| UI Women's Center: feminism (un)defined |
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| Written by Megan Broyles - Argonaut | ||||||
| Thursday, 26 March 2009 | ||||||
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One mission of the University of Idaho Women’s Center is to share the female experience. Every month, the group invites the community to watch a film made by women, about women. Golden Globe-winning “Iron Jawed Angels” screened this semester, and the winner of the Sundance Film Festival award for Best Documentary was shown in February, just before this year’s performance of “The Vagina Monologues.” “Just like all the programs at the Women’s Center, we’re showing films that affect women and girls globally,” Interim Director of the Women’s Center, Heather Shea-Gasser said. “We intentionally choose films that expose the university population to different topics.” “Water,” an Indian film about widows and their place in a caste society, will show mid-day Wednesday at the Student Diversity Center. Shea-Gasser said the turnouts for the events are OK, but would like to get more student involvement in the Women’s Center. “I really feel that we would like to enlist a new generation of student activism centered around the work we do here,” she said. The biggest event of the year at the center will come over two days, April 6 and 7, when Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner come to Moscow. Richards and Baumgardner are authors and third-wave feminists coming to speak to Idaho students and the community. One of the topics to be tackled is the task of the general population to find “a feminism that resonates with the individual.” In other words, the challenge someone is faced with when looking at feminism is finding the sliver of feminist ideology that agrees the most with them. The term “feminism” has had bad connotations for years, Communication Studies professor Annette Folwell said. Folwell teaches COMM 432, gender and communication. In her class, she uses a column written by Leonard Pitts called “I am a feminist: many women shun the label but support the values.” In the column, Pitts described how his daughter reacted when he asked if she considered herself a feminist. “This, by the way,” Pitts wrote, “is the daughter with the 3.75 GPA who is currently pondering possible college majors including political science, psychology and ... women’s studies.” Pitts said the foundations of feminism are the things most people as a whole endorse: integration, child labor laws and product safety, but people treat the label “feminism” like a dirty word. “Feminism is really individual,” Shea-Gasser said. “A lot of people don’t think they’ll connect because there is a part they don’t agree with.” Through events at the Women’s Center, Shea-Gasser wants to reverse this trend. “(Anyone) who is interested in social justice as a whole should look to the Women’s Center,” she said.  Add as favorites (36) | Views: 623
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