Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Any Change In Sexist Texts? Feminist Press Staff Survey Education Publishers, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

Are American publishers planning to do anything about the sexist bias found in their textbooks?

In order to answer this question, two Feminist Press staff members—Merle Froschl and Phyllis Arlow—conducted interviews this spring with 37 representatives of 15 New York educational publishers encompassing (with their subsidiaries and divisions) more than 200 educational publishers.

The study followed a more comprehensive investigation by Feminist Press staff of the state of sexism in the high school English and social studies curriculum. This larger study, initiated in September 1973, was conducted with the help of a generous planning grant from the Rockefeller Family Fund.

Women's Studies And The Community: Some Models, Catherine Stimpson

Women's Studies Quarterly

One of the virtues of Female Studies VII (The Feminist Press, 1973) is that it enhances our awareness of the fact that women's studies is in a new phase. Among the features of that phase are: 1) an international interest in women's studies; 2) more respect from foundations and government agencies; 3) a concern for women in the curriculum of secondary and primary schools; 4) a worry about both the continuing hostility and indifference on the part of traditional academics and the danger that apparent converts may be little more than exploitative bandwagoneers; 5) consolidation within existing programs; and finally, …

Seattle Schools Clean House, Deirdre O'Neill

Women's Studies Quarterly

Credit for awakening the Seattle schools' feminist consciousness lies with 55 women physical education teachers and coaches, who three years ago cried foul. Frustrated and angered over long-standing sex discrimination against women employees and students, they filed a complaint with the Washington State Human Rights Commission (HRC).

During the two and a half years of investigation by HRC, 40 of the women originally involved in the suit left the district. The persistence of the remaining 15 was rewarded by the recently signed conciliation agreement which promises corrective action by women and girls in physical education and athletic programs. In addition, …

Administering A Women's Studies Program, Juanita H. Williams

Women's Studies Quarterly

The essay that follows answers some of the questions posed in last issue's Editorial. It was first read at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association in August 1973. Comments in the form of correspondence or essays will be welcome.

The Women's Studies Program at the University of South Florida completed its first full year of operation in August 1973; and concomitantly, I concluded my first year as an administrator of the Program. Is administering a women's studies program any different from administering a history or an economics department? In some respects not. All department chairpersons and program directors …

Slide Protest, Lallo

Women's Studies Quarterly

A poem.

News From The Campus, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

The list of official women's studies programs is still growing (see additions below), and so is the number of innovative college courses and facilities offered for women. Here are a few examples we found especially interesting.

National Conference On In-Service Education, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

The Feminist Press has announced it will sponsor the nation's first Conference on In-Service Education to be conducted November 21-23 on the campus of SUNY/College at Old Westbury.

The focus of the conference will be sex-role stereotyping and the teaching of history and literature. Delegates from the school systems of nine major cities are expected to participate.

International News: Four New Feminist Presses, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

In the last few months, we have received announcements of the founding of feminist presses in England, Japan, Germany and France.

Back Matter, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Introducing High School Students To The Women's Movement, Sharon Henricks,, Etta Magnusen, Jodi Wetzel

Women's Studies Quarterly

But every time I got into an argument with either a chauvinist male or a chauvinist female, I found I lacked the arguments to support my point. I found that some people don't believe that discrimination is wrong or that everyone should have an equal chance. This class gave me good, solid arguments.—a college student.

For the second year the Minnesota Women's Center (MWC) and the Living-Learning Center (LLC, a part of University College) at the University of Minnesota are offering a directed-study project, "Introducing High School Students to the Women's Movement." Two main goals of the two-quarter, six …

Addition: La Mujer: En Pie De Lucha, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Teaching In The Community Classroom, Toni Mester

Women's Studies Quarterly

Despite academic chauvinism in women's studies, it is possible to teach off-campus and get paid. As an hourly instructor in women's literature for the San Francisco Community College District, I have been able to help raise feminist consciousness in the community and draw a part-time professional wage. I created my job myself, although I share its economic insecurity with hundreds of other "hourlies" in local community colleges. The benefits—flexibility, autonomy, and student variety—may encourage others to seek or invent similar work.

In 1968, with an M.A. in English, teaching credentials, and not much hope of teaching in the job-tight Bay …

Feminism At A Rural University: A Report From The University Of Idaho, Cheri Register

Women's Studies Quarterly

Moscow, Idaho, the dried pea and lentil capital of the world, is situated between Potlatch and Genesee, 85 miles southeast of Spokane, Washington. Its population is 13,000, a figure that must include a good share of the 7,000 students at the University of Idaho. It is not listed in national feminist catalogs—a lack that is due less to the failure of local feminist efforts than to the urban bias prevalent in the women's movement.

In my two years with the University of Idaho Women's Center, I watched—and, I hope, helped—a new spurt of feminism take hold in Moscow. I spent …

Review Of The Feminist Papers: From Adams To De Beauvoir By Alice S. Rossi, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

THE FEMINIST PAPERS: FROM ADAMS TO DE BEAUVOIR, edited by Alice S. Rossi (Columbia University Press, 1973: $12.95; Bantam, 1974: $1.95), will be welcomed as a text by teachers and students in need of a single collection of "essential" feminist writing both by theorists and activists. Chronicling the two hundred years of western feminist thought, this 716-page volume is impressive for its inclusiveness: twenty-two writers, plus selections from the History of Woman Suffrage.

Schools: News And Resources, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

Another U.S. Congressperson, Senator Charles C. Percy, has introduced legislation to promote equal educational opportunities for women. The Women's Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974, like the Women's Educational Equity Act introduced by Representative Patsy Mink and Senator Walter Mondale, "is an attempt to call a halt to the processes that have robbed women of their potential. ... " Senator Percy contends that landmark laws such as Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 are alone not enough to ensure equal educational opportunity for women. While the Mink and Mondale bill will "create a new program to support a …

Evaluating A Women's Studies Course, Joan Borod, Susan Dorsky, Carol Hull, Ellen Keller

Women's Studies Quarterly

Some fifty women attended the first Women's Studies Evaluation Conference in June 1973, at Wesleyan University. About half had previously taught women's studies courses. Literature and the social sciences were heavily represented; there were no hard scientists. We came with questions about the value, even the possibility, of evaluating women's studies courses and programs. We wondered whether any measuring technique could isolate one class as the cause of change in a student. We questioned social science methodology, and we speculated about possible alternative methodologies.

Project Focuses On Women In Higher Education, Margaret C. Dunkle

Women's Studies Quarterly

The Project on the Status and Education of Women began in September of 1971 when the Association of American Colleges hired Dr. Bernice Sandler as Project Director. The Project—the first nationally funded project focusing on women in higher education—is funded through August 1976 by the Danforth Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Exxon Education Foundation.

Review Of Hillbilly Women By Kathy Kahn, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

HILLBILLY WOMEN by Kathy Kahn (Doubleday, 1973: $7.95) "tells what it means to be a woman when you are poor, when you are proud, and when you are a hillbilly." This book focuses on women who are usually left out of feminist discussions of oppression: poor and working class white women who live in the Southern Mountain region.

Review Of Fragment From A Lost Diary And Other Stories: Women Of Asia, Africa, And Latin America By Naomi Katz, Nancy Milton, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

FRAGMENT FROM A LOST DIARY AND OTHER STORIES: WOMEN OF ASIA, AFRICA, AND LATIN AMERICA, edited by Naomi Katz and Nancy Milton (Pantheon, 1973: $10.00), contains twenty powerful stories (one of them in verse) thematically organized to catch the changing lives of women, chiefly in Asia (eleven stories) and Africa (seven stories). Such lives are bound not only to marriage, family, custom, and poverty, but to struggles for freedom in resistance movements above and below ground.

Review Of The Women, Yes! By Marie B. Hecht, Joan D. Berbrich, Salley A. Healey, Clare M. Cooper, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

THE WOMEN, YES! by Marie B. Hecht, Joan D. Berbrich, Salley A. Healey, and Clare M. Cooper (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973: paperback, $5.95) is the first interdisciplinary feminist high school textbook on women. In four units of seven to nine chapters each, the editors offer analyses of major social and institutional forces which define and discriminate against women (advertising, history, law, economics, religion, sports, the arts, language); significant documents from the movement for women's rights; excerpts from American literature that portray women young and old; and recent essays by feminists involved in the current women's rights movement.

Michele Murray (1934-1974), The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

Feminist, novelist, poet, and critic, Michele Murray died of cancer on March 14, at the age of 40. Book editor for the National Observer, she also published a fine literary anthology, A House of Good Proportion: Images of Women in Literature, and two children's books, Nellie Cameron and The Crystal Nights (see review in Women's Studies Newsletter, Vol. II, no. 1 ). She was an early and warm friend of The Feminist Press. We print below most of a letter she wrote in response to our first News/Notes in the fall of 1971.

Analyzing Physical Education For Equality, Jean L. Ambrose

Women's Studies Quarterly

On his last day in office, New Jersey's Governor William T. Cahill signed into law A823, a bill prohibiting discrimination in the public schools of the State. The bill states simply:

No pupil in a public school in this State shall be discriminated against in admission to, or in obtaining any advantages, privileges or courses of study of the school by reason of race, color, creed, sex or national origin.

Editorial, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

It's been a year since our last editorial. We continue to receive encouragement about the Newsletter especially from people who like the mix of news about elementary, secondary, and higher education. But we wonder about the fact that we've had no negative criticism of our coverage or our features. And we're sorry, frankly, that we've been able to provoke no debate, and only a trickle of correspondence from our readers. In the interest of provoking such debate or correspondence, we offer several clusters of questions that need answering. We hope you'll try one or more of these.

Teaching About Black Women Writers, Barbara Smith

Women's Studies Quarterly

As a Black female who is also a graduate student in English, I have always felt outside the mainstream of Anglo-Saxon male consciousness which pervades the course materials I have been required to investigate. My long and deep involvement with Afro-American literature has been individually fulfilling, but I have never had a course in it nor gained the impression that white scholars view it as anything approaching valid art. Women's literature also strikes a responsive chord, but with both sets of non-mainstream writers there have been problems for me. I am not a Black male, but a female; I am …

News From The Campus, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

On the basis of our travels and correspondence, we can say with confidence that new women's studies programs continue to be organized. At Western Michigan University, for instance, at Oberlin, at Ohio State University (from which we receive the excellent library bi-monthly, Women are Human), at Kent State University, at Case-Western Reserve University, at St. Olaf College, at the University of Texas/Arlington, there are official or unofficial faculty women's studies committees working this year either on the writing of a formal proposal or on its implementation. At two eastern women's colleges—Wheaton and Simmons—a lecture series will focus on aspects …

Women's Studies At Suny/Albany, June E. Hahner

Women's Studies Quarterly

Women's studies at the State University of New York at Albany began in the fall of 1971 with a course on Women in Modern Literature offered through the School of General Studies. The following fall the faculty Women's Caucus at SUNY/Albany formed a subcommittee to develop a women's studies program, which by the spring of 1973 offered an undergraduate minor. We now face new decisions.

Self-Portrait: Feminist Dean, Adrian Tinsley

Women's Studies Quarterly

The following was a presentation at the Modern Language Association's convention in December 1973, under the heading, "Life Styles of Academic Women." We hope to print other portraits in future issues.

The token number of women in administration is increasing in a token way, at least in state and land-grant universities, according to a report from the National Association of Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. Eight hundred and sixty-four women held major administrative positions in 1972-73; while two years earlier, in 1970-71, sixty percent of the state universities and land-grant colleges surveyed had no women administrators who met the criteria of …

News Briefs, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Trade Union Consciousness Grows Among Women, Rosalyn Baxandall

Women's Studies Quarterly

An historic occasion: more than three thousand women from every state, representing at least 58 different trade unions, met in Chicago on March 23 25 to found the first Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW). Regional preparatory meetings had been held in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. For about one-quarter of the women present, this was their first trade union conference.

Correction: Foundation Grants To Women's Groups, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.