International Women's Day - 8 March 2012
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International Women's Day has been observed since in the early 1900s, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialised world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.
Event
The Visible Women Campaign (VW) - a student-led women in leadership campaign that seeks to further raise the aspirations and achievements of women - will be holding a thought provoking event, ‘Breaking the Glass Ceiling’ at Goldsmiths, 6-8pm, Thursday 8 March. It’s free to attend, to register click here.
The theme for International Women's Day, 'Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures', is an exciting opportunity for the Visible Women Campaign to partner with Goldsmiths’ Students Union's ‘Be Pro-Active Not Re-Active’ campaign. "It shows that we as a collective can see beyond the glass ceiling to inspire and empower the next generation to do and be more while learning from women that have gone ahead and lived to tell the tale,” said Barbara Soetan, Founder, Visible Women Campaign.
We catch up with some of Goldsmiths' female academics who share insight into what has inspired them...
Dr Kate Devlin, Lecturer, Department of Computing
“I have a huge amount of respect for the women who have shaped modern computing - from the women patch cable operators programming the early computers to fantastic individuals like Grace Hopper, who invented the first compiler. Women have made a wealth of contributions to my field and I am always reminded of them when faced with surprise at being a female in a rather male-dominated area.
“One of the inspirations for my own research is a formidable Victorian woman called Adela Catherine Breton - with whom I share a name (I'm Adela Katharine) and a passion for recording archaeological art. She travelled round Mexico in the 1890s making detailed records of its murals, I am always amazed at what she achieved. I use a camera and a laser scanner to record rock art but she hand-illustrated not only accurate records but lovely pieces of art in their own right.”
Sarah Lambert, Lecturer, Department of History
‘A wild wish had just flown from my heart to my head, and I will not stifle it though it may excite a horse-laugh. – I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society. Unless where love animates the behaviour,’ Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
“This line has inspired me since I first heard it read in a small room, above a pub, back in the golden age of the history workshop. To see the recognition of this possibility, the on going for this reality calling out from the eighteenth century gave me the strength to continue the fight for a gendered understanding of history throughout the ages. Just as inspiring were the wonderful women who engaged in that struggle back in the days when academics seemed to think 'ladies' had been invented in around 1981, and had no discernable history before that.
“Imagine how further inspired I was to come across the work of Christine the Pisan, whose cry rang out from the fourteenth century: ‘If it were customary to send little girls to school and teach them the same subjects as are taught to boys, they would learn just as fully and would understand the subtleties of all arts and sciences.’
“It is a great boost to critical analysis of historical sources to know that contemporary readers were also at war with the standard, restrictive, even oppressive models of the mainstream thought of their day.
“Now I am much older, and don't go to meetings, but my daughter inspires me, because she fearlessly labels herself as a feminist, and she still thinks I am very wise!”
Dr Anna Furse, Head of Department, Department of Theatre and Performance
“In January 2010, I had an unforgettable meeting with the artist Louise Bourgeois in her home in Chelsea, New York City. When I arrived she was painting: fresh wet vermilion flowers with fat round blooms on sheets of white cartridge strewn about her messy living room. They had to be cleared to make space for chocolate cake and, on her insistence, brandy. The cake was from her birthday - she was born on Christmas Day 1911. She was 98. She was still painting, still alert and still curious about others.
“I have been inspired by many women writers and artists throughout my life, starting with Germaine Greer in 1971 whose 'Female Eunuch' changed my life. I cannot count all the many others, from Angela Davies to de Beauvoir back then, and the scores of brilliant women to have emerged as theorists, artists and writers since those early formative years of feminist politicisation.
“Meeting Louise has inspired me to the thought that women artists and intellectuals do not retire. They just grow older. Our work continues…”
Dr Claudia Bernard, Head of Postgraduate Studies, Senior Lecturer in Social Work
“As a feminist entering higher education as a new academic in 1991, Patricia Hill-Collins' ‘Learning From the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought’, significantly influenced how I made sense of my positioning as a black woman in what I experienced to be an inhospitable environment.
“Hill-Collins' starting point that the ‘outsider-within’ status functions to give black women unique insights and particular ways of knowing, provided me with some conceptual tools to make sense of my own lived experiences in the academic setting. It has thus been an important concept in my development as an academic.”
Professor Rosalyn George, Director for Centre Identities and Social Justice, Department of Educational Studies
“It was a few years ago when bell hooks [aka Gloria Jean Watkins] came to meet and talk to students at Goldsmiths. The lecture theatre was packed to the ceiling with students and staff, with bell hooks’ magnificent presence felt by all. There was informality about the event, which felt low key, and discussion ranged from the significance of hair and hairstyles to African Caribbean communities, to experiences of childhood and debates around mixed heritage marriages.
“However, at the core of the discussion was the importance of feminism to bell hooks and how it intersected with ‘race’ and class in shaping her life and indeed the lives of so many other women. Many argue that hooks’ book ‘Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism’, is one of the key works on feminism which challenged and critiqued second wave feminists who tended to see the feminist struggle from the view of the white middle class woman.
“Having been a school teacher myself before entering the world of higher education, it was bell hooks’ perspective as an educator which resonated with me as she also spoke about the power dynamics that she maintains are inherent in classroom and school structures. She talked about how the classroom dynamic must be ‘transformed’ in order to equalise and emancipate students and teachers, an argument she sets out in another influential text, ‘Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom’. This is a practice that has been embraced within our department.
“bell hooks has written more than 20 books and she speaks through her writing in an accessible way where she intentionally speaks to everyone. It was a privilege to meet her at Goldsmiths. Her influence on my practice as a feminist educator and teacher has been profound.”
Professor Carrie Paechter, Department of Educational Studies
“On International Women's Day, I would like to highlight the problems for women and children that are likely to occur with the proposed removal of legal aid from family law cases that do not involve officially-recognised domestic violence.
“Much domestic abuse goes unreported, and so will be unrecognised by the legislation. This measure will leave women and children open to continued bullying and coercive control, through mediation and the legal process, from men with greater resources and ability to pay for legal teams. It raises the spectre of continued abuse of vulnerable women through the court process, and is likely to result in them being coerced into unfair settlements because they do not have the resources to fight these.”
Professor Carrie Paechter, Professor Rosalyn George and Professor Angela McRobbie founded the seminar series 'Young Women in Movement: Sexualities, Vulnerabilities, Needs and Norms,' with the aim to bring together academics, policy makers, practitioners and media professionals to investigate some of the key issues in young women's lives.