Boulder professor Jaggar named Gee award winner

Jaggar

Alison Jaggar, a Professor of Distinction in philosophy and women and gender studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, is the winner of the 2012 Elizabeth D. Gee Memorial Lectureship Award. The award honors an outstanding faculty member for efforts to advance women in academia, interdisciplinary scholarly contributions and distinguished teaching.

She will receive the award at CU Women Succeeding: The 10th Annual Professional Development Symposium, set for Feb. 23-24 at CU-Boulder. The award, instituted in 1992, comes with a $1,000 honorarium. During the Feb. 24 symposium luncheon, Jaggar will present her scholarly work in an address titled, “The Feminization of Global Poverty: How Can Philosophy Help?” Registration for the symposium already has reached capacity.

Jaggar is a pioneer in introducing feminist concerns into philosophy and in establishing the discipline of women’s (now gender) studies. As a member of the American Philosophical Association, she has taken a leadership role in working to improve the status of women. At CU, she has supported junior women faculty and mentored many women graduate students who are now established in tenured or tenure-track positions. Jaggar is the author of many books and articles, and her recent work introduces gender as a category of analysis into the philosophical debate on global justice.

During her symposium lecture, she will discuss ways in which existing poverty measures likely obscure the full extent of gendered poverty. She will also talk about  her work as the central investigator in “Fempov,” a multidisciplinary and international research project whose aim is to produce a new poverty standard or metric capable of revealing the gendered dimensions of global poverty.

The award is named for Elizabeth Gee, a faculty member in the Health Sciences Center School of Nursing and the late wife of former CU President Gordon Gee. It is the only award in the CU system that specifically recognizes outstanding work on women’s issues and efforts to advance women in the academy. It is conferred yearly by the CU Faculty Council’s Women’s Committee.