University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: September 20, 2007

By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer

Gender Week, which opens on Monday, and other activities sponsored by the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender (IREWG) have become an important part of the academic experience at UB. And as the Gender Institute celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, its leaders recall there was a time not too long ago when the organization was little more than a dream in the minds of some very active and dedicated faculty.

Pat Shelly, associate director of the Gender Institute, says IREWG started out as a "coterie of feminist scholars" who met informally for many years in people's homes and on campus to discuss the future of women at UB. The goals of the grassroots organization were to strengthen the status of the Women's Studies Program and create "some sort of office or institute on women," Shelly says.

Margarita Vargas, co-director of the Gender Institute and associate professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, College of Arts and Sciences, began taking part in these gatherings two years before IREWG was founded. But, she says, others have talked about meetings going back as long ago as 20 years.

"There were women meeting since the 1970s," Vargas says. "I was a junior faculty member on the first executive committee when the institute was formed and it was a tremendous learning experience. It was very significant to me to be a part of that group from the beginning and seeing [founding co-directors] Isabel [Marcus, professor in the UB Law School] and Margaret [Acara, professor emeritus of pharmacology and toxicology, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences] going from group to group and having continuous meetings with people inside and outside the university. It was just an inundation of information from these women who had so much knowledge and resources."

One of the most powerful catalysts in the creation of the institute was the 1996 President's Task Force on the Status of Women at UB, Shelly says, referring to the landmark report that revealed gender-based discrepancies in salaries and tenure-track appointments at the university, as well as a dearth of women in upper administration. UB underwrote the first three years of the institute with a grant totaling $240,000, she adds, and continues to provide consistent support through the Office of the Provost.

In the past 10 years, the Gender Institute has grown both in programming and faculty involvement, says Rosemary Dziak, co-director of the Gender Institute and professor of oral biology in the School of Dental Medicine. The institute awards about three $3,000 grants to UB faculty annually, and grant applications have tripled in the past year, Dziak notes. The institute plans to offer graduate and undergraduate scholarships and a travel grant as well.

"The boundaries are really breaking down among the different disciplines," she says, explaining that gender has become an increasingly important topic in the sciences because organizations such as the National Institutes of Health are pushing for more studies on women's health. "It's becoming more universal," Dziak adds. "There's more and more people from the biological and health sciences actively involved."

Interest in gender is on the rise in the humanities as well. "You have feminist scholarship in comparative literature, geography, English, languages," Shelly says. "It's no longer only women's studies or global gender studies investigating questions about gender."

Adds Vargas: "Now you can be in romance languages and converse theoretically with people in English or history or geography."

The scale of events sponsored by IREWG also illustrates its success. Although the institute began as a place to organize small-scale workshops and luncheons, it has become the force behind such ambitious projects as the 2001 Pan Am Women's Leadership Conference, which featured such notable speakers as anthropologist Jane Goodall, New York State Health Commissioner Antonia Novella and U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. In addition, IREWG organizes a biannual graduate student symposium on gender, as well as sponsors an annual International Women's Film Festival, Gender Week celebration and a Distinguished Faculty Lecture, featuring UB faculty members at the top of their fields.

Among the highlights of this year's Gender Week is the keynote lecture on Monday by Sarah Schulman, an acclaimed novelist, historian, playwright and longtime social activist, entitled "United in Anger: A History of Act-Up."

Also speaking on Wednesday will be anthropologist Sue V. Rosser, one of the most vocal proponents of women in science, mathematics, medicine and technology in the past 20 years and the first dean of an academic college at the Georgia Institute of Technology in that school's 110-year history. For a schedule of Gender Week events, click here.

Shelly also points out that another strength of the Gender Institute is the many collaborations that have occurred over the years. "This includes everything from working with the UB Office of Special Events on the [2004-05] Distinguished Speakers Series to bring in [UB Reads author] Barbara Ehrenreich to working with the Association of Women Full Professors, who are our partners in welcoming new women faculty every year," she says.

In terms of community outreach, Shelly says IREWG members serve on numerous university committees, as well as regional boards focusing on issues of concern to women, including the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Domestic Violence Committee of Western New York and Women's Action Coalition of the Erie County Commission on the Status of Women. She also notes that last year three UB faculty members spoke about future careers for women at the Garret Club, a private women's club in Buffalo, plus Gender Week keynoter Judith Heumann met with teachers and students at the Erie County Health Center for Children in Buffalo School 84.

Beyond countless contributions to research and education on gender at the university, Shelly says IREWG sends an important message that UB is a place that cares about the quality of work life, status and position of women. Women made up only 26 percent of full-time faculty (17 percent tenured) in 1994, according to the President's Task Force on the Status of Women at UB. This year, Shelly says, nearly half of new faculty hires were women.

"If you look at the departments, you realize the numbers are pretty equal," says Vargas. "But the question is still raised. What I think has really changed is that now that there are more of us women involved, we feel like we have a greater voice."