(Photographed by Staff Writer Skyler Pereyra)
Staff Writer: Skyler Pereyra
Email: spereyra@umassd.edu
On November 12th, the Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality (CWGS) celebrated its 55th anniversary with a cocktail gala celebration in the Marketplace.
The Center opened in 1970 during a period when, as CWGS Director Juli Parker explained, “women could not get a mortgage, a bank account, or a credit card without their husband or father signing for them.” At its founding, the Center functioned primarily as a pregnancy support and birth control referral resource, operating at a time when access to contraception was limited to married women.
“Opening the Center was a bold and radical act,” she mentioned, “and it all started in a tiny closet-sized room.”
CWGS has come so, so far since then.
Film, Reflection, and a Look Back
Before the main event, CWGS held a screening of Lilly in the Grand Reading Room, a film based on the real life Lilly Ledbetter who was an activist against gender discrimination in the workplace.
Chancellor Mark Fuller was in attendance and addressed the audience with an introductory speech: “For more than five decades, the center has played a working role in our university’s commitment to creating a truly inclusive campus.”
Chancellor Fuller mentioned how the center’s 50th anniversary was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. “All the more reason to make this evening’s celebration more memorable!” he exclaimed.
A Pioneering Voice for Gender Equity
Special guest and speaker, Jean Kilbourne, was introduced by Dr. Kristen McHenry, an assistant professor of Political Science and the director of the Health and Society Program.
Jean Kilbourne is an “acclaimed author, filmmaker, and lifelong champion for gender equity,” explained Dr. McHenry.
“Dr. Kilbourne has spent decades challenging the cultural forces that shape our perceptions of gender, sexuality, and power. Her pioneering research and groundbreaking media analysis of women in advertising have transformed how organizations, educational institutions, and communities around the world address urgent public health issues.”
Her multiple-part film series, Killing Us Softly, has been incorporated into the Women and Gender Studies department curriculum since the early 2000s.
Dr. McHenry highlighted her other films, including Deadly Persuasion, Spin the Bottle, Pack of Lies, and Calling the Shots, as well as her written work, So Sexy, So Soon, and Can’t Buy My Love, which won an award from the Association of Women in Psychology.
Dr. Kilbourne also has an extensive background working with the United States Government, serving as the advisor to former United States Surgeon General Dr. C. Everette Koop and Dr. Antonia Novello. She was also appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services to the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
The Media, Beauty Standards, and Representation
From there, Jean Kilbourne took the stage and proudly stated that the work CWGS is doing is “more important now than ever.”
She began talking about her research on women in advertising and how the mass media tells “such a narrow, limited, and limiting story.”
She also mentioned how she has made four Killing Us Softly films and is currently working on a fifth.
She showed the audience different advertisements about women from when she released the first Killing Us Softly film in 1979.
(Images via UKEssays)
“And now, primarily forced from social media, women are valuable and desirable only if we are young, white (or at least light-skinned), thin, beautiful, carefully groomed, and polished. And if we’re not these things, we become invisible or viewed with contempt, a fate that awaits all of us as we age… The ideal image of beauty is absolutely impossible,” Kilbourne stated.
Kilbourne also briefly shared the impact AI has had on the images of women in the media, which she said she will most definitely be working into her newest version of Killing Us Softly.
She also reported statistics regarding women’s representation in the media: “Women in their teens, 20s, and 30s are 39% of the population in real life, and 71% of women on TV.” On the other hand, “Women 40 and older are almost half of the population, yet only 26% of women on television.”
Kilbourne summed the situation perfectly: “We get the message that we lose our value as we grow older, we disappear, and this does terrible psychic damage to women…. One reason that our stories aren’t told in the mass media is that so few women are given the opportunity to tell them.”
After Dr. Kilbourn’s impactful speech, the event shifted to a night of eating, drinking, and community. The crowd was filled with current faculty, staff, and students, as well as retired UMass Dartmouth workers, active community organizations that assist women and LGBTQ+ people, and alumni.
Dr. Kimberly Scott gave a quick speech thanking Dr. Juli Parker for her part in making the campus a welcoming and inclusive space for all students. She recounted a story about Juli going out of her way to help a student who was in the midst of wanting to drop out but was encouraged by Dr. Parker to persevere and make use of the campus’s resources.
Finding Home at CWGS
Dr. Scott turned the stage over to Cadance Camara, a junior in Political Science with a pre-law concentration, who is also a part of the Mock Trial and Cheerleading team.
Cadance spoke about her experience of coming to UMass Dartmouth, admitting she wasn’t overly thrilled to attend. However, her feelings for the campus changed when she worked at CWGS.
By her second semester, Cadence started to feel right at home. “I really got to know the center,” she said. “I got to understand the true reason it was here: the community. I found a safe space in an unfamiliar environment. The sheer love and warmth could cure any stress and anxiety someone might have had.”
She continued, “It was not only a community for me, though; it was a family. I have somehow got three mothers, a dog, and a strange number of siblings in the matter of three years. The Center has been here to fight for our community’s equality and love. And after 55 years, we are not slowing down.”
Lessons in Listening and Growth
After Cadance’s speech came Gina Regonini’s, an alumna from 1999.
When Gina came to UMass Dartmouth, she was surprised to find that she still had a lot to learn about what it meant to be an open-minded and inclusive person.
“And I have to say, when I first stepped on campus,” she started, “as a first-year student, I thought that I was pretty open-minded. Even in high school, I had written articles for my school paper telling people that they should not be saying, ‘That’s so gay.’”
During her orientation training, there were printed booklets that had little profiles about each of the orientation leaders, and one of the questions read, “What is your favorite feature of the opposite sex?”
Dr. Juli Parker called that question out as being heteronormative, and Gina remembered feeling embarrassed “not because Juli called this out, but because I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“That small comment opened my eyes and changed how I listened, how I spoke, and how I noticed the world around me,” Gina admitted.
She also talked about the importance of the Vagina Monologues, a play written by Eve Ensler that addresses women’s sexuality and the stigma attached to sexual violence and abuse, fostering a broader dialogue centered on women’s experience.
“It was women and allies coming together to speak truths that had been whispered, ignored, or hidden away,” Gina said. “It gave us permission to take up space. To tell our stories, to be powerful and unapologetic.”
Through the play, she was able to bring her friends who didn’t necessarily “have feminism at the forefront of their minds.”
In her eyes, CWGS is a place that “opens the eyes of the wider world.”
“The work that happens here doesn’t stop at graduation, and it doesn’t stop within Ring Road. It carries through our lives, into our families, into our workplaces, into our communities. That’s what we’re celebrating today. 55 years of transformation, inclusion, and courage.”
Looking Back—and Forward
Last and certainly not least, Dr. Juli Parker, who has been at CWGS for the last 25 years, gave a final speech to end the night. She offered thanks to all the offices, departments, staff, and faculty that made this night possible.
She transitioned into listing all the women’s and LGBTQ+ centers at the college level across the country that were shut down due to the ongoing political climate that’s driving fear and uncertainty in universities and beyond.
Dr. Parker reminisced about the Center as a whole. She gave shout outs to many of her previous students who have gone on to do amazing work—like Dr. Jessica Pabón, who is now the President of the National Women’s Studies Association. She also celebrated Michelle de Sousa, who worked in Sexual Violence Education and Advocacy at Dartmouth College.
“These alumni and so many more have left UMass Dartmouth to make the world a better place,” she exclaimed.
Dr. Parker talked about her many achievements in her time at CWGS: how she taught Women’s Studies for 17 years and “helped found the Women and Gender Studies Major” at UMass Dartmouth.
She went on to share that CWGS was among the pioneers in bringing former Lieutenant Governor Evelyn Murphy’s wage project to campus, providing young women with valuable training in salary negotiation. In addition, UMassD implemented a system-wide chosen name initiative, ensuring that students can use their preferred names and pronouns without the risk of being misgendered in class.
The Center also championed the introduction of gender-inclusive bathrooms and worked to address menstrual equity on campus.
I could go on and on, but you get it,” she chaffed.
The night ended with a long standing ovation from the crowd.
55 Years of Impact (and Counting)
As someone who used to work for Dr. Parker at CWGS, it was amazing to see the room filled with people from CWGS’s long history. At a time in our country where women and the LGBTQ+ community are struggling, places like CWGS are important as a symbol of resistance and resources.
In the wise words of Dr. Parker, “While the world has changed since 1970, our mission hasn’t. We still fight for safety, inclusion, and equity…. The work of justice is never finished, but neither is our hope.”
Thank you, Juli Parker and the Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality, for all the hard work that you do.
Here’s to another 55 years!