flyer for Panel on The Portland Women’s Movement, Part 3: Building: Fighting for Ideas and Dollars

[Sandy Polishuk]

For immediate release:

Contact: Sandy Polishuk @ in...@occupyhistory.us

Who: History of Social Justice Organizing & the Center for Women,
Politics and Policy

What: Panel on The Portland Women�s Movement, Part 3: Building: Fighting
for Ideas and Dollars

When: Wednesday, May 22, 7:00-8:30 pm

Where: 2nd floor Gallery, Urban Affairs Building, Portland State
University, 506 SW Mill, Portland

Free and open to the public

Ten years before gaining official recognition as a program, female
students and professors met to plan and implement the inclusion of
Women's Studies courses at Portland State University. They held an event
in the school�s ballroom and began offering ad hoc classes., later
hiring a coordinator. Eventually Women�s Studies became an official
program and then a department offering a major.

In 1980, 22 Oregon women faculty members filed Penk, et al. v. Oregon
State Board of Higher Education alleging sex discrimination in pay,
promotion, and treatment in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964. Though the case lost in court, it sparked the Oregon
legislature to ultimately pass a law against discrimination in its
institutions of higher education.

Panelists:

Julia M. Allen participated as a graduate student in the development of
the Women's Studies Program at Portland State during the early to mid
1970s. She taught Introduction to Women's Studies and developed a course
in feminist critical theory as well. She went on to serve as a member of
the faculty at Sonoma State University, where she developed courses
focused on rhetoric and social movements.

Nona Glazer, Professor Emerita, Sociology Dept., was a co-founder of the
Women's Studies Program at PSU. Many of her publications address women's
unwaged labor, and its use by capitalist firms to reduce their wage
costs in health care delivery and retailing. Other work is on curriculum
integration with her na�ve expectation that gender, class and ethnicity
would quickly become part of all university curricula rather than being
lodged mainly in special "studies" programs. She was a plaintiff in Penk
et al vs. the Oregon State Board of Higher Education.

Marjorie Burns was a witness for Penk vs. the Oregon State Board of
Higher Education. Though she has published on women studies and
testified about women's issues in both California and Oregon, her main
area of expertise is nineteenth-century British literature. She was on
the faculty of Portland State University for thirty-seven years and is
now a professor emerita.

JoAnn Reynolds was associate counsel with Don Willner, in the Penk case,
which was tried from September 1984 to June 1985. She now specializes in
family law, representing clients in divorce, parenting, support,
property division and other family matters. She is Of Counsel to Yates,
Matthews & Eaton, P.C., in Portland. Previously, she was an associate,
then partner, with the Willner, Bennett firm..

History of Social Justice Organizing is an ongoing series of
presentations by activists and scholars on a wide variety of social
justice organizing topics in Portland and elsewhere. The mission of the
Center for Women, Politics & Policy is to increase women's leadership in
public policy through targeted teaching and community service programs.