Let’s Talk About Sex (and Gender): Transgender Equality Activist to Speak at Drexel Research Forum

Ranging from abortion barriers to sexual satisfaction, the research presented at an upcoming Drexel University conference will delve into how sex and gender intersect with medicine, public policy, sports and more.

The university will host the Helen I. Moorehead-Laurencin, MD, Sex and Gender Research Forum in Gerri C. LeBow Hall to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8, 2017.

The forum is named after a prominent African-American physician from North Philadelphia and is presented by the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership in the College of Medicine. It will bring together multiple disciplines to explore questions of science, equality, justice and identity.

“There are so many ways to examine sex and gender and the interrelationships with health and society. We really wanted this event to have a broad focus with representation from the diversity of schools and colleges across the university,” said Pamela Geller, PhD, Steering Committee chair and associate professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Among many others, topics and speakers will include:

• Have College Sports Declared a War on Women?
  Ellen J. Staurowsky,
  EdD Center for Hospitality and Sport Management

• Sex Differences: Insights from Brain Development
  Karol Osipowicz, PhD
  College of Arts and Sciences

• Abortion Barriers: The Struggle to Get an Abortion in the United States
  David S. Cohen
  Thomas R. Kline School of Law

• HIV Continuum Outcomes Among Women With and Without Depression in the Perinatal Period
  Florence Momplaisir, MD
  College of Medicine

View a full list of presentations.

Harper Jean Tobin, director of policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality, and Jean Lau Chin, EdD, a professor at Adelphi University, will give keynote presentations.

As an attorney and policy director for the nation’s leading transgender advocacy organization, Tobin coordinates all aspects of advocacy on federal administrative policies. She also works to provide information to the public about laws and policies that affect transgender people. Tobin’s editorials have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Huffington Post and Washington Blade. She has recently been featured in Bustle and New Republic.

Chin is a distinguished educator and clinical psychologist whose work examines leadership, diversity and women’s issues. She was the first Asian-American psychologist to be licensed in Massachusetts, and has been the first female in a number of her leadership roles.

The day will also include an interdisciplinary faculty panel at 10 a.m. to discuss the role of sex and gender in our current political climate, among other topics.

The research forum is free and open to the community from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Register now.

Alexa Bonacquisti, PhD, is the program coordinator for the forum. The event is jointly sponsored by the Laurencin Family Foundation and by Drexel University’s Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership, College of Arts and Sciences, School of Education, Dornsife School of Public Health, Office of International Programs, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Department of Psychology, the College of Medicine’s Office of Research, and the Dornsife School of Public Health Maternal and Child Health Working Group.