Have Women Achieved Equality?

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Hey,
 
Okay, I know that replying to one's own message is sort of tacky, but I
feel bad that my morning questioning rant about service learning and
student activism was so devil's advocate-y and, uh, negative.
 
There IS a really great course-based service learning project coming
together here   @   Tulane w/the cooperation of some women's studies faculty
associates, some folk from developmental & educational psych, people from
the School of Social Work (and assorted others) that's being synergized
out of a longstanding university-community partnership b/w Tulane and the
nearby CJ Peete Housing Community.
 
Here's the description from our fall course listing. The main coordinators
are Margaret King, Director of Newcomb College Student Programs (& WMST
fac), and Barbara Moely from the Psych Department:
 
19879   WMST 493-02     Women and Leadership
                9:30-10:45AM    TR        King, M.
 
        This course will explore the concepts of leadership and examine
how those contexts affect women. Course content will include the evolution
of leadership theory, popular literature and research on women's
style of leadership, the effects of organizational structures and
organizational culture on leadership, the development of leadership in
individuals, and the responsabilities of leadership.
 
 
20506   WMST 493-03     Leadership, Development & Community
                2:00-4:30PM     M       Moely, B.
 
        The first semester of a two-semester interdisciplinary course.
Involves exploration of research on women's leadership, early adolescent
development of self-esteem, interpersonal relationships and life
goals, and women's roles in cultural context. Students will read and
discuss  relevant work coming from various disciplines, meeting with
faculty who are knowledgeable in each area. Students will extend their
learning by working with adolescent girls from a low-income,
African-American
community in New Orleans, assisting in their classrooms and engaging in
observation
and interaction during the fall semester for 4 hours each week. Weekly
class  sessions will involve 2 hours of academic work and one hour of
reflective activity focused on work at the school. The goal of the course
is for students to develop a leadership program that can be implemented
in the second semester with adolescent girls. (NOTE: Concurrent
registration required in WMST 389 Service Learning (1 hour))
 
20509    WMST 389-01    Service Learning Component
                   TBA      Moely, B.
 
The 6-8 folks coordinating this project have been meeting, planning,
refining and learning from one another since November '97. This process
has been really transformative/challenging for all involved.
 
I forwared Phyllis' call for papers to Margaret King & she immediately
mailed back saying thanks and that she truly intends to submit something
to the collection.
 
Now, contrast that kettle of "course-based" activism, with the very
well-intentioned idea floating around to require all the students in a 40
to 50-person (isn't that shameful?) feminist theory class here to perform
some nebulous/as-yet-undefined "community service." I totally respect and
adore the woman who's teaching that course, but 1) I fear that requirement
will end up driving her absolutely nutty, and 2) I don't think that it
will enhance the class... I mean, ideas that were coming up were for
students to go out into community agencies & do clerical work, babysitting
and stuff.  Am I just screwy, or are so many agencies so sorely taxed that
even a couple of hours of general help per week be a major help after one
factors in training time for these students?  Anyhow, the prof herself is
starting to re-think the whole thing.
 
Crystal,
 
feeling much less "Monkeygirl for The Man"-ish this evening thanks to the
great group of teenage girls in the Center's small, intensive Internet
access/learning/empowerment summer program. Every Thursday in July, a
super physics grad student/one of our computer cluster consultants and I
are spending the afternoon in serious, directed, fundamental girlpower
geeking w/ a group of eight 16-17 year-old girls from a nearby public high
school. The girls (most of whom have had no or very, very little hands-on
experience with the Net)  have access to our computer facilities all
summer and all next school year, and you'd better believe that they're
into it!  Yay!
 
   "take, take the noise in my head... take, take the noise in my head..."
 
      Crystal Kile                      ckile  @  mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu
      www.tulane.edu/~wc                ernie.bgsu.edu/~ckile/ckile.html

For those interested in this topic, I suggest taking a look at the
Canadian journal,
 
Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal
Vol. 22.1 (Fall, 1997)
 
The feature is titled "Women's Studeis in Focus: Field-Based Learning in
the Practicum Course"
 
Articles include:
 
"Introduction" Christine St. Peter
 
"Are Practica Worth the Effort" Greta Hoffman Neimiroff
 
"Feminist Field-Based Learning: Theory & Praxis in the Course of
Knowledge Creation"  Linda Christiansen-Ruffman
 
"Hosting the Practicum Experience" Linda Clippingdale
 
"Out in the Field: Praxis is Where We Play?" Tania Trepanier
 
"Giving feminist Theory a Heartbeat:  Field-Based Learning and the
Academy" Sandra Gabriele
 
"The Pain and Pleasure of Praxis Out in the Field" Joan Smith
 
"Violence Against Women: Students Workng in Community Agencies"
Katherine McKenna
 
"Experimental Learning: Field Placements at Brock University" June Corman
 
"A Good Idea Takes Form: Practicing Feminism for Fun & Profit" Debby Yaffe
 
Katherine Side
kside  @  acs.ryerson.ca
 
Department of Sociology
Ryerson Polytechnic University
350 Victoria Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5K 2B3

--- You wrote:
Joanne and everyone:
 
    I'm a little concerned about the framework of this discussion:  how do we
-- the inference is in our superior thinking and practice -- get them --
naive, clueless, apathetic perhaps? to act.
 
    My experience of young women is that they are often hungry to make change
and they have a sense that women in my generation and older are gatekeepers
of various movements and organizations, deigning to allow them to 'collate'
for the revolution at ridiculous wages when they graduate from college.
--- end of quote ---
 
I apologize if I sounded this way, I don't for one second believe that young
women are apathetic and clueless. Just perhaps need  a bit of guidance and
someone standing behind them to say "I believe in you, I'll support you, You
can do this". Pardon the implicit condescension, I'm too close to their age and
experience to mean it! :)
 
susan

As we design our new WS major at California State
University, Fresno, we are launching a "Feminist Activism"
course that will be the senior seminar (or one of only a
few options) for majors.  The idea is both to teach
about the history of feminist activism and to teach
students nuts-and-bolts tactics for anything from writing
a press release to organizing street theater to . . . well,
we'll have to keep it legal, despite whatever our own
experiences may have been as activists.  Assignments
will, of course, have students actually doing some of
these things, at least sometimes in collaboration with
the campus women's center.
 
The idea is that women's
studies majors who are seniors -- and others who elect
to take a course titled "Feminist Activism" --
have a desire to take action.  This is very different
from other required (say, General Education) courses
with a community service project.  I teach those a lot,
and I agree with those who consider the prospect
problematic, if not "half-baked."  It is nearly impossible
to break many students out of a gawking "charity" mode
there.  (The course I am talking about comes with a
mandate for community service from another program, not
WS.)
 
In intro WS classes, I assign students to write a series
of letters on current issues, one to an editor, one to
an advertiser, and one to a politician.  This is small
scale activism, but it's amazing how pleased students
seem to be to have a voice at all.  It's also a sly way
to teach some library skills, since I require them to
find addresses, names of CEOs, etc.
 
Linda Garber
Assistant Professor
Women's Studies
California State University, Fresno
Fresno, CA  93740-0078
linda_garber  @  csufresno.edu
(209) 278-5721
fax (209) 278-7664

I think we must distinguish between service and activism. As I understand
service, you help people solve a problem within an existing structure or
system. Examples would be working in a literacy project, soup kitchen or
shelter for battered women. Activism, on the other hand, is work that tries
to change a structure or system, e.g., analyze conditions that lead to
illiteracy, hunger and battering of women. Either could be paid or unpaid.
    From this perspective, service is a good; it's active work on behalf of
others, part of social responsibility; the people being helped may change
some element in an institution, e.g., a welfare recipient learns how to get
what she's entitled to, gets that; maybe she complains about the difficulty
to a supervisor in the agency processing benefits and the supervisor sees
to it that the agency workers do better for others entitled to welfare
benefits. But systemic poverty goes on. Battered women might be counseled
in a shelter, helped to find jobs and housing. But battering women goes on
as a societal problem.
    An activist would tackle the conditions that cause battering of women;
perhaps. This would start with a critical analysis of causal factors, an
examination of institutions that bolster men's and women's attitudes about
dominant and submissive gender relations, patterns that argue for valuing
men more than women in subtle or blatant ways (e.g., they're equal or both
important, each in their 'gender-appropriate' place), e.g., educational,
religious and economic institutions. The activist would work with women in
the institutions to raise consciousness about the systemic conditions and
they would work together to change them.
    The key difference is in effecting systemic social change.
    From the description of the Tulane course on women's leadership, it seems
to be in the service category. The students' activism seems to consist of
helping school teachers do something for African American girls from low
income families. Those teachers might be doing something good and the girls
will benefit from that. But I don't see any indications of critical
analysis of what is being done  at the level of the classroom and the
institution of which the classroom is a part; nothing on curriculum,
content (perhaps steering to "gender appropriate" or
"race/ethnic/gender/class" roles?) or what the girls will encounter when
they graduate from school. - It may be that such issues come under the
heading of "leadership responsibilities" in the project description, but I
see nothing in the description to suggest that they would. It's an
individualist approach. Recipients of help focus on their own need. Can one
by one by one lead to social change? maybe, not much, I think, if the sytem
is stacked against the group in question.
    But then, after I wrote the above, I remembered an incident at a workshop
of academics and activists in New Delhi, initiated by the Indian Women's
Studies Assn. An activist described an episode at a meeting that was part
of the project she and women in villages were working on to stop
construction of a dam that destroyed people's homes and land for growing
food (no good alternative place to live was available): A bruised village
woman interrupted the meeting to ask for help: her husband beat her again.
The activist's asked: Tell her, today we deal with the dam, on Tuesday we
do wife battering?
        beatrice    bkachuck  @  cuny.campus.mci.net

Beatrice makes an important distinction between service and activism-it
works well for academic purposes---but it is a distinction I wouldn't want
carried too far or we will be doing activism based on how educated, academic
women view what needs to be changed.  Before we do activism, we all need to
listen to the women most directly affected by the system we are attempting
to change.  Service might be necessary.
 
For example, take the battered women's movement.   Most battered women have
said that they just want the battered to stop beating them.   So,  we worked
on legal reforms to protect battered women.  Have they?  What would we have
done if we truly listened hard to her for solutions?   I am currently
working on a project which  collects data from and provides advocacy to
battered women affected by welfare reform.  The goal of the data collection
is to inform social policy here in Wisconsin.  What do battered women need
to become economically stable?   It feels very different than just
advocating for the Wellstone amendment for battered women.
 
What I am getting at is  that we  need to be very careful that we aren't
separating out too clearly service and activism.  Students need help making
connections when they do service so they can do thoughtful,  informed
activism.   I have mostly middle class white students.  Changes they see
would be very different than women struggling to feed their children.
These students need to learn to listen, think critically and then take
action.    Sandi

Sandra Krajewski, Professor and Chair
Department of Women's Studies
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Board Member, New Horizons Shelter and Women's Center
608-785-8732
608-785-8357 (leave a messge)
608-785-8731 (fax)
kraje_ss  @  mail.uwlax.edu

Sandra Krajewski is quite right about listening to women 'on the ground'
before engaging in activism. As way to get at this with students, it seemed
effective in a graduate WS course to include an assignment to visit with
sites involved with various feminist projects to learn what they do, the
questions raised, etc. Astonishing for me was the help some New York City
students needed to locate sites.
    BTW, I gained new perspectives on issues as I moved around India where
people live (including my own middle-middle-class neighborhood) and
attended workshops and conferences.
>

I think that this is a very complex issue.  I am often approached by students
who are interested in working in the non-profit sector upon graduating from
college.  They usually find that most of the jobs for new college graduates
pay very poorly. One student, an older (late 20s) woman who had left a
successful career in business to go back to school and get her B.A. was
in shock when she started to apply for jobs only to find that that they paid in
the low 20s. Unless you are young and unattached (this particular woman
has a ten year-old daughter), you can't afford to live on that kind of
salary.  The women who are in the highly visible non-profit jobs--
the head of Planned Parenthood. for instance, either put in a long
apprenticeship working for next to nothing or they have a partner/husband who
is subsidizing their work.
 
When I was the action coordinator for California NOW during the 1980s, the only
officer with a salary was the state coordinator and I believe, if memory serves
me correctly, that she was barely making $30,000 in the last year of her
term. The personal debt incurred just to take a job like that was terrific.
(And at that time, California NOW had 25,000 members.
 
Encouraging students to become involved in the community, teaching courses
that include service learning is probably a better way to encourage activism
than to encourage young people to become professional activists.  Even
students who go  to law school with the intention of working for community
organizations, becoming public interest lawyers or public defenders are in
for a rude shock when they finish school. Non-profit organizations and public
defender offices have their pick of the very best students from the very best
law schools: There are few opening for non-profit lawyers. Again, the best
opportunities are for those willing to work in a firm that will allow
them to do some pro bono work. THAT was the shock I got when I graduated
from law school.
 
There is a great deal more to say about this subject but we have limited
space. I would be willing to join a panel on this subject if anyone else
is interested.
 
____________________________________________________________
Rosa Maria Pegueros, Ph.D.           pegueros  @  uriacc.uri.edu
Department of History and Women's Studies Program
University of Rhode Island           phone: (401) 874-4092
80 Upper College Road,  Suite 3        fax: (401) 874-2595
Kingston, RI 02881
                            "Qui me amat, amat et canem meum."

I found this comment somewhat sad:
"....jobs only to find that that they paid in the low 20s. Unless you are
young and unattached,[...] you can't afford to live on that kind of salary."
while it is a worthwhile goal to work toward good wages for all jobs and a
rising standard of living for all workers, I think we should remember that
in fact, thousands of American individuals/families ARE living on "that
kind of salary," often in return for work that is physically more demanding
and far less satisfying than that found in non-profit service
organizations.  Others have chosen voluntary simplicity in their lives, and
find that conscious decisions about what kind of relationship you want with
a consumer culture can lead to a realization that a low wage can be enough.
JoAnn Castagna
joann-castagna  @  uiowa.edu

When I was a legal services attorney back in the early Reagan Era, we
often confronted the problem of "impact" (or activist) v.  "service"
cases.  An impact case dealt with a large issue, with the hope that it
would change laws or practices for a large number of people, while service
cases were individual in scope. If we took on an impact case, which
required a large investment of our resources, it meant that we could
handle far fewer service cases.  For the individual client, the service
case was just as important as the impact case.  However, we never had
enough resources to handle all the service cases, either; we held "case
acceptance" meetings as a form of triage.  Emptying the ocean with a
teaspoon, is how I saw it.
 
With the increased limitations placed on legal services by the Congress
and the Court, from the Reagan era to today, the option of choosing the
impact case disappeared.  One by one, our tools were taken from us: class
actions, organizing, lobbying, and now, I understand, even challenging the
constitutionality of welfare deform.  Not many remember the luxury of
choosing.
 
But even back then, our choice tended toward a dichotomous one.  The
"impact" case was a challenge designed in the heads of the folks sitting
in the central office with no client contact; the service cases were those
affecting the individuals sitting in your office.
 
The tendency toward fragmentation inherent in the legal system, and
exacerbated by the increased limitations on practice, made it difficult to
see how and when a "service" case had "impact"  potential.  When our
thinking was fragmented, we slogged through the individual problems and
solutions, a domestic violence "case", a landlord-tenant "dispute," and a
public assistance "fair hearing."  If we helped that ONE woman, there
were fifty more in the waiting room.
 
So, our perceived solution was to take on a case that would solve, once
and for all, the domestic violence situation, the landlord-tenant
situation, or the public assistance rule.  Seeing the problems as
interrelated was very difficult, and, I would argue, even more difficult
today, and not only for legal services.
 
The real imaginative work was done by those offices who used a "bottom up"
analysis of the service cases that flooded through their doors, to find
more encompassing solutions than those offered by the legal system, who
could see that finding a solution to the shortage in low cost, decent
housing or increased educational opportunities could help a woman who was
being beaten by her partner escape his abuse.
 
Perhaps in studying activism in a women's studies class, it might be
helpful to bring in histories of efforts to make connections, and to pose
the assignments in terms of connections.  There may be a host of people
out there in the community who can relate their stories.  It means opening
a critical eye (in the good sense) on community work.  There is a lot of
service work that is just plain bad, offensive, degrading to the intended
recipients. There is a lot that is painful.  And there are wonderful
successes.
 
 
Celia Winkler
Department of Sociology
University of Montana
Missoula, MT  59812-1047
Office: (406) 243-5863
Fax:    (406) 243-5951
cwinkler  @  selway.umt.edu

At 08:23 AM 7/20/98 -0500, you wrote:
>I found this comment somewhat sad:
>"....jobs only to find that that they paid in the low 20s. Unless you are
>young and unattached,[...] you can't afford to live on that kind of salary."
>while it is a worthwhile goal to work toward good wages for all jobs and a
>rising standard of living for all workers, I think we should remember that
>in fact, thousands of American individuals/families ARE living on "that
>kind of salary," often in return for work that is physically more demanding
>and far less satisfying than that found in non-profit service
>organizations.  Others have chosen voluntary simplicity in their lives, and
>find that conscious decisions about what kind of relationship you want with
>a consumer culture can lead to a realization that a low wage can be enough.
>JoAnn Castagna
>joann-castagna  @  uiowa.edu
 
I found the above comment equally sad. I find it patronizing to assume you
know what other people may need.  Someone with children needs more money
than someone who is single; someone who has a physical disability may need
more.  Any kind of ill health can require large amounts of money which
nobody is about to give you.  Any kind of calamity can happen at any age,
and not being able to provide for college or the future is nothing to
encourage in women.  Far too women are savvy not about money and find
themselves in dire straits later in life -- most people living in poverty in
old age are women, not only because we may live longer, but because we make
less and are less able to put money away.
 
Many Americans do not make enough money to be safe and comfortable, but that
is something we should be changing, not emulating.  It is not fair that ANY
woman has to choose between health insurance and oil delivery, between
aspirin and milk.  My parents could not afford to take me to the dentist in
my childhood or my adolescence, and I'll live with the results of that till
the day I die.  I know so many women who have to make impossible choices
with too little money to imagine it is something anyone should have to face
unless the woman chooses it -- for herself.
>
>

Last week, I asked the following question: "Each year, when I teach Intro
to WS, I have at least one student (& usually many more) insisting that men
& women are now equal in every area of life.  And so, to stimulate
discussion & (hopefully) challenge that misconception, I'm looking for
accessible articles that discuss gender disparities in politics & government."
 
THANKS to everyone who made suggestions--both privately & to the list.
Since many people asked that I share replies with the list, I include below
the suggestions made to me privately.  I've broken the replies into two
messages. This message contains printed texts. The next message contains
recommended films.
 
Have a great week.    AnaLouise Keating (nalouise.keating  @  enmu.edu)
 
I do not have any specific articles i can refer you too because your
question is so broad, but you might check out the journal WOMEN AND
POLITICS which is indexed in a variety of places - including PAIS (Public
Affairs Information Service) and several Abstract Services.  If your
university has the journal, the list of indexes is in the front of the
Journal.  An American Government text that is good in covering gender is
Welch, Gruhl, Steinman, Comer... Understanding American Government.  This
should have info on the lack of representation of women in Congress and the
top levels of the executive branch - even the courts.  There are
recent texts available on women's participation - we participate as much as
men, just differently.
      kate greene
 
This seems self-serving, but.....In my edited book, Subtle Sexism: Current
Practices and Prospects for Change (Sage, 1997), all the articles are
geared toward convincing students (not faculty), that not only is blatant
sexism alive and well in politics, education, the military, etc. but that
subtle discrimination underlies much of the "gee-we're-all-equal-now"
perspective that many students endorse. You might find some
thought-provoking articles in the book.
    nijole (niki) benokraitis, sociology, u of baltimore
    nbenokraitis  @  ubmail.ubalt.edu
 
I've found it useful to start with Joan W. Scott's article about the
meaning of equality (as understood through a postmodernist analytical
process) (I think that it is in a collection on feminist thought, ed. by
Virginia Held) -- what does it mean to argue for equality for beings who
are demonstrably different -- and then to go through the main points of the
"Platform for
Action" (special ed., Women's Studies Quarterly, 1996), as to how
inequality can be created/reproduced (and is still ongoing). I've also
found it useful to then pick a number of areas (health, peace, employment,
justice, etc.), depending on the size of the class, and divide the students
into groups, each to prepare a report card on how far along we are towards
a fair,
caring, equitable and sustainable society of communities (with each group
having to report on their report card, and the measures which they use for
evaluation). This exercise is accompanied by a list of resource materials
on indicators (e.g., "Women in Canada" (3rd ed), Economic Gender Equality
Indicators (both Cndn. gov. pubs)), and a checklist of points to consider
re equality (e.g., self-determination, self-accomplishment,
community-responsibility). This seems to defuse the either/or aspects,
allows students to question both/all gender constructions, and puts the
debate at a peer level.
 
As to accessible articles: in Ms. there was an article about what women
have reached during the past 25 years and what they have not reached yet.
It was in the 25th-anniversary-number last
year (Vol 8 No. 2, Sept./oct. 1997) What regards international
politics/international relations both books by D'Amico and Beckmann are
easy to read for beginners. Beckmann, Peter R., Francine D'Amico (eds.),
Women, Gender and World Politics: Perspectives, Policies and Prospects;
Westport (CT), London: Bergin & Garvey, 1994. (this one is about why
women's perspective is
important and about feminist theory/ies).  D'Amico, Francine, Peter, R.
Beckman, Women in World Politics; Westport (CT), London: Bergin & Garvey,
1994. (and this one is about more and
less famous female ploliticians)
 
You can also find useful information at the homepage of the
Interparlamentary Union (eg the number of women in parliaments worldwide,
the times when women got the vote etc) http://www.ipu.org/ And you can also
try at the U.N. women page: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/un/
 
Well, the figures make their own case: per cent of women in both Houses of
Congress, and so on.
The best place to go might be the Rutgers Center for the Study of American
Women and Politics -- for info., that is.
 
I am afraid I write on feminist thought now so am not up to date with
recent articles etc., but I'd have thought any Intro to Women's Studies
text will make the non-governmental point. (The White House might help out:
I haven't checked their Web Site lately.)
    Or the collection of syllabi at umdd -- U of Maryland, same url as this
list; I think you can go straight to inform, but you may have to go to umdd
(umd?).edu then to Depts then to Info then to women's studies.
Judy Evans                      jae2  @  york.ac.uk
 
I don't have a reading, but I have a discussion question.  Ask the students
if "women equal men" sounds the same to them as "men equal women."  They
usually argue that it does/should.  However, I bring this up all through
the semester and at the end they are willing to accept that, in our
society, the two statements do not really mean the same thing.
Virginia Norris
South Dakota State University
norris  @  starpoint.net

Hello again,
 
Below you'll find suggestions for films that assist students in
understanding women's progress (or lack thereof) in political issues.
 
AnaLouise Keating
 
Women Make Movies also has a number of films, including
Women in Politics
A six-part series by Lowri Gwilym
1989 6 x 40 minutes Color, Video
England
 
Produced by BBC Television, Women in Politics is a major international
series of documentaries about women politicians.  Profiles of six women who
run the gamut of political involvement_from those who were thrown into
politics by historical circumstance and dynastic succession to career
politicians- all raise important questions about women and power and what
it means to enter the world of male-dominated political institutions. The
six women profiled are: Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, Corazon
Aquino, former President of the Philippines, the inventor of perestroika
Tatyana Zaslavskaya, the Prime Ministerof the Commonwealth of Dominica for
over a decade Dame Mary Eugenia Charles, Simone Veil, one of France's most
popular politicians, and member of the Icelandic parliament Dr. Gudrun
Agnarsdottir.
 
Voices of Change
A 5-part series by
Lyn Wright and Barbara Doran
92 minutes
1996
Color, Video
Canada, Subtitled
An wide ranging examination both of individual activism and issues facing
women worldwide this inspiring five-part documentary offers invaluable
insights into the realities of international feminism.  As women discuss
their work for native and worker's rights, educational equity, and the
search for free expression, they connect their activism to past and future
familial and cultural traditions: In Australia, Barbara Cummings grew up in
a state-run Mission as part of a social policy of forced assimilation.
After attending the college where she had worked as a cleaning lady and
writing a book about her experiences, she has become a leader in the
Aboriginal rights movement.  In Guatemala, Sandra Gonzalez risked her life
by demonstrating to bring the
union to the clothing factory where she works.  As she raises her two sons
and continues her union and factory work, she studies for her degree in
union law. In Latvia, Mara Kimele has endured blacklisting and constant
funding struggles to direct theater that nourishes the souls of her people.
 Offering a potent analysis of women's lives under various occupying
regimes, she articulates a creative vision of Latvia's tumultuous recent
history. In Pakistan, renowned lawyer and human right activist Asthma
Jahangir braves death threats to fight for the rights of rape victims,
bonded laborers, and accused blasphemers.  Winner of the Martin Ennals
Human Rights Award, she uses her work as a platform from which to lobby
against women's mistreatment.In Canada, Hong Kong immigrant Tam Gooseen's
work as community organizer culminates in her election as the first
non-white School Trustee in the school system attended by her 16 year old
daughter.  Taking inspiration from her mother's struggle, Taking
inspiration from her mother's example, daughter Carolyn works to increase
awareness of diversity in her school. 
 
Kate Kirtz
Educational Marketing and Sales Coordinator
Women Make Movies

Apparently Hagolem and I are on the same wavelength. I too have suffered the
effects of poor dental care because of my impoverished childhood. Moreover,
I do not discourage my students from their idealism but I do try to give them
a realistic view of what they can expect. Before coming to academia, I worked
in a number of worthy causes (welfare advocacy, women's movement advocacy,
coordinating a program for homeless people)  and none of them paid me a living
wage.  I will pay for those choices when I retire and have inadequate retire-
ment savings. Every day I pay for the effects of the head injury I received
when I was beaten by the police while coordinating a program for the homeless.
 
Voluntary simplicity is laudable but few--VERY few--people can choose it
without paying enormous consequences for it. For instance, are you aware of
S.O.A.R.--Save Our Aging Religious? It is an organization dedicated to
finding the funds to support elderly nuns, many of whom staffed Catholic
schools and hospitals. They lived simply and now they barely have enough to
function at all.
 
Furthermore, working for a non-profit is no panacea, nor is it necessarily
pleasant. You are at the mercy of donors who use their money to manipulate
the professional directors, often throwing their weight around simply because
they can.
 
Our college students, (and at URI, many of them come from working class back-
grounds) have the expectation that graduation from college will help them get
jobs that will render them at least as comfortable as their parents. Assuming
that the overwhelming majority will do so rather than choosing "voluntary
simplicity," focussing their attention on the needs in society and their
opportunities to fill those needs through service or charity is the best use of
our time with them.
 
____________________________________________________________
Rosa Maria Pegueros, Ph.D.           pegueros  @  uriacc.uri.edu
Department of History and Women's Studies Program
University of Rhode Island           phone: (401) 874-4092
80 Upper College Road,  Suite 3        fax: (401) 874-2595
Kingston, RI 02881
                            "Qui me amat, amat et canem meum."

I would also suggest the documentary, "Wilma Mankiller," produced by Women
Make Movies, for a course/section on women in politics. It features Wilma
Mankiller, Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
 
-Cari Carpenter
 
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
 
Cari Carpenter
Graduate Student Instructor
English/Women's Studies
University of Michigan
 
carimc  @  umich.edu
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
 

Dear Women's Studies List:
 
> Encouraging students to become involved in the community, teaching courses
> that include service learning is probably a better way to encourage activism
> than to encourage young people to become professional activists.
 
I agree, Rosa. Professional activism takes lots of special talent and
resources.  Few of us have the stamina for it. :-)  However, we can all
make a difference in our communities.  I think we must show students how
to think globally, act locally.  The opportunities are endless.
 
We feminists in corporate America live "in the closet".  But we still
do lots of activism after hours.  I regularly gave speeches about
feminist issues, including feminism itself, when I was active in
Toastmasters.  That experience gave me the courage to talk about
feminism to friends, boyfriends and the like.  Just for fun, I went into
a singles chatroom and started talking about patriarchy.  Several years
ago, I did some underground activism at work when I secretly complained
to the HR department about girlie pictures in colleagues' offices.
 
I'd be willing to share my volunteer activist experiences with
interested WS students.  In particular, I'd like to share my experiences
in dealing with unstable organizations, burnout, frustration, betrayal,
and finding your own activist "style".  I was quite shocked to find that
most social justice organizations are understaffed and unstable.  It
took me a long time to get used to it.
 
Academic and non-academic feminists need to get together and do more
networking.  Since I'm not an academic, I couldn't chair a NWSA panel.
But I'm open to sharing my experiences at some future convention.
 
Joanne Callahan
jmcalla1  @  airmail.net

Dear women friends,
 
I have been fllowing the activism thead with interest.  My students and I
started a nonprofit Communty Development Corp out of feminist ideas in our
Race, Class, and Gender Studies program which we think of as activism
although it does provide some services.  As a broad set of categories we
make the following distinctions.  Service is typical of agencies, does not
change the sturcture of society and meets the needs of people according to
what the caregiver thinks is best.  Within this category, of course, there
is abroad range of poor to great service depending on the will/perspective
of the service provider.  Much of service is absolutely necessary and
activism takes the role of helping the service provider be more responsive
to the self defined needs of the recipient rather than their own "expert"
opinion of what is needed.
 
Community organizing gets a community together
to "force" an organization to "fix" something for them. The organization
being pressured is often a government body and the fixing usually involves
changing the law, providing more funding, and/or providing new or better
programs.  Once again this does not necessarily change the structure of
society nor does it empower new leaders since often existing community
leaders are the one's organized.  Nonetheless, this too is often essential
given the inequities of power and resources.
 
Finally, there is community dvelopment.  This is where community people
define their own problems, assess their own skills, capacities, and
resources and come up with solutions that meet their definition of the
problem.  They may use "expert" service providers as a resource, they may
organize to get some organization or government agency to help with
funding or programming but the bottom line is that local people provide
whatever is needed to themselves based on their definition of what they
need and what they want.  This both empowers new leaders and shifts power
away from "expert groups" to people in the community.  This does change
the structure of society.
 
To look more closely at these ideas I suggest Hinsdale, Lewis and Waller
IT COMES FROM THE PEOPLE Temple U Press, Belenky THE TRADITION THAT HAS
NO NAME Basic Books, and McKnight THE CARELESS SOCIETY, Arnold's
ORGAQINIZING FOR CAHNGE Between the Lines Press.  Also check
into National Congress of Neighborhood Women.
 
From this we have concluded that a big part of what makes a project
activism is the consciousness that one
brings to it that one is acting in parity with others to diminsh social
injustice and economic inequity not the particular type of activity one is
engaged in.
 
Nelda K. Pearson
Prof. Dept of Soc/Anth
Chair, Race, Class, and Gender Studies
Radford University
Radford, VA.24142
npearson  @  runet.edu