Author Addresses Shoes and Working Conditions

KEENE, N.H. 3/05/02 Cynthia Enloe, professor of government and director of the women studies program at Clark University, will speak about Tracking the Global Politics of Sneakers: Some Feminist Clues, on Thursday, April 18, at 7 p.m. in the Mabel Brown Room of the Student Center at Keene State College. She will discuss how the quality of life for women working in sneaker factories operated by multinational corporations in Asia is affected by the process of militarization. The presentation is free and open to the public.

For many years, Enloe has been studying the impact of government policies on the lives of women throughout the world. Her most recent book, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Womens Lives, discusses how women have had their wages suppressed because major brand corporations and their factory contractors hire former military men as their managers or call on local security forces to prevent workers from organizing into unions. Topics she has addressed in other books include sexual politics at the end of the Cold War and ethnicity in the military. Her work has also been published in The Village Voice and Ms. magazine.

Enloe was a professor at the University of California and Miami University and has been teaching at Clark University since 1972. She holds an honorary professorship of political science at the University of Wales.

The program is sponsored by the KSC Presidents Commission on the Status of Women, the Campus Commission on the Status of Diversity and Multiculturalism, and the Womens Studies Council.

For more information, contact Corinn Columpar, instructor of film and womens studies at 603-358-2583.