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Fall
Newsletter: Carly Arendall Radford University P.O. Box 7027 341 Russell Hall Radford, VA 24142 Tel: 1-540-831-6143  |
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| Inside
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| Professor
Hochstein’s dissertation is titled: Collaboration,
Commitment, and Conflict: Implementation of an Innovative Inter-Agency
Domestic Violence Program. It examines the collaborative
effort of public and private agencies to create an interdisciplinary,
inter-governmental program to address domestic violence issues in
the Spokane, Washington region. Data were collected over a three-year period using individual and focus group interviews, direct observations, and official program statistics. These data were analyzed using political science theories of new program creation. Findings suggested that when certain conditions are met, local inter-agency programs have a greater chance of being created with their original goals and structure maintained. Some of the conditions include: there is an environmental pressure for change, policymakers have previous inter-agency collaborative experience, and realize that agencies have common goals and outlooks, program leaders agree on the program goals and structure, program participants at every level are committed to programmatic success, and the program has a task force structure, that is, the disciplines involved are working together to accomplish specific goals. Other issues of interest to Dr. Hochstein are pay equity, advocate/criminal justice agency partnerships, and diversity in government agencies. |
Dr.
Suchitra Samanta Presents at the American Association of University
Women |
| Dr. Samanta will
be presenting this November at the AAUW symposium, “International
Perspectives: Global Voices for Gender Equity.” The title of
her piece is “Dowry in the context of poverty and purdah: constraints
to Muslim women’s education in a Calcutta basti [Slum].”
Her paper presents a) her general findings on the prevalence of the
custom of dowry in an impoverished Muslim community in a SW Calcutta
slum area, and the consequences of this custom for women’s education;
b) the factors responsible for relatively successful resistance to
this custom by some few young women from the basti. The larger goal
of her study, in the context of women and education, is to explore
what stands in the way of “sustainable development” for
a minority (Muslim) community in India. |
| Did
You Know? Radford
University is forming a Women’s Studies Club here on campus.
Stephanie Saunders and Christina Hyre, two undergraduate students
at Radford, founded the club. All students with and interest in
Women’s Studies or issues are encouraged and welcome to join.
For more information or to sign up for the club please visit the
Women’s Studies Club Pages at, http://www.radford.edu/~wstudies/wsclub/wsclub.htm
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| Women’s
Studies Director Hilary Lips spent the 2001-02 academic year on professional
development leave. During a year that she cites as “a wonderful
opportunity to focus on writing, scholarship, building networks and
gathering ideas,” she produced several papers on power and gender,
wrote the second edition of her book A
New Psychology of Women: Gender, Culture, and Ethnicity,
and gave a series of invited addresses in the United States and New
Zealand about the gender wage gap. Below are her comments about her
newly-published book. It is now so clear that the world is a small and interconnected place, and that we who live and work in North America have a responsibility to pay attention to the rest of the world, to listen to and learn from those whose lives are lived elsewhere. Women’s Studies and some other interdisciplinary fields have been at the forefront of a call for a more international focus in universities. My home discipline, psychology, like many others, is shifting its focus to include an awareness that our theories and research are not culture-neutral---that what any one of us thinks we know about human beings and their behavior is shaped and limited by our own culture and experience. So I felt that a book on the psychology of women, which really crosses the fields of women’s studies and psychology, had to be placed squarely within this new awareness. In this book, I definitely did not try to write the psychology of all women everywhere. That would be quite a presumptuous undertaking! What I have done is to try to provide some understanding of how gender-related expectations interact with other cultural assumptions and stereotypes, and with social and economic conditions, to affect women’s experiences and behavior. I have also included as much information as possible about women’s lives in various parts of the world as well as research by |
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perspectives from the women of different ethnicities and cultures. Working on this book has been an enriching experience for me, as I have learned so much. However, it has also been rather humbling, as I have realized, again and again, gaps in my own knowledge and understanding. Some years ago, in an article on gender skepticism in Anne Herrmann and Abigail Stewart's book Theorizing Feminism, Susan Bordo commented that our first intellectual responsibility in confronting diversity is not to construct a new theory but to adopt an attitude of humility, and listen and learn. That idea has been my touchstone in writing this book, and I hope that the book will convey that attitude to the students and faculty who read it. Web site: http://www.radford.edu/~hlips EQUAL PROTECTION OF THE LAW? GENDER AND JUSTICE IN THE UNITED STATES by Mary Atwell, Professor of Criminal Justice (Email: matwell@radford.edu), will be published in October by Peter Lang, Publishers, New York. While teaching an undergraduate course in Race and Gender Issues in Criminal Justice for almost ten years, Atwell had difficulty finding a suitable book dealing with gender issues. So she decided to write one. The title includes a question mark because Atwell believes that even today women do not enjoy equal protection under the United States constitution. Historically women were excluded from the process of making, interpreting, and enforcing the law, and despite some recent improvements, the American legal system maintains traditional inequities. These inequities are revealed when one examines commonalities and diversities in the experience of women as victims, offenders, and participants in the criminal justice system. Web site: http://www.radford.edu/~crju-web/faculty.html |
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Dr.
Mary Atwell |
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| Kristen
A. Sims Radford University has given me many opportunities academically. One of my greatest achievements, while an undergraduate at Radford, was graduating in the Spring of 2002 as one of the first Women’s Studies minors. As an English major I believed that I was learning not only about literature, but also about the world. English is a great major, because you learn about the history that surrounds what you are studying. I felt as if I were accomplishing so much with one major. Dr. Moira Baker introduced the Women’s Studies minor in one of the English classes I was taking. I found that I would be taking classes from different disciplines while learning about the struggles of women and how they have made their place in society. I was intrigued. I spoke with Dr. Baker (who teaches Women’s Studies courses) and other folks involved with the minor. I then became the first Women’s Studies minor at Radford University. Since then I
have become a well-rounded student academically, for most of my
education women were left out – ignored. For the first time,
I studied about women from all over the world, in different classes,
and different ethnicities. I learned about the struggle that women
face and what women have to do today to make it. This knowledge
has given me a reason to help further the education and status of
women in society. |
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“Women's
Studies”, it by no means excludes men. This minor gives students
both sides of the stories – not just the part of history written
by men. I believe that I have a better understanding of not only Women,
but also humanity – I know that I have become a better person. Brian Torres Jenny
Brown |
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RADFORD UNIVERSITYUpcoming Events Special Guest Speakers: |
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Monday
October 7, 1:00, Heth Lounge B, Fulbright Scholar in Residence,
Ms. Phelele Tengeni will be presenting, “Women
and Politics in South Africa". She will be addressing
the multiple layers of oppression and multi-layed victory for South
African, women, resisting apartheid, putting women on the political
agenda in the 1990’s, women in government from 1994 to date,
and the constitution and outstanding business.
Thursday October 17, 12:30-1:45, Cook 107, A Presentation by Dr. Hilary Lips, sponsored by the Center for Gender Studies. She will be presenting "Gendered Futures: University Students’ Views of their Current and Possible Selves". The presentation will focus on several years of research at the Center for Gender Studies in which students at Radford University and other institutions were asked about their academic self-views. The findings show a striking divergence between young women and men in their visions of future possibilities for themselves. Brown Bags: “The Criminal Justice Response to Elder Abuse.” Wednesday November 13, 2002 from 12:00-1:00, in the Radford Room of Heth. Presented by Dr. Lucy Hochstein. “Sexual Abuse & Attachment.” Tuesday January 21, 2003 from 11:00-12:00, in the Radford Room of Heth. Presented by Dr. Jeff Aspelmeier & Dr. Ann Elliott. “Gender and Digital Technologies.” Tuesday February 11, 2003 from 12:30-1:45, in the Virginia Room of Heth. Presented by Dr. Jeanne Mekolichick. “Are Women Still Worth Less? A Report on the Gender Pay Gap.” Monday March 3, 2003 from 12:00-1:00, in Heth Lounge A. Presented by Dr. Hilary Lips. Other
Events to watch for: The
Clothesline Project. Workshops for making T-shirts
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday Afternoon. The Clothesline will be
on display Wednesday Evening. |
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