto de Amor".

Andrea O'Reilly Ph.D. is a writer on women's issues and currently a Professor in the School of Women's Studies at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. O'Reilly founded the Association for Research on Mothering (ARM) at York University in 1998 and ran it until it closed in 2010. Its disbandment led to the inception of a new organization, the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI). She is founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, now the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement. In 2006, as director of ARM, she founded Demeter Press, the first feminist press on motherhood. As well, she is founder of the feminist mothers group "Mother Outlaws".

Letecia Layson is a Filipina, Feminist, Futurist, Priestess of Morphogenesis (Form Coming Into Being), High Priestess of Diana; Priestess Hierophant in FOI/TOI-LA. Letecia is one of the founding Mothers of the Center for Babaylan Studies; a member of International Feminists for Gift Economy, Modern Matriarchal Studies Network.

Unfortunately, Andrea O'Reilly was unable to joins us for this Salon.