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The Women's and Gender Education Center at Eastern Washington University was established in 1977 as the EWU Women's Center, and has continued to serve students at EWU since that time. The center is part of the Women's and Gender Studies Program.
Eastern Washington University's Women's and Gender Education Center, or WAGE, opened officially on October 5, 1977 in Monroe Hall on the Cheney campus. Then called the Women's Center, its first director was Dr. Pat Coontz. [1] The Center was part of the Women's Program, which coordinated the activities of an academic program for Women's Studies with the Center's programming for Eastern Washington University students, faculty, staff, and the greater Cheney community. [2] Pat Coontz also created the Women's Center to break the stigma of women being viewed in the role of wife and mother, and to create an empowering environment to be recognized as a powerful leader in her community.
As the name of the Center suggests, its intention was to support research in women's studies. In addition to supporting scholarship, discussions, counseling, and lectures were on the agenda. [3] In the student newspaper's "Faculty Forum" column on January 19, 1978, Pat Coontz shot down the "Women's Libber" stereotype, noting that extremist views were not characteristic of the majority of feminists. She then called out her male colleagues for contributing to a sexist campus culture. These colleagues, were "good union men, interested in a better future for everyone" yet referred to their "Farrah Fawcett-looking students" as "chicks" and "dolls." [4] The Center's name has changed over time: originally the Women's Center from the fall of 1977 [5] until about June 1989, [6] it was renamed the EWU Women Studies Center in September 1989. [7] It received its current name, the Women's and Gender Education Center, in the fall of 2017. [8]
The main objective of the center is to provide an area for women and non-binary identities with resources and the opportunity to promote in-depth academic and scholarly research on issues relating to women and gender. Ultimately a main goal of the WAGE Center is to educate people about women's status, lend assistance in cases of discrimination, and support the strengthening of women's ideals.
Annually, the Women's & Gender Studies Program hosts Contemporary Issues in Feminist Research presentation series in which faculty present research in their discipline from a feminist perspective. The Women's Studies Challenge to Tradition was a four day conference, starting May 4, 1978 to May 7, 1978, that brought together members of the general public and scholars from the Northwest to discuss research and developments in women's studies. The keynote speaker for the symposium was Fanny Howe, who spoke on the need to reexamine curricula biased toward a male perspective. [9] There were 15 panels and workshops that discussed different topics such as women under stress, women and work in a technological age, women and politics, history's lost achievements, women in the arts and sciences, the language of sexism, single parent families and the impact of feminism on the church.
In 1986 from October 17–19, Eastern hosted the Northwest Women's Studies Association Conference, featuring keynote speaker and contemporary feminist Nawal El-Saadawi.
The H.O.M.E. (Helping Ourselves Means Education) Program is a self-help network that provides resources for students who are typically low-income parents. H.O.M.E. connects students to a network of volunteer staff, faculty, and administrators. [10]
On October 17–19, 1986, a conference was held and it dealt with the energy of women in building and giving birth to their communities on a local level, as well as nationally and internationally. [11]
Programs offered in the spring quarter of 1977 were sexism in counseling, women in art, racism and sexism, and women and social reform. [12]
Currently, The Women's and Gender Education Center offers a bi-annual leadership seminar to the students of Eastern Washington University. This one day seminar, including local community leaders, celebrates the successes and challenges of women in and around Spokane. This seminar allows ideas to bloom in a safe environment and vital connections are made. The WAGE Center continually connects women to resources within the University and out in the local area.
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but primarily affects women and girls. It has been linked to gender roles and stereotypes, and may include the belief that one sex or gender is intrinsically superior to another. Extreme sexism may foster sexual harassment, rape, and other forms of sexual violence. Discrimination in this context is defined as discrimination toward people based on their gender identity or their gender or sex differences. An example of this is workplace inequality. Sexism may arise from social or cultural customs and norms.
Eastern Washington University (EWU) is a public university in Cheney, Washington. It also offers programs at a campus in EWU Spokane at the Riverpoint Campus and other campus locations throughout the state.
Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppression; and the relationships between power and gender as they intersect with other identities and social locations such as race, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, and disability.
Cheney School District No. 360 is a public school district in Spokane County, Washington and serves the towns of Cheney, Airway Heights, and the surrounding area. The district offers classes from Kindergarten to Grade 12.
The Chicago Women's Liberation Union (CWLU) was an American feminist organization founded in 1969 at a conference in Palatine, Illinois.
The Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women was established in 1981 at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, as an interdisciplinary research center focused on gender and women. In addition to research, the center is home to archives of feminist theory and women's history as well as Brown's undergraduate Gender and Sexuality Studies concentration. Postcolonial theorist Leela Gandhi, is the Center's director, having assumed the position in July 2021.
The Eastern Washington Eagles are the intercollegiate varsity athletic teams that represent Eastern Washington University, located in Cheney, southwest of Spokane. A member of the Big Sky Conference, EWU's athletic program comprises five men's sports: basketball, cross country, football, tennis, and track and field, and seven women's sports: basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, tennis, track and field, and volleyball.
Joan Elise Robinson Acker was an American sociologist, researcher, writer and educator. She joined the University of Oregon faculty in 1967. Acker is considered one of the leading analysts regarding gender and class within the second wave of feminism.
Sexism in academia refers to the discrimination and subordination of a particular sex or gender academic institutions, particularly universities, due to the ideologies, practices, and reinforcements that privilege one sex or gender over another. Sexism in academia is not limited to but primarily affects women who are denied the professional achievements awarded to men in their respective fields such as positions, tenure and awards. Sexism in academia encompasses institutionalized and cultural sexist ideologies; it is not limited to the admission process and the under-representation of women in the sciences but also includes the lack of women represented in college course materials and the denial of tenure, positions and awards that are generally accorded to men.
Beverly Guy-Sheftall is an American Black feminist scholar, writer and editor, who is the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies and English at Spelman College, in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the founding director of the Spelman College Women's Research and Resource Center, the first at a historically Black college or university.
The National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) is an organization founded in 1977, made up of scholars and practitioners in the field of women's studies also known as women's and gender studies, feminist studies, and related names in the 21st century.
Margaret "Maggie" Lowe Benston (1937–1991) was a professor of chemistry, computing science, and women's studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was a respected feminist and labour activist, as well as a founding member of the Vancouver Women's Caucus, in 1988, the Euphoniously Feminist and Non-Performing Quintet in 1970, Simon Fraser University's Women's Studies Program in 1975, and Mayworks in 1988. For thirty years, Benston worked locally, nationally, and internationally writing articles, giving speeches, and lobbying politicians on behalf of the women's and labour movement. Benston died of cancer on 7 March 1991.
Swoop is Eastern Washington University's athletics mascot. He is modeled after an eagle, in reference to the nickname of the university's athletic teams, the Eagles. The mascot first appeared in September 1973 when the Eastern Washington State College changed the name of its athletic teams from "the Savages" to "the Eagles". The name "Swoop" was subsequently adopted in 2004.
William Bryan "Red" Reese was athletic director and coach of multiple sports at Eastern Washington University in Cheney from 1930 to 1964.
Hijas de Cuauhtémoc was a student Chicana feminist newspaper founded in 1971 by Anna Nieto-Gómez and Adelaida Castillo while both were students at California State University, Long Beach.
Charles V. Mutschler was an archivist and Interim Dean of Eastern Washington University Libraries. He served as Assistant Archivist and Acting University Archivist and was hired as University Archivist in 2001. He became Interim Dean in 2018.
Cynthia Ellen Harrison is a historian who taught at George Washington University. Harrison participated in activism that led to the Equal Credit Act of 1974 and is an advocate for gender equality.
The Associated Students of Eastern Washington University (ASEWU) is the student government for the undergraduate and graduate student body at Eastern Washington University (EWU). The organization was first established in what was then the State Normal School at Cheney when its constitution was approved for the 1919–1920 academic year, and its initial class of officers were elected. ASEWU has played an important role in the life and landscape of EWU, including raising funds for multiple student union building projects over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Wendy Luebbers Schuller is an American basketball coach who was, until 2021, the head coach for the Eastern Washington Eagles women's basketball team, a position she had held since 2001.
Leslie Rosenberg Wolfe was an American women's rights activist, known for her work as the longtime leader of the Center for Women Policy Studies. She particularly focused her activism on the intersection of racism and sexism faced by women of color.
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