Dr. Nancy Murphy, Adjunct Professor at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology and Executive Director of Northwest Family Life Learning and Counseling Center, will be participating in a conference presented by UN Women, a United Nations organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. Organized by the Baptist Women’s Alliance, the panel will discuss the use of religion as a tool of coercive control in domestic violence, says Murphy, who has been attending the conference since 2010.
The panel is scheduled for 8:30 a.m., March 12, at the Church Center of the United Nations in New York City. Murphy will be joining Rabina Niaz, founder and Executive Director of Turning Point, the first nonprofit agency to address domestic abuse in New York City’s Muslim population; and Rabbi Lisa Gelber, Associate Dean of the Rabbinical School and rabbi of the Women’s League Seminary Synagogue at Jewish Theological Seminary.
This year’s conference, Beijing+20, is the 59th session of the Commission on the Status of Women and marks the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which was signed by 189 governments and is still considered the most comprehensive international document on women’s rights. The conference, March 8-14, also coincides with International Women’s Day on March 8.
For more than 20 years, Murphy has been counseling, teaching, writing, training, and speaking about violence against women, including domestic violence and human trafficking both locally and globally. In addition to her work with The Seattle School and Northwest Family Life, Murphy volunteers at Esperanza, a community that serves individuals and families in crisis on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia.