Sexuality and Feminity
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2008 - Seven Who Chart New Pathways
these guests became Cole"s role models. "My folks kept explaining to me that getting an education isn"t simply about coming to understand the world better," she recalls, "education is also about learning how to make the world better." This lesson laid a foundation for her entire career of educating young African American women and preparing them for leadership. As a student at Oberlin College, Cole discovered anthropology. "I see the world through one lens as an anthropologist, and through the other lens as an African American woman." The two lenses give her the vision she needed to be a community volunteer and a social activist, she says. In 1987 after climbing the academic ranks, Cole became the first African American woman to serve as the president of Spelman, a historically Black college for women in Atlanta. Though she completed a successful capital campaign there, she feels proudest of "helping to put Spelman in closer touch with its own self" as a place to nurture diverse Black women who would go on to be outstanding leaders. In 1987, Cole retired from Spelman College; her retirement didn"t last long. In 2002 she assumed the presidency of Bennett College for Women, the only other historically Black college for women in the United States. Bennett faced substantial challenges at the time. "How good it feels to have worked with others to turn things around at that ever so special college," she says. Cole stepped down as Bennett"s head in 2007, and now much of her work is connected to chairing the board of the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute, founded at Bennett College. One of the Institute"s projects that Cole is particularly excited about is Power Girls, a magazine, Web site and summer program that targets female teens and provides them with leadership training. "I believe so much in girls and women," Cole says. "When I see a young woman who has chosen to soar toward the height of her possibilities, the effect is far-reaching. She will become a role model; she will inspire others." Theresa Connor, Warrior for Reproductive Autonomy In 1982, Theresa Connor was a promising journalist at CNN in Los Angeles when she discovered she was pregnant. She was a single mother on an entry-level salary with no family nearby to help care for an infant. "I was faced with a tough choice: keep the child or keep the position," she recalls. Connor chose to return to her home state of Washington to have her child and assumed her experience and education would make it easy to find a job. She underestimated the biases facing pregnant women. Jobless and with no prenatal care, she soon headed to the welfare office. "I was angered by the way poor women were treated by welfare workers and others," Connor says. "I remember sitting in the reception area, turning to a woman next to me and saying, "This is outrageous!"" When her son turned 1, she became politically active. As president of the local chapter of the Women"s Political Caucus, Connor advocated for child care and lobbied the city to adopt a "limited duty policy" rather than force pregnant police officers and firefighters to take unpaid leave during pregnancy. Working late nights at the Washington State Senate, she often picked up her son from daycare and returned to her office where he stayed by her desk. She soon joined the state employees union to help others struggling with child care. She helped draft child-care legislation and set up a hotline for child-care referrals. Connor longed to vigorously push for the women"s issues that mattered to her when she opened the paper and saw a lobbying position for Planned Parenthood. She persuaded them to make the job full-time and ramp up their campaigns. "I had this vision of what it would take to move the organization to the next level in terms of political presence. It"s taken 15 years but we"ve done that." Connor and her associates beat back anti-choice legislation and took the offensive, fighting for wider access to maternity care and contraception. She also initiated the legal research and regulatory strategies that led to the 2001 Erickson v. Bartell case that required employers" insurance plans to cover prescription birth control under anti-discrimination laws. Connor was inspired by the case to change directions: She just received a law degree from the University of Washington. Her next step is sitting for the bar, and she plans to continue using the law to advance women"s rights. William J. Dean, Matchmaker for Legal Help The number of female inmates in prisons and jails in the United States has grown at double the rate for men since 1980. William J. Dean, at the helm of a volunteer organization providing pro bono civil legal services to low-income people in New York City on a range of issues, took note and acted. Dean and his colleagues launched the Incarcerated Mothers Law Project of Volunteers of Legal Service. In 2006, 142 incarcerated mothers received legal counseling on child custody and visiting issues in the project, and 193 women participated in legal information sessions on these issues. The goal of the project is to help mothers maintain a continuing relationship with their children during the period of incarceration by counseling them on their legal rights and responsibilities as to their children. Volunteer lawyers work at the Rikers Island jail in New York City, where women first enter the penal system after being arrested or after being convicted of a misdemeanor; Taconic Correctional Facility in Bedford Hills, N.Y., where women serve felony sentences; and Bayview Correctional Facility, a prison on Manhattan"s West Side where mothers transition out of the prison system. Entering these facilities is eye-opening. "It"s extremely critical that lawyers become aware of prisons and jails and conditions there, because as lawyers we are so much a part of the justice system," Dean, a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia Law School, says. "It"s important for the legal profession to know about problems faced by prisoners and also by poor people; it being too easy for lawyers to live in a golden ghetto." Lawyers are matched by Volunteers of Legal Service to help mothers work out problems relating to child custody arrangements and visits from their families. Lawyers also follow up with social services agencies and help locate children in the foster care system. These services give mothers a sense of hope, Dean says. The project relies on lawyers at large law firms in New York City who donate their services. "Mothers are delighted to have professional legal counseling on these difficult, sensitive issues," he says. "Even on the outside, this kind of service is difficult to find." "When the decision is made between incarcerating a mother and considering an alternative sentence, an important consideration should be what the impact is going to be on children," Dean says. "That is done infrequently now." Sarah Seltzer is a writer for Women"s eNews in New York City. For more information: Bella Abzug Leadership Institute: http://www.abzuginstitute.org/ Be Present Inc.: http://www.bepresent.org/ American Moroccan International Exchange: http://www.amieonline.org/ The Sunshine Lady Foundation: http://www.sunshineladyfdn.org/index.html Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute: http://www.jbcinstitute.org/ Planned Parenthood VOTES! Washington: http://www.ppvw.org/2005ABOUTUS.htm Volunteers of Legal Service: http://www.volsprobono.org Note: Women"s eNews is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites and the contents of Web pages we link to may change without notice.Pages: 1 [2]