Though women are participating in greater numbers at all levels of government throughout the world and have made many gains, the overall statistics "are still pretty grim," reported Edith M. Lederer, chief correspondent at the United Nations for the Associated Press, at the opening panel of the President's Council of Cornell Women's (PCCW) spring conference on campus, April 12.
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| Quirine M. Ketterings, assistant professor of crop and soil sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, describes her research to PCCW members Barbara Press Turner '55, center, and Mary-Beth De Laney-Hahn '89 at a reception for faculty April 12 in the atrium of the Biotechnology Building. Ketterings received a grant last year from PCCW's Affinito-Stewart Grant Program, established in 1992 to help advance the careers of women in academia through support of research leading to tenure. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography |
The 1963 alumna of the College of Human Ecology moderated the panel on "Global Perspectives on Women in Politics," reflecting the main theme of the conference, which focused on the roles women play in the political sphere and explored barriers that remain to their full participation.
"Less than 5 percent of the world's presidents and prime ministers are women," Lederer said, noting that the United States ranks 52nd in the world in the number of women serving in parliaments and congresses. "Unless women get more economic and political power, women's equality will remain a dream."
Valerie Bunce, chair of the Cornell Department of Government, focused on the 27 countries that made up the former Soviet Union and compared the status and well-being of women before and after the breakup. The "brutal" transition to capitalism has "wreaked havoc in women's lives," she said. Deborah A. Starr, assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies, sadly pointed out that on the day of the panel, in the Middle East, "another woman has blown herself up as a political expression." She described how many Middle Eastern women use literature as a "personalization of pain and conflict."
The situation for women in Latin America was explored by Lois Wasserspring '64, co-director of Latin American studies at Wellesley College. "We still find a growing feminization of poverty," she said, noting 70 percent of the poor are women. "There has been a tremendous mobilization of grassroots organizations for women" and women have made political and legal strides. Still, "the paradox" of Latin America is that despite those strides, "there is deterioration in the status of most women," she said.
A lively panel April 13, led by Kathleen Frankovic '68, director of surveys and a producer at CBS News, included three alumnae who described their personal experiences in politics.
Almeda Church (A.C.) Riley '58 went from raising a family and volunteering in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., to becoming the successful Republican candidate in a mayor's race. "We need to get people to run for office and encourage women to raise their thinking about how much they can contribute," she said. "You really don't raise enough money with bake sales. We really need to train women to think critically, to be assertive about being candidates and raising money." Riley said she was typical of the '50s generation of women who expected to marry and raise families. Only three members of her sorority house were not married by the September after graduation.
Helen Kanovsky '73 began politics as a teenager volunteering at a Democrat storefront in a small town in Pennsylvania during the Johnson-Humphrey presidential campaign. She came to Cornell in politically intense 1969 and was trained in campaigning by the New Democratic Coalition. The former aide to U.S. Sen. John Kerry is now working in the private sector. Since the 1970s, she said, women have made "dramatic" progress in gaining elected office and serving as professionals in government. "I went [to Cornell] through a period of time when nobody said I couldn't do what I wanted to do," she said.
"My interest in politics was kindled at Cornell," said Judith Loeb Goldfein '64. After graduation, she had a successful career in the fashion industry, most notably as the designer of the popular maternity T-shirt with an arrow and the word "Baby" on it. The Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill controversy brought her into politics. "For many of us, that was a very catalytic moment," she said of the scene of a roomful of male politicians "terrorizing" a woman. "I got up from the couch and said, 'Never again.'"
Goldfein is now northeast development director of Emily's List, an organization founded in 1985 to raise money to help women campaign for office. "It's become much easier to get women to understand the importance of making a difference," she said. "The challenge now is to find a way to get women in their 20s and 30s interested in congressional and Senate races." She came to Cornell just before it became "radicalized" by the '60s movements. Students today "don't know what it was like not to get reproductive rights when you needed them."
"The FBI combed everything ever known about me," said Barbara Everitt Bryant '47, describing the review process she endured after President George H.W. Bush nominated her as director of the U.S. Census Bureau. "They asked everything except was I good at market research." During the 1990 Census, her agency had 500,000 employees tracking "the complexity of our nation."
"I think I'm not typical of my generation," she said. "I was a war-time Cornell woman, and we had a lot of power. Cornell was the only place a woman could get an Ivy League education. There were plenty of males here -- all in uniform."
The third panel on "Women's Political Role in Different Cultures" was led by Kathryn S. March, Ph.D. '79, Cornell associate professor of anthropology, women's studies and Asian studies. "There is much more diversity than we are inclined to imagine" in women's status and roles around the world, she said.
Saadia Toor, a doctoral candidate in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, discussed "the politics of representation," using images of Muslim women and the practice of veiling to portray how the use of these images gives a false or politicized impression of them. Toor is a native of Pakistan and a feminist, and she confessed how she grappled with her own belief that veiling is a practice that is oppressive to women.
"We have to grant the fact that women sometimes make choices we don't agree with," she said. The veil, which seems oppressive to Western eyes, can be used to make a strong political statement, she pointed out.
Student-elected trustee Leslie Barkemeyer '04 described her involvement in politics at Cornell, including the anti-sweatshop movement and efforts to support the Women's Center.
"Too Many Men? The Implications of Sex Difference in Aggression on International Politics" was the provocative topic of a presentation made by Rose McDermott, assistant professor of government, at a dinner April 13.
Violence in the Middle East has roots in the polygamous culture of much of the Islamic world, she said. Rich and powerful men control access to women, leaving a shortage of wives for lower class men. "Single men with poor reproductive futures are most prone to violence," she said. Authoritarian regimes try to export the violence generated by uneducated, unemployed men by directing their anger to other countries, and that is "one of the biggest dangers to peace and stability today," McDermott warned.
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