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Join the University of Arizona Honors College for this special Honors Now: LIVE webinar for Honors alumni and friends.
Victoria DeFrancesco Soto ’00 will discuss the issues and challenges facing women during the pandemic and post-pandemic economy. In late Spring of 2020, the expression Shecession was born. The term refers to the unprecedented loss of women’s jobs in the wake of the COVID-19 shutdowns. The 2020 pandemic recession brought women, especially women of color, into the focus of an economic crisis not seen since the Great Depression. Female job loss because of the pandemic has been compounded by the “voluntary” exit of women from the labor force because of a lack of childcare or remote schooling.
As the American economy enters the Fourth Industrial Revolution, technology and AI will render many of the jobs women fill obsolete. In the long term, women’s financial security is increasingly insecure as short- and medium-term income loss impacts retirement security. As the U.S. economy emerges from the Coronavirus pandemic, how do we chart a path forward for women, for their families, and for American prosperity?
We hope you’ll join us for this timely and important discussion with Honors alumna Dr. Soto and Honors College Dean Dr. Terry Hunt!
Questions may be submitted ahead of time to Candice Crossey or you can submit questions during the live event via the Q&A feature.
Register below for the Zoom link, and be sure to tell a friend! After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Victoria is the Dean Designate of the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas and currently serves as the Assistant Dean at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a political analyst for NBC News and Telemundo. Named one of the top 12 scholars in the country by Diverse magazine, Victoria previously taught at Northwestern University and Rutgers and received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University, where she was a National Science Foundation fellow. She received her bachelor’s degree in political science and Latin American studies at the University of Arizona, graduating from the Honors College.
Victoria’s social scientific areas of expertise include immigration, Latinos, women, racial and ethnic minority politics, economic equity as well as political psychology. Underlying all her research interests is the applicability of high-quality, rigorous research to on-the-ground policy realities. Victoria is a native of Southern Arizona and is a diehard Arizona Wildcats basketball fan. She is of Italian-Jewish-Mexican heritage and lives in beautiful Austin, Texas with her husband Neftali Garcia and their children.