Thinking Gender 2025: “Gendered Labors & Transnational Solidarities”

March 7, 2025




Thinking Gender 2025

35th Annual Graduate Student Research Conference

“Gendered Labors & Transnational Solidarities”

Presented in partnership with the UCLA Transnational Gender and Labor Working Group

Friday, March 7, 2025

8:30 AM – 6:00 PM PST

James West Alumni Center, The Collins Conference Room, Los Angeles, CA

 

Join us for a day of engaging student presentations and labor rights organizer Adriana Paz Ramirez (International Domestic Workers Federation) as our keynote speaker.

This year’s Thinking Gender theme, “Gendered Labors and Transnational Solidarities,” highlights the rich repertoire of organizing strategies as well as contemporary and historical examples of campaigns led by precarious workers around the world. We are bringing together feminist, queer, and BIPOC scholars, artists, and organizers to reflect upon the meanings of labor solidarity and care to imagine a more livable society. Register today to attend!

Friendly Reminder: Seating is on a first come, first served basis. Due to the high percentage of no-shows, we do overbook our events. Therefore, a reservation does not guarantee a seat, so we suggest you arrive early. We appreciate your understanding and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.


Keynote Speaker: Adriana Paz Ramírez

“From the Margins to the Center: Domestic Workers Realizing Collective Power & Gaining Rights”

Historically, paid domestic work has not been recognized as real work. Instead, it has been regarded as an extension of women’s roles and duties, unskilled and unqualified. The organized labor movement also has a long history of excluding domestic workers, who are primary Black and Indigenous migrant women. However, today, the International Labour Organization Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers known as Convention189 enshrines the rights of domestic workers.

The International Domestic Workers Federation is the first and only global union federation led and founded by women from the Global South. In this talk, Adriana Paz Ramirez will explore how domestic workers have galvanized their movement into a global force through strategic alliance building. Using creative organizing models, strategic alliance building and transnational solidarity, domestic workers were able to become recognized interlocutors with government institutions to develop legislation and enact much needed legislative reforms. Together, workers fought and continue to demand dignified work and life.



Adriana Paz

Adriana Paz, born and raised in Bolivia, is the General Secretary of the International Domestic Workers Federation, which represents 730,000 individual domestic workers organized into 90 unions in 69 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, Europe, the
Middle East, and North Africa. Adriana is a labor rights organizer, researcher, and global advocate for domestic workers’ rights to build collective bargaining power on the ground to advance decent working conditions in the care economy. She has over 20 years of experience in movement building at the trenches of migrant justice, farm workers, and domestic workers organizing.

Learn more about Adriana’s work, calling for the liberatory knowledge production that centers the experiences and insights of marginalized workers, in our blog post on her: “Towards Liberatory Research: A Conversation with Adriana Paz Ramírez.”



Keynote Panelists and Moderator



Yesenia DeCasaus (Panelist)

Yesenia DeCasaus has been an organizer with the United Domestic Workers/AFSCME Local 3930 (UDW) for over 18 years. Yesenia is currently the Director of Organizing and Member Engagement with the UDW. She has worked for the union representing caregivers in different capacities throughout the State of California. As a Labor representative, she has negotiated contracts, organized workers and mobilized union members during a number of campaigns over the years. Recently, she has been working to expand binational ties between the Mexican-American members of her union and the Mexican Domestic Workers union in an effort to collaborate and gain strength on both sides of the border. Yesenia is an immigrant from Mexico herself where she was born and raised before she came to the US and graduated with a BA in Communications from Cal-State University San Bernardino.




Lorena Lopez Masoumi (Panelist)

Lorena Lopez Masoumi is the Organizing Director at UNITE HERE Local 11, the hotel and restaurant union which currently represents over 30,000 hospitality workers in southern California and Arizona. For over two decades Lopez has led successful campaigns throughout Southern California that have resulted in unionizing thousands of workers in the hospitality industry. Lopez has also led ground-breaking ballot initiative campaigns to protect workers against sexual harassment, to regulate workloads, and increase minimum wages.




Saba Waheed (Moderator)

Saba Waheed serves as the director of the UCLA Labor Center, following 11 years as its research director. A pioneering researcher with nearly 20 years of experience, she co-developed the “research justice” framework and has led over 40 community-based studies focusing on diverse worker populations, including domestic workers, nail salon employees, gig workers, and young workers. Beyond her research, Waheed is an award-winning storyteller who co-produces the Re:Work podcast blending her academic expertise with creative advocacy. Her experience includes roles at DataCenter and the Urban Justice Center, and she holds an MA in anthropology from Columbia University and a BA in English and religious studies from UC Berkeley.



Cosponsors

School of the Arts and Architecture
School of Theater, Film, & Television
Center for Community Engagement
American Indian Studies Center
American Indian Studies Department
Anthropology Department
Asian American Studies Department
Asian American Studies Center
Bixby Center on Population and Reproductive Health
Chicana/o and Central American Studies Department
Chicano Studies Research Center
Disability Studies
Department of Education
English Department
Gender Studies Department
Graduate Division
Humanities Division
Information Studies Department
Institute for Research on Labor & Employment
Institute of American Cultures
Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin
International Institute
LGBTQ Campus Resource Center
LGBTQ Studies Department
UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
Promise Institute
Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Deans Office, Office of Inclusive Excellence
Social Welfare Department
Sociology Department
Williams Institute (Law)
UCLA Labor Center
UCLA Latin American Institute