Women’s Centre
http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~uwsawc/structure.html

Gender Studies Women’s Studies Debate
http://userpages.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/womvsgen2.html

http://ejw.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/1/1/11

incidently nuns I’ve known are pro-contraceptive and pro-choice particularly those that work with women’s shelters etc.
(really, I was suprised too)

miss you C

- Is the resource centre a library for women, or is it a library specialising in feminist resources for the education sector and the community? Do you see these things as synonymous? Because I don’t, and our wires seem to cross on this issue a lot. To me, it’s like that whole “natural-born women” argument all over again.

- What decisions are you making on behalf of women?

- The leap from employing feminist men as paid staff and/or volunteers to men taking over the library and radically altering its mission statement is pretty enormous. Also, the library isn’t run by a single person; it’s run by a board of elected members.

- Is employing men an indication that women can’t do the job (really? Who is going to look at an organisation with either Women’s Studies or Gender Studies in its name and assume it thinks women are incompetent idiots?) or is it a sign that we are making progress? I personally feel impressed and hopeful when I see men and women working together to address gender issues.

- I think the library would do more good in the fight to close the pay gap by highlighting the issue and making information about it readily available to as wide an audience as possible than by employing one woman in what is a pretty insular environment.

- Discrimination against women is much more complicated than men vs. women. Even the example you cited, where women were outnumbered by priests in a UN discussion about abortion, is about much more than men crowding out women – it’s about the power of religious institutions, the peculiar power relations between men and women within religious institutions; it’s about the structure of the United Nations (an problematic organisation in need of massive reform), abortion, etc. C., any discussion of abortion between large numbers of people is going to be a tricky one; I’m pretty sure even you and I have disagreed on the specifics of it. Do you think the discussion would have been any less frustrating if those priests had been nuns?

Just because it is easier to grasp and sympathise with issues that directly affect or are likely to affect you personally, that doesn’t mean that sensitivity and understanding can’t be learned. You yourself have often talked about how far you’ve come during your years at the library – what reason is there to expect that a man (who was already willing to engage with issues of sexist discrimination enough to apply for a job at the resource centre in the first place) wouldn’t gain similar insight over time?

- Libraries are the embodiment of the notion that knowledge is power. It is not important that library staff have vaginas, it is important that they provide access to a comprehensive, focused and useful collection in a respectful manner in order to empower their clients. Libraries are not healthcare providers, and library staff are not qualified as nor employed as counsellors.

- Sexism is only one form of discrimination. Feminism is part of a broader political spectrum that necessarily intersects with other movements that benefit from cooperation between men and women. By excluding men from feminist organisations, we are potentially also excluding women who already see them as allies. If the argument is that feminist issues tend to get lost in the shuffle or that women are discriminated against on the basis of their gender in other movements, then we need to do something active about it, not retreat into ourselves.

- For me, feminism is a positive force. Of course there are people out there who don’t believe in the existence of, or seriousness of, sexism, but we know better and so do plenty of others. Sometimes I feel that there’s something really defensive about the atmosphere at the resource centre, that there’s a fear of open dialogue or real engagement with the community in case someone exposes the whole thing as a sham and another Adelaide women’s organisation bites the dust. But it isn’t a sham, and feminism isn’t going anywhere, although it is always changing. I wish the library were more confident about looking at feminism in new ways instead of always tiptoeing.

As a feminist, it does not feel useful to me to always be looking over my shoulder in case someone’s lurking there waiting to usurp me. I am looking for solidarity and encouragement in a feminist organisation, but I also want that organisation to challenge me enough that I develop the skills to face antifeminism and all those other negative –isms head-on.

- Can the library survive with only Women’s Ed students as borrowers? While I would never seek to downplay the seriousness of abuse survivors’ safety concerns, I’m not sure why it’s appropriate for this to affect the library’s staffing decisions. The interlibrary loan system is already well-used by Women’s Ed students – you rely on it to serve borrowers who live remotely or physically can’t make it up the stairs – how is this any different? And there are always two staff members on duty; it would be perfectly reasonable to stipulate that one of them be female to accommodate client needs. Employing men needn’t necessarily alienate the borrowers.

- While it is important to be respectful of abuse survivors (of anyone), I don’t think we need to patronise them. They’ve got it together enough to go to TAFE, they’re out there in the world, and they can find information about counselling and shelters through the library or nextdoor if they need it. I don’t think any further cottonwool is necessary.

- Which parts of women’s history does “gender” negate? I really, really don’t understand what “Gender Studies” takes away from “Women’s Studies”. I don’t see how it implies a background of equity – as far as I can see, it just broadens the context for sexist discrimination, giving us the opportunity to better understand how to ameliorate the situation. Do you have any specific examples of organisations that abandoned any interest in women’s issues under the Gender banner? And even so, do you think that’s inevitable or is it just something to be aware of and address upfront, should the change ever occur?

- I am not proposing that we all just close our eyes and hope really hard that we wake up in some sort of Icelandic utopia. But if things are not changing as we’d like them to, it won’t help if we just cling to the familiar instead, you know?

In the end, maybe it’s just personal – part of it is definitely my privilege talking. When it comes to the dissemination of information, an open dialogue and an active movement for social change, the resource centre feels like a dead-end to me as is (which is not meant as a disparagement of the fantastic work that has gone into it) – but if it’s exactly what other people need it to be, then that’s awesome (and maybe I should just open my own library one day). I think, C., that we have fundamentally different ideas about what libraries are or are for, and neither of us is right or wrong but sometimes it’s hard to move forward with the conversation because of that.

(And I shouldn’t be blogging at work, so I’ll log off now.)