Poly students, faculty, members of the United Nations Association (UNA) community, the 2023-24 Global Scholars Cohort and more trickled into Garland Theater on Thursday, March 7 to attend Women Without Borders, an event celebrating International Women’s Day by featuring Jennifer Hall Lee, an esteemed filmmaker, writer and public speaker.

Lee recently completed a six-week tour of Pakistan in collaboration with the Critical Thinking Forum at the International Islamic University in Islamabad. Her affiliation with the university began in 2013, when Lee screened her independent film, “Feminist: Stories from Women’s Liberation,” which explored the women’s liberation movement in the United States, to the young, bright female students.

Lee’s work with the Forum later expanded to include a State Department-funded cultural exchange in 2016 and an invitation to speak at the Women and Environment conference in Islamabad.

In 2018, Lee also received a Fulbright award, laying the groundwork for her 2023 exhibition, “Women Without Borders: A Visual Study of Lives of Women in Pakistan,” aimed at fostering cross-cultural collaboration and reshaping narratives globally.

Within the event, Lee shared stories of individual feminists in Pakistan, centering around the contrasts between American women and Pakistani women. Additionally, she touched upon her work examining the dangers of the “feminist” label in contemporary society. Lee mentioned the evolution of feminism and stressed the importance of recognizing women’s voices globally, as demonstrated with her work in Pakistan.

GIP Scholar seniors Josephine Hirsh and Gaia Drago directed the Q&A segment of the event. Reflecting on Lee and the event, Hirsh shared, “I appreciated the way she spoke about the freedom to move, and even simply the freedom to exist in public spaces. I really resonate with how she framed it, in that it means so much to be able to do the simple things that men can do.