Willa Needham | March 19, 2025

At the the UCLA Center for the Study of Women|Barbra Streisand Center’s 35th annual ‘Thinking Gender’ conference, keynote speaker Adriana Paz Ramírez, General Secretary of the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF), asked the audience to join her in a thought experiment: What would the world look like if social systems and global economies were structured around care rather than extraction?

“When we think in terms of the social reorganization around care, it gives us a framework for action and a philosophy where we are prioritizing a caring society,” Paz Ramírez said. She defined this framework as a “feminist labor agenda.”

Scholars, activists and community members working at the intersection of labor and gender engaged in urgent critical inquiries earlier this month at the graduate research conference themed “Gendered Labors & Transnational Solidarities.” 

The conference was presented in partnership with the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment’s (IRLE) Transnational Gender and Labor Working Group. The working group is a collective of scholars that fosters conversations about the interconnected nature of labor, gender, nationality, immigration status and other social identities to examine the complex interplay between labor commodification and social reproduction across borders. The working group facilitates workshops, networking activities and public events as a joint initiative between the IRLE and the CSW|Streisand Center.

The objective of the working group was fully realized at the conference through presentations and discussions that illuminated the lives and movements of domestic workers, childcare and homecare workers, women farm workers, hotel housekeepers and others in low-paid, precarious jobs. 

The focus on these industries was not coincidental: “These are the workers who are leading the fight, both locally and transnationally, by forming unions, staging protests and strikes and demanding collective bargaining, while calling for essential protections in public health, the care infrastructure, the environment and our collective well-being,” said Jennifer Chun, IRLE Associate Director and Director of the TGL Working Group. 

At the day-long conference, graduate student presenters from UCLA and other universities discussed their research in themed panels, two of which were led by UCLA labor studies instructors. Jennifer Chun, Associate Professor of labor studies and Asian American studies, moderated “Gendered Modes of Alternative Knowledge Production as Organizing Strategy,” while Virginia Espino, lecturer of labor studies and Chicana, Chicano and Central American studies, moderated “Gendered Labor, Border and Surveillance.”

The IRLE was also connected to the conference through Katherine Marino, Associate Director of the CSW|Streisand Center and Associate Professor of labor studies and history, who served as the event’s faculty director. In addition, Saba Waheed, UCLA Labor Center Director, facilitated a research justice graduate student workshop with keynote speaker Paz Ramírez the day prior and moderated the keynote panel at the event. 

The conference culminated with Paz Ramírez’s inspiring keynote address titled “From the Margins to the Center: Domestic Workers Realizing Collective Power & Gaining Rights” followed by a panel featuring the speaker alongside Lorena Lopez Masoumi, Organizing Director at UNITE HERE Local 11 and Yesenia DeCasaus, Director of Organizing and Member Engagement at United Domestic Workers/AFSCME Local 3930, UDW.

As moderator, Waheed facilitated a moving conversation about building women’s power through organizing at work, supporting a feminist labor agenda and maintaining optimism and vitality when facing political adversity. The panelists’ remarks each arrived at a key message and call to action: grassroots, worker-to-worker organizing has been central to progress in the past, and it is now more crucial than ever in order to resist fascism and global oppression.

After the panel concluded, the room buzzed with a renewed sense of purpose and passion for social justice work. During the post-event reception some attendees shared that what they learned at the conference had changed their perspective and would shape their work moving forward. 

Da In Choi, a UCLA gender studies PhD student who coordinated the conference reflected, “‘Thinking Gender,’ especially in this political climate, was a space of hope: as our keynote panelists said, this is the time to act, to envision a world where we can work together towards labor justice. The time is now.” 

Get updates on the IRLE’s Transnational Gender and Labor Working Group and learn about future events by signing up for our mailing list.