Woman President Research Articles

Gender and the American Presidency. By Theodore F.Sheckels, Nichola D.Gutgold, and Diana B.Carlin. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. 192 pages.

Gender and the American Presidency. By Theodore F. Sheckels, Nichola D. Gutgold, and Diana B. Carlin. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. 192 pages. Senator Hillary Clinton's competitive campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Governor Sarah Palin's selection as the Republican vice presidential candidate in the same year, and the wins by women in U.S. Senate races that brought the 113th Congress to a record level of 20 women now serving in the Senate have once again brought to the fore questions about women and the American presidency. The U.S. has yet to elect a woman president. In only two elections--1984 and 2008--have women even been on presidential tickets as vice presidential running mates. While progress has been made over the last one hundred years in women's political rights generally, the nation has not reached parity in elective representation. In their timely book, Gender and the American Presidency, Theodore F. Sheckels, Nichola D. Gutgold, and Diana B. Carlin examine the biographies and rhetoric of nine prominent, modern-day women to ask a fitting question: Why not Madam President? (p. viii). The book's approach is an inductive look at why prominent women have not been given the nod for the presidency and/or presidential tickets. We chose to proceed as we did based on a hunch that the stories, if told without the lens of current theories about and politics firmly in place, might point to some new or differently-cast hypotheses, state the authors (p. viii). After a brief overview of the project, the book presents one chapter for each of the women the authors selected: Nancy Landon Kassebaum, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Mikulski, Elizabeth Hanford Dole, Nancy Pelosi, Olympia Snowe, Christine Gregoire, Kathleen Gilligan Sebelius, and Linda Lingle. In each chapter, the authors lay out short biographies explaining how these women came to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, or governorship of their states. The authors then examine each woman's rhetorical style before speculating on why each woman was never chosen for higher office. The book ends with a chapter offering 11 maxims suggesting why a woman has yet to be nominated by her party, let alone to win the presidency. The title of the book should have, perhaps, been Women and the American Presidency rather than Gender and the American Presidency, as it does not examine the backgrounds and rhetoric of high-profile males. The word gender implies comparison, which is not the approach here. Rather, Sheckels, Gutgold, and Carlin chose to focus on women only. One limitation of this approach is that any allusions to the women featured in the book as being affected because of are speculative. Of the 11 maxims suggested in their conclusion, all but two observations seemingly would apply to both female and male candidates. …

Comment on women in surgery: little change in gender equality in Japanese medical societies over the past 3 years

Dr. Tomizawa has presented an eloquent review of the gender discrepancies that exist in Japan today [1]. She notes that gender equality in the member societies of the JAMS continues to lag behind that of other industrialized nations. The Japanese Association of Women Surgeons, of which Dr. Tomizawa is the president, has led the way in developing policies for change. In the USA, change has also been slow: Currently, fewer than 5 % of surgery department chairs are women. Moreover, women account for only 7 % of full professors of surgery versus 13 % of full professors of medicine. The American College of Surgeons has had two women presidents in 100 years but the Royal Colleges of Surgeons in Ireland, of England, Glasgow and Edinburgh have only had one woman president in their collective 1,000-year history! The reasons for these differences are multifactorial and include competing priorities for women making it more difficult to compete on an equal footing, particularly in the junior faculty years; implicit or unconscious bias, precluding women from being offered the opportunity to acquire the skills to become competitive; and occasionally, blatant discrimination. Since almost 40 % of the residents entering general surgery now are women, it is important to explore why they are still less likely than their male counterparts to receive tenure and to be underrepresented in higher faculty ranks and in leadership positions. Thus, those of us fortunate enough to have achieved success in our profession have an obligation to offer mentorship and support to the women who come after us, so that our successors can also achieve their personal and professional goals.

Virtue as the Benchmark for Spirituality: Management Lessons from Asia's First Woman President

Spirituality has become an area of interest for business. But two issues confront it in the organization and workplace: 1) the struggle to be amidst a utilitarian business framework where spiritual...

History of the New York Roentgen Society

The New York Roentgen Society (NYRS) was founded in April 1912, seventeen years after the discovery of the X-ray by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen in 1895. The original name of the Society was the Roentgen Society of New York. The NYRS is the second oldest local Radiology society in the country, founded shortly after the founding of the Philadelphia Roentgen Ray Society, at a time when there were no state Radiology societies and only two national Radiology organizations, the American Roentgen Ray Society and the American Radium Society. The purpose of the Society was to “form a close association of the ethical Radiologists of the city of New York and surrounding areas, for the advancement of the science and practice of Radiology and its maintenance as a specialty of medicine.” The Society's first president was Dr. Edward Leaming, who served a 2-year term from 1912 to 1914. The past presidents of the Society include many luminaries in the field. From its early days, the NYRS included Therapeutic Radiologists, now known as Radiation Oncologists. Training programs included both specialties until the 1970s. A Radiation Oncology Chairman was elected in addition to the President starting in 1972, with Dr. Arvin Glicksman as the first to hold that position. Dr. Florence Chu was the first woman to become the Radiation Oncology Chairman in 1980, and Dr. Ruth Rosenblatt became the first woman president of the Society in 1989. The Society's membership has grown over the years to over 1200 members, including residents and fellows. Dr. Roentgen was awarded an honorary membership in the Society in 1914, the only American honorary membership he ever accepted. Honorary membership was also awarded to Dr. Marie Sklodowska Curie when she was a guest speaker at the NYRS in 1921. From an early date, meetings of the Society were held on a regular basis at the New York Academy of Medicine on the third Monday of the month from September to March. The

Women's Centers: Even More Relevant and Necessary Today

The University of the Pacific opened its Women's Center in 2010, some 50 years after the University of Minnesota had originated the concept. A year earlier, the 160-year-old traditionally male-dominated university had welcomed its first woman president, Dr. Pamela A. Eibeck, an engineer. The oldest private college in California, the University of the Pacific was the first school to receive a charter from the newly formed state. “Women students at Pacific have a long and storied history of leadership and success across the disciplines, and particularly in the humanities,” said Corrie Martin, director of the Women's Resource Center. “I think our relatively small size and personalized education model promoted women student success in the past.” Martin spoke about the power of Women's Centers to transform schools at the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) conference held in Phoenix in March 2012. Prior to 2010, the school “addressed women's issues in an ad hoc, grassroots way,” said Martin. “Individual faculty, students and administrators would identify problems or issues and seek to investigate and rally support for institutional change or response.” Sometimes they just went ahead and did the job themselves, like the dean of women who made condoms available in the residence halls. Thanks to a new female VP for student life who's a “visionary administrator,” and because of “critical gender-based challenges” (a brutal sexual assault on campus) creating the Women's Center was put on the fast track. The center's mandate is to “provide leadership and a collaborative space for organizing campus-wide efforts to understand and improve the academic and professional success of its women students, faculty and staff.” Martin's position is funded by the liberal arts unit and student life. The center organizes groups, provides a meeting place and resource library and offers internships and service learning opportunities, as well as collaborates with local, community-based organizations. Its objective is to “remain in the ‘mainstream’ of campus culture, collaborating with everybody, while effectively leading and mobilizing the campus community to recognize and address issues that might otherwise remain marginal and under-prioritized,” she said. Some would argue that a Women's Center, especially one that was just launched, is unnecessary when the student body is more than half female. Martin firmly disagrees. “I do think that the need for campus-based Women's Centers is as great as ever and will continue to be so for decades to come,” she said. “The increase in and dominance of women students earning all degrees belie entrenched inequities and roadblocks to actual equity in higher education for women.” Women's Centers are able to uncover and address the subtle incidents of discrimination. Speaking at an annual conference promoting girls' achievement in STEM, Martin asked some 80 middle and high school girls if they had ever heard or been told they couldn't do or study something because of their gender. “Nearly every girl raised her hand,” she said. “It was a sobering reminder to me about how much work needs to be done.” At Pacific, the concept of a Women's Center was already under discussion when the two catalysts, the new VP and the sexual assault, made it a top priority. If there is no Women's Center committee, start with the women's commission of faculty, administrators and students. Focus groups will help you refine the message. Track students you've worked with and incorporate their stories. “Gender equity and justice is the responsibility and work of every sector of campus,” said Martin. “It's enormously helpful to have a catalyst like the Women's Center to be able to provide some limited resources, energy and focus to this long-term project.” Determine how you'll strategically partner with other groups so all benefit. Seek out and form deep partnerships across campus but avoid losing the historical center. This year's political rhetoric has revealed that gender discrimination is still alive and well, and the academy is not immune. Women's Centers are about change; in today's political climate, they're needed more than ever. “The day that women do not have to plan their lives and families around the inhumane limitations of their academic workplace and schools is the day we won't need Women's Centers any longer,” she said. Contact: Martin1@pacific.edu or 209.932.2815

The Contradictions of Inclusion: Mapuche Women and Michelle Bachelet

The center-left Concertación held the presidency in Chile from the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990 until 2010. The coalition's loss of the office provides a unique opportunity to evaluate its performance. I focus in this essay on the government of socialist Michelle Bachelet, Chile's first woman president, who held the office from 2006 to 2010. I am interested in the contradictions in the evaluations of her presidency by feminists (including feminist scholars) and Mapuche activists (and scholars of Mapuche politics). While both groups shared a mix of hope and skepticism at the beginning of her government, one of the things that most struck me in field visits to Chile as her term progressed was growing enthusiasm on the part of Chilean feminist acquaintances and growing bitterness on the part of Mapuche ones. I am particularly concerned with what this means for indigenous women who find themselves at the intersection of these two identifications, and suggest that their positionality and experiences represent a long-standing and still unanswered challenge to feminist methods and praxis.

Recollections of the First Woman to Serve As President of the FSMB

Recollections of the First Woman to Serve As President of the FSMB

How Have Epiphanies Affected Your Life?

How Have Epiphanies Affected Your Life?

The Tasks of Theology in the Proyecto Social of the University's Mission

It is a great pleasure and honor to offer this address at the end of my term as president of the College Theology Society. I wish to begin by paying tribute to Sister Vera Chester, a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph, a graduate of Marquette University, who served as the first woman president of the College Theology Society between 1980–1982. She died on April 22, 2012. I had the good for tune of having Vera Chester as one of my professors when I was an undergraduate student at the College of St. Thomas shortly after the Second Vatican Council. Although I was a philosophy major, I took quite a few classes in theology. In many of those philosophy and theology classes I witnessed my professors working through and acting out the postconciliar debates between the heirs of Neoscholastic Thomism and transcendental Thomism, and I learned a great deal in the process. I experienced a different kind of approach to theology in a course on spiritual autobiographies taught by Vera Chester at The College of St. Catherine. We were introduced to the writings of Augustine, John Henry Newman, Thomas Merton, and (if my memory is correct) Teresa of Avila and Thérèse of Lisieux. What strikes me about this course now is not only Vera's contagious joyful interest in her subject matter and her students, but also her awareness of the importance of introducing students to theology through the use of narratives, specifically autobiographies that describe spiritual life journeys.

Norine G. Johnson (1935–2011).

On November 19, 2011, Norine G. Johnson, the ninth woman to serve as president of the American Psychological Association (APA), lost a valiant battle with cancer. Norine's curiosity about her grandmother's strength led to much of her later work on the development of strength and resiliency in adolescent girls and in women. She received her doctorate in 1972, with a minor in child development, and she became one of the first to be considered a pediatric psychologist, a newly emerging specialty. Norine became involved in organized psychology as her children got older. When she learned there had not been a woman president of the Massachusetts Psychological Association (MPA) for almost 50 years, she was appalled. An ardent feminist, who had served on MPA's Board of Directors, she could not let the situation remain that way. She ran for president and won, serving from 1981 to 1983, and then mentored many women colleagues into the role. MPA sent her to the Council of the APA as one of their representatives, and she immediately ran for a seat on the Finance Committee, later serving as chair of the committee. During her tenure on the Finance Committee, she helped create financial policy that changed APA from an organization whose assets were threatened and shrinking to a financially solid association. Norine considered Division 35 (Psychology of Women) to be her home in APA, a place filled with warmth, collegiality, and shared values. She and Judith Worell spearheaded the extremely important and successful 1993 National Conference on Education and Training in Feminist Practice. Norine was elected to the APA Board of Directors in 1997, where she served with distinction, continuing to focus on the financial well-being of the Association. Not surprisingly, she went from that role to being elected APA president. Her focus as president was on the changes in the health care delivery system in the United States. She was a staunch champion of the biopsychosocial model of health. Under her presidential leadership, the APA Mission Statement was amended to add the word "health," confirming the importance of health to the psychological community. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

The Road Trip of 1975: How Far We Have Come, How Close to Austin We Remain

In March of 1975, perhaps four or five of us students from U Wisconsin- Madison climbed into a station wagon, rented for us from the UW car pool by the Department of Languages and Literatures, and traveled south toward the sun in Austin, Texas.We leftin the dead of night. The thought of real spring weather, the increasingly warm temperatures as we headed south, and the long drive made us giddy enough. But we were also nervous and excited about the fact that we would soon meet faces and bodies to match some of the famous names we knew . . .I had largely moved to as a French PhD student, because, as I often say, the faculty in Studies-literature especially- would invite you to their homes. And you could actually MEET the writers and filmmakers you were studying. You could ask them questions, and they'd answer you (more or less), whereas in French, the writers we studied were mostly dead, and none of the living had ever come-during my years, at least- to Madison.It was also obvious that African literature, as we then called it, mattered. These texts we were reading and debating were part of something real, something critical. They clearly made a difference. This was proven to us in the worst way: Writers, like political leaders, could censored, jailed, tortured, exiled or murdered.So, a historic occasion was brewing and we students would a part of it. We would in fact, if I may shiftmetaphors, getting in on the ground floor.I don't remember much in the way of detail, except that I would the guest of a UT graduate student, Patsy. I slept on her floor. She was a wonderful hostess.It was only the second professional meeting I'd ever attended, the first being the 1974 ASA meetings in Chicago when the ALA was born. It had seemed a radical break at the time, even though it was presented as a caucus more or less, which is to say that we would all still attending ASA but would hold a separate meeting in addition, where no longer overshadowed by political science and policy wonks, could come into its own. I didn't grasp then what a difference this would make and how much the ALA would shape me professionally and personally, nor how invested I would become in this little association, how it would give institutional credibility to the work we do, how it would enable women to also be somebody.Students might in awe of these household names (household, among Africanists at least), but they were never treated like junior members: They were full-fledged participants in the debates, on the Exec Council right from the beginning. And so were women. Although it would take twelve years before the election of the first woman president of ALA.The theme of the Austin meeting was Contemporary South Literature. Among writers and scholars from West Africa, there were Chinua Achebe, Emmanuel Obiechina, Romanus Egudu, Pol Ndu, KofiAwoonor, Ama Ata Aidoo, and a Wole Soyinka protege, Biodun Jeyifo. From East Africa: Peter Nazareth and Ali Mazrui.What I remember most clearly of that first iteration, of course, was the overwhelming presence of South Africans-Dennis Brutus, Cosmo Pieterse, Mazisi Kunene, Ezekiel Mphalele, Wally Serote, Oswald Mtshali, our own Daniel Kunene. Many of these giants would presidents of ALA over the following decade. And the ALA's next twenty years, with all their excitement, discovery and growth, would painfully tethered to the evolution of South politics.The tyranny at home in South Africa reached over and shaped the course of the ALA, located in the U.S. in those years. Individuals were silenced, expelled from meetings and membership on the basis of positions they took in or trips they took to South Africa. It was wrenching. But such was the acuity and urgency of the South debacle, standing in for the whole continent, that it is hard to imagine how it could have been otherwise. …

Adding ‘Women's Voices’ Across the Curriculum

Adding ‘Women's Voices’ Across the Curriculum

Obama vs. Clinton: Categorical Boundaries and Intra-Party Electoral Outcomes

The 2008 Democratic presidential primary provides a unique opportunity to examine how community structure is related to intra-party electoral outcomes. Because the contest between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton remained competitive until the very end, we are able to analyze voting outcomes for more than 2,300 U.S. counties where votes were cast before the ultimate winner had been determined. The primary was also noteworthy because Obama was seeking to become the nation's first African American President, while Clinton hoped to be the first woman president. The competition, and the response that the candidates received from voters as they campaigned across the country, revealed interesting dynamics pertaining to race, class, and gender. We argue that Obama and Clinton appealed to constituencies on different sides of a cultural divide among Democratic voters, and that divide is rooted in occupational segregation. Our results show that occupational segregation by race, and especially by sex, are related to the voting outcomes, with Obama gaining his strongest support in the most integrated contexts and his weakest support in segregated contexts.

Finding The Courage to Change the Things You Can

Finding The Courage to Change the Things You Can

Notes on Contributors

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156973211X581687 International Journal of Public Theology 5 (2011) 385–386 brill.nl/ijpt Notes on Contributors Margaret S. Archer heads the project ‘From Modernity to Morphogenesis’ at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. She devel- oped the morphogenetic approach to social theory and was the first woman president of the International Sociological Association. She is author of sev- eral books, including Conversations About Reflexivity (London and New York: Routledge, 2010) and Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Julie Clague is Lecturer in Catholic Theology at Glasgow University, UK. She advises

Feminist Public Theology in the Uniting Church in Australia

AbstractThis article considers the expression of Protestant feminist public theology by the first women to gain access to leading positions in the Uniting Church in Australia, which was inaugurated in 1977. Roman Catholic and Protestant feminist theologians have started to provide theories of feminist public theology. The case studies of Lilian Wells, first Moderator of the Synod of New South Wales, and Jill Tabart, first woman President of the Assembly of the Uniting Church, provide evidence for the revision of these theories. The article argues that both the desire for and the expression by women of feminist public theology has a history that is longer than might be assumed. It also argues that such history confirms but also challenges aspects of received theories of feminist public theology, and that the two cases outlined below provide insight into the constraints inherent in the expression of feminist public theology in Protestant denominations such as the Uniting Church in Australia.

Empowerment of coastal communities in cultivation and processing of Kappaphycus alvarezii—a case study at Vizhinjam village, Kerala, India

The Science & Society Division of Department of Science & Technology, Government of India sanctioned a project in 2005 under the Woman Scientist Program (DST WOS-B) with an objective to develop technologies for the cultivation of high-value seaweeds widely used for industrial purposes/human consumption with empowerment of the coastal communities in Kerala. The project was divided into two phases: an experimental/investigational phase and an extension phase. In the experimental phase, pilot-scale culture experiments were conducted to evaluate the possibility and feasibility of the cultivation of the red alga, Kappaphycus alvarezii, in the southwest coast of Kerala. Pilot-scale studies of seaweed culture were conducted in the shallow subtidal waters on the Vizhinjam Harbor area in two bamboo rafts tied with seeds of K. alvarezii (100 ± 1.20 g) following accepted culture and growth monitoring procedures. The first harvest was carried out after 45 days and the growth was nearly eight times the initial biomass (826 ± 2.80 g). A group of local fishermen were trained in the fabrication of culture rafts, implanting seed material, rearing the seedlings with periodical monitoring, harvesting, and post-harvest technologies like drying, sorting, packing, etc. as part of the pilot-scale study. The pilot-scale efforts showed good scope for the further expansion of the large-scale cultivation of K. alvarezii in the southwest coast of Kerala by imparting training and adopting fishermen families for their additional employment/alternative livelihood. Success in the pilot-scale cultivation led to the second phase of the project, the extension phase, which fulfilled the main objectives of the DST WOS-B programme. Vizhinjam Gramapanchayat (village), where the pilot-scale cultivation was carried out successfully and headed by a woman president, came forward to pool resources of the project to be implemented as a Model Seaweed Cultivation Programme. A training/workshop on “seaweed farming technology” was conducted and nearly 60 people were trained. Mangalam purusha sahaya sangham, a registered self-help group (SHG) of Vizhinjam, came forward to start the culture operations at Vizhinjam with technical backup from the DST-WOS-B Programme. Some seaweed entrepreneurs from inside and outside Kerala also came forward with a 100% buyback guarantee for the produce. Nationalised banks like the State Bank of India offered loans to trained SHGs for starting seaweed cultivation at commercial scale.

Interview with Mary Robinson

AbstractMary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland (1990–1997), former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997–2002), and current President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, has spent most of her life as a human rights advocate. As an academic (Trinity College Law Faculty), legislator, and barrister, she has always sought to use law as an instrument for social change. The recipient of numerous honours and awards throughout the world, Mary Robinson is a member of The Elders, co-founder and former Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders, and Vice President of the Club of Madrid. She chairs the GAVI Alliance (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) Board and the Fund for Global Human Rights and is Honorary President of Oxfam International, Patron of the International Community of Women Living with AIDS (ICW), and President of the International Commission of Jurists.

Dame Josephine Barnes: Distinguished Gynaecologist and First Woman President of the British Medical Association

In previous articles in this series, we have written about the great women pioneers who broke down the barriers which prohibited or limited their entry into the various branches of the healthcare professions and who then proved that they could compete, on equal terms, with their male counterparts. Included in the first among these, of course, was Florence Nightingale, who, in the Crimean war (1854-6) and afterwards introduced the 'modern' era of nursing training and put an end to the dirty, ignorant and often drunk women who had been delegated to look after the sick and injured in the hospital wards before her time.

Nadelson Honored for Contributions to Medicine

Nadelson Honored for Contributions to Medicine