Drury on-campus gender equity issues
Posters provoke a response across DU community
Greta Brown and Matthew Frierdich
Issue date: 3/17/10 Section: News
Posters hung in honor of International Women's Day were torn down and written on in Burnham, Lay and Springfield Halls last week.
Members of Drury's American Association of University Women (AAUW) developed posters modeled after Peggy McIntosh's "Invisible Knapsack" to enlighten the campus on gender issues that are still relevant to Drury's campus and to the greater community.
The posters provoked quite a response. Over the next days, a number of posters were torn down or written on across campus. Additionally, other posters expressing opposition to the feminist movement were hung next to the male privilege posters.
Dr. Teresa Hornsby, a professor of religion, explained that as she talked and thought about issues of gender equity on campus, she became interested in the different experiences of men and women.
"I've been fascinated lately on how some women and men have very different communication styles," said Hornsby, "I've been thinking about ways to communicate the idea that many of us are trying to reach the same goals, but we just go about it differently and at times, are at a loss understanding the other side."
Hornsby decided to generate a list of observations that described some of the differences between the male and female experience. She based her observations on Peggy McIntosh's list of white privileges that differ from the experiences of persons of color.
"[McIntosh] came to realize that she was able to enjoy certain privileges simply because she had white skin. It made me wonder if there was a way that I could point out that some women at Drury do not experience life at Drury in the same ways as their male counterparts," explained Hornsby.
After removing outdated or unrelated statements from her list, Hornsby submitted 15 ideas to the Drury chapter of the AAUW so they could add their own observations to the list.
"At the same time, but apart from this, we were trying to generate ideas on how to celebrate International Women's Day," said Hornsby, "So some of the female faculty got the idea that we could post the observations just to get people to think about some of the ways that some men at Drury may experience their day to day lives differently than women."
Members of Drury's American Association of University Women (AAUW) developed posters modeled after Peggy McIntosh's "Invisible Knapsack" to enlighten the campus on gender issues that are still relevant to Drury's campus and to the greater community.
The posters provoked quite a response. Over the next days, a number of posters were torn down or written on across campus. Additionally, other posters expressing opposition to the feminist movement were hung next to the male privilege posters.
Dr. Teresa Hornsby, a professor of religion, explained that as she talked and thought about issues of gender equity on campus, she became interested in the different experiences of men and women.
"I've been fascinated lately on how some women and men have very different communication styles," said Hornsby, "I've been thinking about ways to communicate the idea that many of us are trying to reach the same goals, but we just go about it differently and at times, are at a loss understanding the other side."
Hornsby decided to generate a list of observations that described some of the differences between the male and female experience. She based her observations on Peggy McIntosh's list of white privileges that differ from the experiences of persons of color.
"[McIntosh] came to realize that she was able to enjoy certain privileges simply because she had white skin. It made me wonder if there was a way that I could point out that some women at Drury do not experience life at Drury in the same ways as their male counterparts," explained Hornsby.
After removing outdated or unrelated statements from her list, Hornsby submitted 15 ideas to the Drury chapter of the AAUW so they could add their own observations to the list.
"At the same time, but apart from this, we were trying to generate ideas on how to celebrate International Women's Day," said Hornsby, "So some of the female faculty got the idea that we could post the observations just to get people to think about some of the ways that some men at Drury may experience their day to day lives differently than women."
Article last update: 3/16/10 at 7:25 PM CST
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Emily Morgan
posted 3/25/10 @ 7:02 PM CST
What is more disturbing than this one act of poster vandalism is that during the fall of 2007 ALLIES posters were torn down and defaced. This is not an isolated events. (Continued…)
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