Breaking Down Patriarchy

Amy is joined by academic and advocate Dr. Veronica Fynn Bruey to discuss her book, Patriarchy and Gender in Africa, and discuss the impacts of patriarchy on the African continent.Dr. Veronica Fynn Bruey is a multi-award winner and a passionate academic and advocate. Holding six academic degrees from four continents, she has researched, taught, consulted, and presented at conferences in over thirty countries. She's authored five books, several book chapters, and journal articles. She's the founder and editor in chief of the Journal of Internal Displacement, the co-lead of Law & Society's collaborative research network, she is the lead of Law & Society Association's international research collaborative, Disrupting Patriarchy and Masculinity in Africa, the founder of The Voice of West African Refugees in Ghana at the Buduburam refugee settlement in Ghana. She is also the Australian National University International Alumna of the Year in 2021, and the president of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, and a co-chair of Africa Interest Group American Society Of International Law. Currently she is an Action Canada Fellow, from 2022 to 2023, and the director of The Flower School of Global Health Sciences and an assistant professor of legal studies at Athabasca University. Veronica is a born and bred indigenous Liberian War survivor.

Amy is joined by author, educator, and activist Anne Firth Murray to discuss her book, From Outrage to Courage, and start exploring patriarchy on a global scale.

Amy is joined by Dina Asna and Saghi Saghazadeh to discuss the ongoing revolution in Iran.

Welcome to Season Three of Breaking Down Patriarchy!Each week in Season 3 Amy will read a book on a different topic in global gender studies, and will discuss it with a guest who has also read - or, in many cases written - the book being discussed. We will start with the African continent, touching down in several different countries to discuss essential topics in the history of patriarchy and gender studies. The following month, in honor of Black History Month, we will focus on essential texts by Black authors. Next, we will move north to the Middle East, then onward to Asia, around to the Pacific Islands, on to the Americas, and finally, we’ll finish out the year with a handful of European countries. Each guest this year will have ancestry from the country they discuss in their episode, and in many cases they will be longtime residents of that country, which means they will bring firsthand local experience to the discussion.

Amy is joined by the show's editor, Sam Rose Preminger, to discuss all the incredible content in Season 2!

In the concluding episode of Season Two, Amy is joined by Dr. Kristin Neff to discuss the generative power of anger, the danger of rote gender roles, and the radical power of self-compassion.Kristin Neff (she/her) received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, and is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.During Kristin’s last year of graduate school she became interested in Buddhism and has been practicing meditation in the Insight Meditation tradition ever since. While doing her post-doctoral work she decided to conduct research on self-compassion – a central construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not yet been examined empirically. Kristin is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, creating a scale to measure the construct almost 20 years ago. She has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential research psychologists. In addition to writing numerous academic articles and book chapters on the topic, she is author of the book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, and her latest Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power and Thrive.In conjunction with her colleague Dr. Chris Germer, she has developed an empirically supported training program called Mindful Self-Compassion, which is taught by thousands of teachers worldwide. They co-authored The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook as well as Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program: A Guide for Professionals. She is also co-founder of the nonprofit Center for Mindful Self-Compassion.

While many of our listeners are no doubt getting ready for Christmas festivities this week, for others the winter celebrations have already begun. Candles are being lit, loved ones are gathered close, and latkes are already sizzling in oil as our Jewish friends, family, and neighbors are celebrating Chanukah, the festival of lights.From Gerda Lerner and Gloria Steinem to Betty Freidan and Naomi Wolf, I have always admired to contributions of Jewish women to feminist thought and yet we haven’t yet had the opportunity to highlight voices from the Jewish community this season. With that in mind, I was so grateful to be put in contact with a fabulous writer, thinker, and rabbi — Hara Person —who generously volunteered to join us this season and share some stories of powerful women in the Jewish holiday tradition.Rabbi Hara Person (she/her) is the Chief Executive of Central Conference of American Rabbis. Previously, she was the CCAR’s Chief Strategy Officer. In that capacity, she oversaw the Communications Department and served as Publisher of CCAR Press, and worked with leadership on overall organizational strategy.Rabbi Person was ordained in 1998 from HUC-JIR, after graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College (1986) and receiving an MA in Fine Arts from New York University/International Center of Photography (1992).She served as Educator at the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue from 1990-1996, and was the Adjunct Rabbi there from 1998-2019. Since 1998, Rabbi Person has been the High Holy Day Rabbi of Congregation B’nai Olam, Fire Island Pines, NY.Before coming to the CCAR, Rabbi Person was the Editor-in-Chief of URJ Books and Music, where she was responsible for the revision of The Torah: A Modern Commentary (2005) and the publication of many significant projects, including the Aleph Isn’t Tough adult Hebrew series and Mitkadem: Hebrew for Youth as well as several award-winning children’s books. While at URJ, she was also the Managing Editor of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, named the National Jewish Book Award Book of the Year in 2008.Rabbi Person is also the co-author of Stories of Heaven and Earth: Bible Heroes in Contemporary Children’s Literature and as well as co-editor of That You May Live Long: Caring for Your Aging Parents, Caring for Yourself, and Editor of The Mitzvah of Healing. Her essays and poems have been published in various anthologies and journals, including Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, upstreet, Encyclopedia of Jewish American Popular Culture, Women and Judaism, The Continuum Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, and The Women’s Haftarah Commentary.Rabbi Person lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is the mother of two adults.

In the course of this season, we’ve gone in depth and up close with dozens of people’s experiences navigating present-day patriarchy. We’ve heard stories of personal struggle, of generational trauma, of feminist revelations. We’ve listened to fantastic essays on what a more egalitarian future might look like, and we’ve been pointed towards critical changes that our world and our culture are sorely overdue for. On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about what it takes to actually make those changes happen, about the process of change itself. We’ll be talking about how challenging the idea of change can be, about some of the forces which fight against it – tooth and nail – and about the harm that those conflicts can cause. But ultimately, we’re going to be talking about how essential these acts of transformation are – for ourselves, for our culture, for our world – and how everyday people just like you and I can make these changes manifest.To help us in this exploration we're joined by Shauna Rensch and Lauren Prakke. We're so grateful to feature their voices. Shauna Rensch (she/her) is a wife and mother of four kids ages 16 to 6. She grew up in the north suburbs of Chicago but moved to Arizona with her family at the end of high school. She went to ASU looking at various degrees, but decided on education before taking time off to get married and have her first child. She went back to school in order to complete a bachelor's degree at NAU and started teaching. She has taught from kindergarten through sixth grade but loves teaching math above anything else. She completed a master's in elementary education from NAU in 2015. She is currently taking time off from teaching but looks forward to more work within the education field in the future. Shauna loves reading, embroidery, long walks with beautiful views and road trips with her family.Lauren Prakke (she/her) is a cultural innovator, strategic advisor and futurist. Prakke founded Restless Buddha Productions which harnessed a team of international experts across a broad spectrum of the arts including film, theatre, art to simultaneously raise capital and social awareness. Restless Buddha has been featured in numerous newspapers and magazines from Vanity Fair to The Times. Prakke is an int’l lecturer, writer, and curator of contemporary art, a theatre producer and a social activist with an expertise on woman's issues. Prakke is a TED speaker, founded & chaired The Tate Young Patrons at The Tate, served as co-chair of Women for Women International Leadership, Chairman of The Whitechapel Patrons and on the Board of Women of the World at The Southbank Centre. Prakke was an Interest Rate Swaps broker in both NYC & in London for nearly a decade. She was graduated in 19th Century English Literature and has a post grad degree Contemporary Art. She is a relentless reader and an autodidact polymath.

As this second season of the podcast approaches a close, we want to spend a little more time discussing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—not to dwell in the pain which the Church’s patriarchy has caused, but rather to imagine some possible steps forward. To start envisioning a new Church for the future, a Church with regard, respect, and opportunity for all of its members, and to explore some of the potential steps that will lead us there.To help us illuminate these paths forward, it’s my delight that in this episode we’re joined by Kajsa Berlin-Kaufusi who shares a stunning vision for the Church’s feminist future.Kajsa Berlin-Kaufusi (she/her) is, what you might call in French, a "flaneuse"---that is, a woman who enjoys the process of wandering and exploring, whether it be a local bookstore or a new international destination. She completed her BA at Brigham Young University, followed by an MA in Biblical Studies from Regent University. Her research focuses on feminist/progressive theologies, early Christianity, Medieval Judeo-Islamic philosophy, world religions, and women's narratives of the religious experience. Today, Kajsa is devoting her time to writing, with a book forthcoming, and spending time with her family. She is also the proud owner of a Great Dane named Freja, who is one of the loves of her life.

Earlier this year, our podcast began a project of collecting, publishing, and elevating people’s stories about patriarchy, and when we got word out that we were soliciting contributions, we received an overflow of messages from women raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We are so grateful for all the stories that found their way to us.In today’s episode, we hear from Ashley Mae Hoiland and Courtney McPhie, as well as an Anonymous Contributor who help us explore the impacts of LDS patriarchy in their own lives.Ashley Mae Hoiland (she/her) is the author of One Hundred Birds Taught me To Fly, A New Constellation and several children's books. She lives in Provo, Utah with her three kids, geologist husband, dog and bearded dragon. She has an MFA in creative writing and teaches writing classes online at MineToTell.coCourtney McPhie (she/her) experienced a typical awakening to social justice in high school, but took until college to call herself a feminist. A voracious reader and podcast-listener, Courtney lives in Northern Virginia, in the DC Metro area. She completed her graduate studies at George Mason University and holds a masters degree in education, which she uses as a high school English teacher in Fairfax County. She works largely with English Language Learners, mostly asylum-seekers who have come from Central America in the last three years. Courtney lives with her husband and three cute kids in a Colonial house on a hill.