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September 28, 2009
Four themes are umbrella for gender work

Dona Yarbrough is director of the Center for Women at Emory.

The Center for Women at Emory is entering the new academic year with lot of… well… newness. Over the past year, we have redefined our focus, created a new Advisory Council, trimmed our budget (hasn’t everyone?), and developed new programs.

Perhaps you’re not really sure what exactly the Center for Women does, but are afraid to ask? We help Emory provide the best possible environment for women as students, faculty and staff. Reporting to the Provost’s Office, we serve every school and unit of Emory — with only three full-time employees, no less! We promote gender equity throughout the University; provide resources and skill-building opportunities; and bring community members together to examine gender issues and work toward ethical solutions.

We are particularly committed to thinking about how gender intersects with our many other identities and circumstances — such as race, class, sexuality and disability — and recognizing gender as a social construction that exceeds the traditional man/woman binary.

We’ve chosen to organize our work under these four themes:

• Academic Scholarship: We support scholarship related to women and gender and make it available and useful outside of academia. You can see this goal at work, for example, in our new online-only version of our biannual publication, Women’s News and Narratives. (Contact Roslyn.sledge@emory.edu to get WNN delivered to your inbox.) Focused on gender-based violence, the issue features research by Emory faculty and students, as well as stories about how our personal experiences with violence shape our work and our lives.

• Global Engagement: We connect Emory to global women’s issues and use technology to create a global learning environment. On Oct. 15, we will co-sponsor a Luminaries lecture by the internationally acclaimed anthropologist Veena Das, who will be exploring the global public performance of violence. We’ll also launch our new Web site in October.

• Education: We provide practical educational programs related to women’s physical, mental, spiritual and financial health. For example, on Oct. 21 we’ll present the second workshop in our annual Women’s Health and Wellness Series: “Empowering Women to Have Positive Intimate Relationships.” We will also be supporting Take Back the Night programs in October.

• Leadership Development: We prepare diverse groups of women to be leaders and prepare all genders to be leaders in gender equality. On Oct. 7, we’ll explore ethical leadership with a talk by anti-war activist and author Ann Wright. We also support leadership development by advising undergraduate and graduate women’s groups, including Feminists in Action and our discussion groups for Women of Color, Queer Women and International Women.

The programs mentioned above are just a tiny taste of what the Center for Women has to offer. Find us at womenscenter.emory.edu for more information. To hear more about the Center’s work in relation to a broad spectrum of community and diversity initiatives at Emory, join us for “Exploring Race and Difference at Emory” on Oct. 2: See rdi.emory.edu for details.