On LinkedIn, I joined the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, and they posted this meeting announcement for the Association for Conflict Resolution Environment and Public Policy Section 2013 meeting in Washington, D.C.. The title is “Dialogue in an Era of Divisiveness” which sounds very germane to the goals of this blog. Here’s a link to the agenda.
If I were in DC, I would definitely attend. There are many Forest Service and other agency speakers and a variety of interesting topics. I bet that there are some lessons we could learn from these collaboration and conflict resolution experts. If any blog readers are attending, one or more posts on what you find out would be appreciated.
Note: “collaboration” seems to be used in this agenda without the negative undertones associated with it sometimes in the Forest Service context. It would be interesting to observe this at the meeting.
Session A-5 (Strengthening our Collective Future through Gender Inclusion) seems right in line with discussions we have been having here the past few days — and, oddly, could be reasonably interpreted as making demeaning and insulting references to the role of women in “consensus building” at the “community level.”
Too, the program is overtly political. President Obama’s “recent executive directive to strengthen gender equality worldwide” is promoted as an “important frame” with which to consider these issues — no others are listed or suggested, just the concluding summary: “What are some others?” Then the impoverished third-world countries of Peru, Nigeria, and “Cote d’ Ivorie” (Ivory Coast?) are held as examples of a “nascent emphasis on inclusivity of women in natural resources” that can perhaps be emulated closer to home, where “women’s voices are lacking here in the United States.”
I’m not sure who’s hosting this discussion, but I will be interested in the thoughts of participants once it is over. I’d be curious, too, what triggered this panel, and by whom?
I don’t know.. I just found it on LinkedIn. I wish that some volunteer would go and take notes.
I do think that I have run into women who are much more comfortable with the ideas of reaching out and consensus building and men who are more inclined to the confrontational mentality.
There is even literature which we can’t afford to get more of than the abstract…sigh..
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147176705000702
(aside, remember when Region 6 ers were all trained in the same “Managerial Grid”? Was it the early 80’s?)