Task force looks at issues
facing University women
By Julie Shippen
Of Um» Emerald
They meet once a week in
small rooms around campus
and they do a lot of talking
about you behind your back.
They especially like to talk
about your problems — your
needs, fears and wants.
"They” are the Women’s
Task Force, and they have made
it their job to see that women are
finding answers to the struggles
associated with being a woman.
Created in late November by
ASUO President Julie Davis, the
group is a blend of women from
nearly every facet of the female
population. Members come
from major student groups on
campus and represent an assort
ment of academic interests and
levels.
Although the many perspec
tives of these women often
make for interesting debates on
the issues, members believe the
group’s broad background
should help in its community
outreach efforts.
The group’s basic functions
are to collect and disseminate
information and to organize the
yearly women’s symposium,
which is sponsored by ASUO.
"Mainly we're going to ad
dress problems that women en
counter in the University com
munity,” says Lois Day. task
force member and president of
the Student Bar Association.
The 11 particular areas the
Lois Day
group will be examining this
year that concern women in
clude: sexual harassment, com
parable worth, women and
economics, child care, and
mental and physical violence
against women.
“We felt violence against
women is the most pressing
issue,” Day adds.
The subject of alternative
lifestyles will also be discussed
and included with the other
topics of the women's sym
posium held each spring. The
two-day event will feature
films, speakers, self-defense
demonstrations and workshops,
Day says, and will culminate in
a "Take Back the Night” march.
‘ ‘The purpose of the march is
for women to walk together
where they would never walk
alone,” she says.
A second symposium will be
held later in mid-April and will
examine the role of women in
the workplace, Day adds.
"We wanted to reach out for
new people. That’s why we
restructured the symposium to
be more concentrated,” says
another member, Mary Kay
Menard, who is also on the In
cidental Fee Committee. "Our
shape has changed quite a bit,”
she adds.
Davis says she hopes the task
force will accomplish five
things this year: identify cur
rent or potential women’s
issues, define long- and short
term goals to address those
issues, coordinate a "quality”
symposium, work within the
group’s $4,000 budget, and
keep a record of the year’s work.
Task force members besides
Day and Menard include Kim
Freeburn, former Panhellenic
president; Lynn Pinkney, co
director of the Gay and Lesbian
Alliance; Leah Juniper, a direc
tor of the Women’s Referral and
Resource Service; Diane Ar
nold, Ariel Friesner, and ASUO
Executive members Davis, Mar
cia Schmaedick and Karin
Keutzer.
Feminist promotes Freudian theory
Although feminists have long regarded
Sigmund Freud with scorn, his psychoanalytic
theories concerning the family should not be
dismissed because they accurately describe
traditional sexual attitudes in society, said
University sociology Prof. Miriam Johnson
Tuesday night.
“I believe that Freud's description of the
Oedipus complex can be taken as a fable about
the ideal typical middle-class family,”
Johnson told an audience of about 80 in the
EMU Dad's Room.
"He over generalized to all family
systems,” Johnson said. “But to the extent that
the so-called isolated, male-headed nuclear
family is still viable on the scene, Freud’s fable
about it reflects psychic reality.”
As such, Johnson said, Freud’s theories
are a valuable key to our understanding of in
cest, especially father-daughter incest, and the
problem of female identity.
“In his distorted way,” Freud understood
that a daughter in a patriarchal family is com
pelled to become psychologically bound to her
father “until he hands her over to another
man,” Johnson said.
Freud was also the first to suspect that
hysterical symptoms in women might be caus
ed by their having been sexually molested by
their fathers or close male relatives, she said.
Freud unfortunately had suppressed the
publication of this theory, fearing that his col
leagues would ridicule him, Johnson said.
Johnson’s major criticism of Freud was
that he assumed femininity meant only being
passive and heterosexual. To Freud, a female
was always “daddy’s girl,” she said.
“If it is not to be oppressive,
psychoanalytic theory must come to terms
with the fact that gender identity does not have
to rest on either heterosexuality or dominance
and subordination,” Johnson said. “Women
themselves are now constructing new defini
tions of what being a woman can mean.”
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