Ultra-Low Birth Societies Conference
Ultra-Low Birth Rate in East Asia: Crisis Discourses and Collaborative Responses
The participants at this conference will engage in an interdisciplinary way with the ultra-low birth-rates phenomena across East Asia. We are interested in governmental crisis reactions and creative collaborative responses on the part of academics, artists, feminists, and environmental thinkers and activists. We will explore together how the views and decisions of young women across East Asia vis-a-vis their reproductive labor reflect their lived experiences during the late 1990s neoliberalization of education, labor markets and energy production. The latter domain is particularly significant in the Japanese context given the triple disasters of Fukushima.
The purpose of the conference is to deeply consider how young women (and their female and male counterparts) across East Asia are inadvertently, in some cases, and intentionally in others, challenging socio-cultural, gender, labor, family and national-cultural norms and expectations. We will look closely as well at how feminist movements across East Asia are finding common cause with each other, participating in new forms of dialog about the unequal, and unremunerated, responsibilities for “care work.”
We will additionally explore the powerful coming together of feminist scholars and activists with scholars and activists of the environment and eco-socialism. In new ways, these alliances reveal the stakes for the capitalist system, our social worlds and individual lives of what Nancy Fraser and others refer to as the “dependence (on) and disavowal (of) the reproductive labor of social reproduction and of the environment as taken-for-granted resources.
If you would like more information or have a question about attending please contact the organizer, Dr. Andrea Arai at araia2@uw.edu
See Conference Participants HERE
Agenda – Friday, April 25, 2025
| 9:00 AM | Check-in. Coffee and pastry. Introductions, Andrea Gevurtz Arai, Conference Organizer | Thomson 317 |
| 9:30 – 11:15 | PANEL: Crisis Discourse, Conceptualization, Care-Focused Responses | |
| Panelists: Chong Eun Ahn, Sunyoung Yang, Lulu Hung, Andrea Gevurtz Arai | ||
| 11:15 – 12:15 PM | Lunch (participants only) | |
| 12:30 – 1:30 | TALK: Re-institutionalization of Marriage Among Young People in Taiwan, Lake Lui, National Taiwan University | Parrington 360 |
| 1:45 – 2:00 | Return to Thomson Hall and Coffee | |
| 2:00 – 3:45 | PANEL: Feminist Dialog across East Asia, Feminist Art and the Environment (hybrid) | Thomson 317 |
| Panelists: Xinlei Wang, Sue Bin Park, Yukiko Shigeto, Yoshiko Shimada* | ||
| 3:45 – 4 PM | Break | |
| 4 – 4:30 PM | Yoshiko Shimada will be a remote presenter | |
| 4:30 – 5:15 | Q & A | |
| 5:15 | Dinner (participants only) | |
| 6:15 PM | Return to hotel | |
Conference Sponsors
Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology
Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies