Fulbright Visiting Scholars meet CIES staff as they describe their research on women's and children's issues.

With brown bag lunches in hand and education in mind, staff of the Council for International Exchange of Scholars greeted two Fulbright Visiting Scholars. The Scholars, Mary Yvonne Galligan and Asha Banja, were invited to CIES by Program Officer Dan Pattarini to discuss their Fulbright research.

Galligan opened the conversation with a discussion of her research project on Enlargement Gender and Governance: The Civic and Political Participation of Women in the European Union Candidate Countries. Galligan, as the coordinator of the project, is currently working at American University (AU) in Washington, DC. There, she, along with a large team of researchers from 12 consortium country teams in Central and Eastern Europe, has been engaged in the study for the past three years. Eight of the ten countries have joined the EU since the inception of the research project and Romania and Bulgaria currently have accession status to join the EU in 2007.

Making a point to emphasize the unique laboratory-like environment in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989, Galligan characterizes the region as having gone through two major political changes: (1) the transition from a socialist society to a post-socialist and democratic society, and (2) a Europeanization process integrating the political, legal and financial systems into the EU context and the free market.

Fulbright Visiting Scholar Mary Yvonne Galligan is conducting research on Enlargement Gender and Governance: The Civic and Political Participation of Women in the European Union Candidate Countries.

The Fulbright Scholar said her research focuses on gender and “how it situates itself in terms of these two major movements” in the EU candidate countries since 1989. “We wanted to look at what was happening across these countries and see where the empowerment of women has taken place, has it taken place, and in what shape it has taken,” said Galligan.

The landscape of women’s political interests through elected representation in parliament and through representation in the bureaucracy and civil society has shifted, explains Galligan. A major concern is “how Europeanization, democratization and gender fit together through all these transitions,” she said.

"A picture very much like a jigsaw puzzle appears by looking at the top-down perspective of gender mainstreaming—the extent that women’s views and interests have been integrated into policy development; and the bottom-up, civil society/NGO perspective pertaining to the issue of trafficking in women and girls.

"The emerging democracies of the Central and Eastern European states are making a piecemeal effort to integrate the gender norms and the gender equality of those norms into their policies and political system. The research also shows the re-emergence of traditional gender stereotypes in society and highlighted within the party system and the political system," Galligan said.

Fulbright Visiting Scholars shared their research with CIES staff members.

Like Galligan, fellow Fulbright Visiting Scholar to American University, Asha Bajpai, also works with women and child issues. Bajpai is currently lecturing as well as conducting research at AU’s Washington College of Law.

Bajpai’s activities focus on the legal aspects relating to women and children, especially in educating people about their legal rights and educating lawmakers about the practical impact of the laws. She is also involved in action efforts concerning child labor and child sexual abuse in India.

Bajpai said the child labor laws in India are very much pulled in both directions. Protestors of child labor want laws to enforce the schooling of children, while advocates of child labor recognize the economic necessities of working children.

“We have two equal groups,” explains Bajpai. “The law makers don’t know what to do, so we have an act known as the ‘Child Labor Prohibition and Regulation Act.’”

However, the Supreme Court in India recently passed a landmark judgment, the Juvenile Justice Act, recognizing that the cause of child labor is poverty. With this new judgment, children are now given some financial and educational support by the government.

This new legal strategy has resulted in a constitutional amendment to include the right to education for minors between 6-14 years old. Bajpai believes this new strategy will gradually eliminate the economic pressures for child labor.

Fulbright Visiting Scholar Asha Bajpai (left) works with legal concerns in children's issues—including child labor and child sexual abuse—and women's issues.

The Fulbright Scholar also concerns herself with juvenile justice and children in conflict with law. The new Juvenile Justice Act will give the children in conflict with law marketable skills in computers.

Bajpai recounted an effort to help a boy who was caught stealing motorbikes 32 times. Bajpai and other “child friendly” people gave the boy a job in a garage. The law is now quite sensitive to the needs of children. “Sending children to institutions has become the last resort,” said Bajpai. “Instead, judges will try to give community orders or supervised/probational community service.”

The recognition of economic and societal pressures as a cause of juvenile crime has led to this change in the juvenile justice system, explains Bajpai. “People are empowered by legal knowledge and this is what we do—spread legal literacy,” she said.

Both Bajpai and Galligan said they were grateful to the Fulbright Scholar Program and its mission to promote global education for giving them the opportunities to conduct research and to educate themselves and others.