Beyond Tolerance: Moving Ahead Together
A Community-wide Conference Organized by the Santa Barbara School Districts
June 28, 1997
Penny Paine, Gender Equity Consultant, California Department of Education
Gender Equity
These are very interesting times to be involved in gender equity because while we find out in communities, at the graduate level, and throughout all our organizations and early education, we’ve seen an increased interest in what’s happening for our girls and young women today. We’re also seeing some changes at the federal level as it affects women, including all students. In fact, some of the set-aside monies that I’ve been very involved with to address gender equity are possibly going to be threatened and removed. So with that thought in my mind I’m going to continue through and share with you that almost 50% (or a little bit more) of our population is indeed a female population. Fifty percent of our workforce is a female workforce. And yet, somehow, we don’t always get the right messages across to the young girls and young women that we’re working with in schools and in the community.
Fully 90% of women at some time or another raise and mother children. The interesting statistic that goes along with that is that fully 90% of the young women that we’re raising today in our communities will also be sole support for themselves and/or their families at some time during their lives. With that information, we certainly need to address how we are indeed raising and educating girls in our community.
Why do we need gender equity? Why has it been important? Why do we make so many efforts? We just celebrated an anniversary for Title IX, which has certainly made some strides and some differences for opportunities for girls in schools. Yes, we need to create more opportunities for girls in our schools. We need to be opening the door so that they too can achieve and benefit, just as all students have. The new wording in the language for education is to include all students, so all those comments that you’ve heard already, along with the ones I’m sharing now about how we especially address girls from all cultures, will be important. But will they really be included?
If we look around us at the media and the messages that come through our society, the messages are very different. The messages are often very subtle as we’ve heard but they’re often still supporting what we would consider the stereotypes for women. The traditional messages that women and girls should be passive, they should be submissive, they should be sexual, and they should be all the other things that are very derogatory for them. Yet we need to overcome that. That (message) is what the girls that we see and that we work with are still going to succumb to. You can’t be what you can’t see.
We, as a community, as teachers and educators, need to turn around and look and see what we see out there in our community and in our schools. Do we see those role models? Do we see the good examples? We need to provide for that in our efforts to work with young women. Do we have questions ourselves? How do you feel about needing help and finding a woman police officer ready to assist you? How do you feel when the person who comes to repair your equipment is not the traditional male that you thought it might be but is a woman instead? Let’s ask ourselves those questions. How do we feel about that? Because those are the types of feelings that sometimes prevent us from offering all the opportunities that we need to for young women today.
A few weeks back there was a conference some of you may have been involved in or may have heard about it, it was called the Adelante Mujer Conference and it took place at UCSB. It was an interesting challenge. The young woman that organized that event through the University, in conjunction with our school district, had a goal and that was to fill half a hall with young Latinas for a day’s event where you look especially at their opportunities. It was a success and the hall was full: an amazing message to those young women. You must, you must, they were told, make efforts to improve your education and get where you need to be.
We hear from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) that we need to not create "hostile hallways" but to improve them. We hear from AAUW that we need to not shortchange girls. We need to strengthen our math and science efforts with girls. We need to encourage them to look at non-traditional careers. We need to look at leadership skills for girls. We have a wonderful agency in our own community – Girls Inc. – that offers many such programs. Our schools are making efforts to do special programs to address what girls need for their happy future, their successful futures, their higher paying job futures. All the things that I hope we would want for all students, boys, females from all cultures.
Thank you.