The talk will include a power point presentation in which Dr. Gorfkle will show about 35 slides of her work and discuss and analyze these. Dr. Creamer will use stories from early women graduates about their experiences as students at VA Tech to highlight some key aspects of the development of the women's movement and activism between 1920 and 1990. Dr. Calasanti will give an overview of women's paid occupations and earnings, showing where women have and have not made gains. Finally, she will discuss some of the ways in which the workplace is itself gendered, as well as racialized and classed. In three indigenous Ecuadorean communities, women and men work together to maintain gender equality.
Women control as much property as men.
Women and men receive equal pay for equal work. Girls and boys are nourished and educated equally well. Both women and men are respected public leaders. These egalitarian patterns exist despite male bias in wage rates, property rights, and political participation both at the national level and on the local haciendas where indigenous women and men were forced to work for many generations. This presentation will explore the interaction of indigenous cultural traditions and local political economic history that has produced gender equality.