At 35, Women’s Center thrives
Photo credit: Candace diCarlo
There’s no doubt, says Felicity Paxton, that a big part of what the Penn Women’s Center has done and will always do is advocate for victims of sexual assault or discrimination.
But there are plenty of other important activities that take place at the Center, from practical workshops on wage equity and assertiveness to baby clothing swaps.
“We are here to support women throughout their educational careers at Penn,” says Paxton, PWC’s director. “Part of that is helping them through the tricky parts. Part of that means celebrating the highs and shining a spotlight on some of the work that’s being done by women at Penn.”
This year, it’s PWC’s turn in the spotlight. The Center turns 35, and in March of 2009 (fittingly, Women’s History Month), the Center is planning a day of celebration and service. It will also kick off a fundraising campaign.
Besides serving as the Center’s director, Paxton also teaches a “Ritual Communication” class at Annenberg and is a Faculty Fellow who lives in Stouffer College House. She has been a familiar face at Penn since 1993, when she first arrived as a graduate student from the U.K.
After receiving her Ph.D. in American Studies (writing her dissertation on the uniquely American institution of “the prom”) Paxton left Penn, only to return two years later. Her work at the Women’s Center, she says, allows her to do all the things she loves to do.
“When I was just teaching, I was doing a lot of part-time advocacy and issues work and when I’m doing this now, I’m able to teach a little on the side,” Paxton explains. “There’s obviously such a connection between some of the things that I’m interested in in the classroom and some of the things that the Women’s Center is working on.”
Q: What is the role of the Women’s Center on campus?
A: This is our 35th year. Penn Women’s Center began in 1973 out of a series of protests around sexual assaults on campus. Faculty and staff and students demanded a number of things in terms of police responsiveness, in terms of University policy, in terms of safety. And on that list of demands was a Women’s Center.
As we look at Penn now in 2008, we’ve made some remarkable and wonderful progress on a lot of issues that effect women’s lives. For example, in our work against sexual violence, we are now joined by colleagues across the University who are well educated about these issues. And this year, thanks to a Federal Grant, we’ll be hiring a full time Violence Prevention Educator who’ll be instrumental in coordinating our ongoing efforts to educate people about sexual violence.
Q: How do people use the Center on a day-to-day basis?
A: Some come by seeking advice, advocacy, referrals or crisis counseling, all of which we offer. Others use our great meeting spaces. We’re open from 10 in the morning until 9 at night and we have various student groups that come in—the Penn Consortium of Undergraduate Women, 1 in 4 [all-male peer education group tackling sexual violence], Sister-Sister [multicultural women’s group], PGWISE [Penn Graduate Women in Science and Engineering].
We also have two different parenting groups that meet here and we’ve now got a nursing room. I set that up last year because I was hearing stories of women nursing in toilets on campus because there’s nowhere else to [go]. It has a changing table and spare diapers, wipes, a rocking chair, a sofa and it’s got some books on parenting and toys and it’s just a quiet room and it’s used pretty often either for nursing or for pumping. It’s also used for napping, and as a nap room, it’s open to anyone. Sometimes we just get students who are exhausted and strung out and need to just get away from Van Pelt or their dorm room.
Q: It sounds as though you really advocate taking a ‘time out.’
A: When we look at the figures around depression, one in three women is being or has been prescribed an antidepressant in this country now. That’s an incredible statistic. I’m not suggesting all depression can be cured with a nap. However, we have a culture that says to students, ‘Drink Red Bull, drink coffee, cut your sleep, do better, jump higher, get higher grades,’ and I would like the Women’s Center to say, ‘Take some time out for yourself. Make sure that you’re eating well, make sure that you’re sleeping well and if you are really busy, take 20 minutes and close your eyes.’
Last year, I instituted a program called ‘Feel Good Fridays.’ Every Friday afternoon, we offer some different modality around relaxation, stress relief, taking care of yourself. This semester, we’re starting with nutrition, we’ll do one on mediation. On Halloween, we’re just going to carve pumpkins on the porch. Things that just sort of make you sit and breathe and tune in to something other than a computer or cell phone.
Q: What do you say to those who may think that all of the progress that has been made on equal rights renders the Women’s Center unnecessary?
A: There may be some who regard a Women’s Center as anachronistic. I think if you did the most superficial glance and just looked at some figures, you could say, ‘Well look, Penn has had two female presidents in a row and the entering class has more women than men. Why do we need a Women’s Center?’ Part of what my job is, is to say, ‘Hold on a minute—what statistics should we look at here?’
Plenty of college males go through their entire college experience without ever having a female teacher, so what kind of message does that send? At Penn, in 2006, 39 percent of tenure track positions [assistant professors] were held by women, compared to 61 percent by men. When you get to tenured, it’s 22 percent women and when you get to full professors, it’s 17.3 percent women. What you’re seeing there is what you’re seeing certainly in other areas of American life, which is when you look at the bottom of the pyramid you see something that approximates gender equity, but once we move up, we see a real shift. And students aren’t stupid. They notice this and this is part of why we have 18-year-old women coming to us and saying, ‘I want to figure out how to have kids and a career.’
Q: What are some student concerns?
A: One thing they’re concerned about is the career juggle. I think a lot of them have watched their moms go through it. When they come to us saying, ‘How can we do it all?’, part of what we want to say is, ‘Here’s how,’ but we can also say, ‘You don’t have to do it all,’ which is not to take away any of the gains of feminism, but just to say, if the new message you’re getting is the sky’s the limit, that’s great, but it’s not great if you think if you don’t reach the sky, you’ve failed. They have other concerns too that we try to program around: eating disorders, body image, binge drinking, healthy relationships.
Q: What are your goals for the Center?
A: I have many. One thing I’d like to address is the hunger on the part of our undergrads, professional students and graduate students, for moments when they can connect with faculty that are outside of the classroom. In the College House system, where I live and work, we do a really good job of providing those moments, but if you are not in a College House. Where that is happening for you? To [students] they’re brilliant, they’re on pedestals and sometimes students look at them and think, ‘How could that be me one day?’
Part of helping our students to excel is telling our students how we messed up and how we got out of that mess, whether it was professional or personal, giving them real flesh and blood models as opposed to abstract goals or unrealistic demands. ... The Women’s Center needs to be central in making those connections happen.
Q: Talk about your other role, as Faculty Fellow at Stouffer College House. What appealed to you about living with students and being an advisor in this way?
A: I had been living in Atlanta and was moving back to Philadelphia and I had lived here as a graduate student and wanted it to feel different coming back. I heard about the College House system and this lightbulb went off because my dad lived in communes all my life when I was a kid, so communal living was like breathing to me and the ideas around sharing meals and experiences and cohabiting, cooperating and collaborating are very much second-nature to me. I want to be clear—I’m not suggesting that the College Houses are communes. ... I just knew that I liked the idea of a live-work environment.
Q: So you play a pretty informal advisor role?
A: The role, for those of us who live there as staff and as faculty, is to be open to those very spontaneous moments where a student showing up at your door to borrow an iron actually leads to a discussion about a book that you’re reading. It cannot be planned for and is difficult, in fact, to even track.
Q: What would you say to faculty considering living in College Houses?
A: You can’t live in the College Houses if you’re a very closed or private person, because that’s just not how that rolls. You take your life as it is and you share it. That’s the bottom line. You don’t have to reinvent something. I came in as somebody who loved mountain biking and the outdoors, so some of the earliest things I did were to take students on bike rides, and it’s on those rides that you’ll have [memorable] conversations.
It’s absolutely true that students will open your eyes. For me, one of the greatest things about living in the dorms has been having really strong, warm, mutually respectful and enjoyable relationships with people whose politics could not be further away from mine. We all tend to insulate ourselves a bit and dorms are very diverse, international places.
Q: Finally I wanted to ask about your research, which has focused on rituals—specifically, the prom. Did you discover anything that turned the ideas we have about the prom on its head?
A: I did archival and contemporary research, and realized that we have all kinds of misunderstandings of the history of the prom. The stereotypes run something like this: Proms used to be sweet innocent affairs in the high school gym, and that across the century they’ve become more extravagant and elaborate and expensive. But when you actually do the research you discover how inaccurate this nostalgia for simpler times is. Philadelphia students were holding proms in the 1920s and 30s in the Ritz Carlton, the Stephen Girard Hotel and the Crystal Room at the Sears Roebuck’s Emporium! ... We have a lot of nostalgic notions about proms that really don’t hold up to much scrutiny. Basically there’s a reluctance to think critically about this ritual. My work examines how proms institutionalize heterosexuality, how they work to enforce very strict ideas about gender roles and how stereotypes about class and race have been woven into proms.
Originally published Oct. 16, 2008
