Funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the conference is being sponsored by the Institute for Women and Work at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. It is being co-directed by noted feminist and author Betty Friedan, a distinguished visiting professor at Cornell, and Francine Moccio, director of the Institute for Women and Work. The Feminist and Legal Theory Project at Cornell Law School is co-sponsoring the conference. At a time when women in the industrialized world have joined the paid work force in record numbers, when the information and telecommunications revolution has transformed the nature of work and when globalization and the fall of communism have revolutionized the old economic and political order, policy-makers need to rethink old paradigms, say the organizers. This is especially true in the United States, which lags beyond many industrialized countries when it comes to family policy.
Organizers say the international element of the conference is essential.