WGS event: What Can Service Learning Offer to Women's & Gender Studies? Panel presentation

At the beginning of the semester, I attended a panel presentation about what Service learning has to offer community activism, with several women’s & gender studies professors from schools around the St. Louis area. I was kind of on a women’s studies high, having just started the semester and sitting in a room listening to what these intelligent women had to offer to their communities and world was incredible (I took 5 pages of notes). It was really cool to see how political or not these women decided to make their work, and how their own brands of feminism manifested in each one of them. Some talked about the important political nature of the past, some talked about the taxonomy of “women’s studies” and how the differences in the way each of the represented schools decided to label their programs was important, showing what their focus was.

I could write a TON about this, but some of the things/ideas that stuck out to me most were:

-Feminists can tend to “leak” into other events, making it a very flexible/all-encompassing field; there is overlap in activism projects (intersectionality!)

-Another definition of feminism: “Making individual opportunities available to women and other people that don’t have the resources”

-Women’s and Gender studies can learn from the real world as there is inevitably going to be some reflection on the social dynamics of the time

-There are multiple forms of leadership that should be appreciated, more than what or who is on top or in front (simply: appreciate everyone, everyone is valuable!!)

-Locally situated knowledge-important issues or what my community needs from me

-Dr. Laura Kramer said: Be ready to see the unexpected and react to it with something “feminist”--there are many opportunities for creative activism (then went on to explain the fake Champagne clubs the feminists of Iceland held to trick lecherous old men to call attention to the sex trafficking of women and young girls)

-Existing in a network is energizing! Networking and collaboration are key to activism

-Theories are messy, don’t always mix so we need to get into the real world and learn from experience

-Women’s studies has its roots in radical times-we stand on the shoulders of that time

-Service learning= a shared knowledge, high-impact educational experience

-Service model vs. Social change model--helping change the system, not just bandaging problems within the existing system

-Grassroots empowerment is everything!

Penny Weiss: feminist activism--“No” means “not yet” or “regroup and try again later” --be relentless!

Personally, I loved how political these women all seemed to be. That is something that I feel I have been lacking in at SLU: political, intellectual stimulation. It was so refreshing and empowering to hear these women talk about the ways they are changing the world around them.