Gender Benders : Role models: The Women’s History Project, run by the Thousand Oaks branch of the American Assn. of University Women, will bring famous ‘visitors’ to area schools next week. It encourages girls to make informed career choices.
The scene is a Thousand Oaks classroom:
“My name is Maya Angelou,” the woman begins. “I was born April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Mo. When I was 3 years old my parents got a divorce, and so my brother, Bailey, who was 4, and I were sent to live with our grandmother.”
The students at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School are entranced by the bold colors and African designs of the woman’s long skirt and headwrap. She continues:
“We were put on a train by ourselves with a tag attached to each of our wrists that said: ‘To Whom It May Concern: This is Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson.’ ”
The woman describes the pain of an infected tooth and the greater humiliation she suffered when told by a white dentist, “My policy is I’d rather stick my hand in a dog’s mouth.”
She tells how she was the first black woman conductor on the San Francisco streetcars. How she studied dance and drama, worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign for civil rights. How she gained fame from her poetry and books. And how, just weeks ago, she delivered a celebrated poem at President Clinton’s inauguration.
And then she is gone.
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That, at least, is how the script is supposed to go next week when Maya Angelou--her stand-in, actually--and several other surprise “visitors” are scheduled to appear in Thousand Oaks schools.
At a Banyan School classroom, in will stride Margaret Bourke-White, the photojournalist and adventurer whose World War II photographs for Life magazine made her famous. There will be television newswoman Connie Chung, arriving at Westlake Hills elementary. Nancy Lopez, the professional golfer, and Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock, the geneticist, will mingle with students at other schools.
It is not a publicity gimmick. Maya Angelou is really Grace Johnson, a Westlake Village retiree who has long been a fan of Angelou’s poetry and will try to copy Angelou down to the details of her vibrant dresses. Playing McClintock is medical technologist Margie Chespack, who was chosen for the role because she happens to know the difference between the kind of genes McClintock studied and the ones that Levi Strauss & Co. make.
But no matter. Throughout Women’s History Week, which begins Monday, hundreds of students in public and private schools in Thousand Oaks will get glimpses into the lives of these five extraordinary American women as portrayed by Johnson, Chespack and dozens of other volunteers. Perhaps some of the students will be inspired to lead inspired lives of their own.
Known as the Women’s History Project, this is one of the oldest and best-known programs of the Thousand Oaks branch of the American Assn. of University Women (AAUW).
But it is only one part of a larger and more serious agenda by the branch, which is taking women’s issues into the schools.
This bigger agenda, which the branch took on last year, attempts to deal with the contention that schools discriminate against girls, especially in the areas of mathematics and the sciences. And that this discrimination, or gender bias, has serious ramifications for a woman’s later career options and her standard of living.
The efforts of the Thousand Oaks branch echo a national campaign by its parent organization based in Washington.
Last year the national organization issued a manifesto for gender equity, “How Schools Shortchange Girls.” Its widely publicized findings of discrimination fueled a sense of outrage that had been inflamed just four months earlier, when the Senate unwittingly transformed Anita Hill into a symbol for women’s anger.
“It was a catalyst,” said Colleen Briner-Schmidt, president of the Thousand Oaks AAUW branch. “That, along with the anger that many women felt over Anita Hill’s treatment, focused us and brought us together. We felt that issues important to women and families were being ignored.
“I think,” she added, “we funneled our anger well.”
“How Schools Shortchange Girls” said girls were consistently overshadowed by boys because, among other things, teachers give more attention to boys; textbooks are commonly written by men; sexual stereotypes still pervade books and audiovisual materials; and most school administrators are men. Moreover, the researchers who surveyed 3,000 school-aged girls and boys found disturbing differences between the attitudes of younger and older students.
For example, in elementary school:
* 60% of girls and 69% of boys agreed with the statement, “I am happy the way I am.”
* 81% of girls and 84% of boys said they like math.
But by high school, the “gender gap” had widened dramatically:
* Only 29% of high school girls and 46% of boys agreed with the statement, “I am happy the way I am.” (The “gender gap” on this measure of self-esteem widened from 7 points in elementary school to 17 points in high school.)
* 61% of girls and 72% of boys said they liked math, a drop of 20 percentage points for girls and only 12 points for boys.
What does it mean?
For girls, the report said, the consequences of this last finding were said to be several. Principally, even girls who do well in math and science are less likely to pursue science careers, while those girls who don’t do well never have those career opportunities to begin with. And this puts girls at a disadvantage.
The American economy will need an estimated 500,000 new scientists and engineers by the year 2000. Yet without a solid background in these subjects in high school, the report said, women will be shut out of many of these jobs. That in turn increases their economic vulnerability. At some time in their lives, more than half of all women will become the sole means of support for their families because of divorce, death of a husband or a husband’s loss of job.
These arguments hit home in Thousand Oaks, where the AAUW immediately began a campaign to combat gender bias.
“The single most limiting factor in a girl’s education is the amount of math and science classes she takes,” Briner-Schmidt said.
The branch has made math and science education a centerpiece of its program.
In its most ambitious effort so far, the branch last month brought girls in grades six through nine together with 32 women who have made their careers in math and science fields, ranging from cellular biology to electrical engineering, pharmacy and auto mechanics.
It was billed as the 1993 Math & Science Conference. The Conejo Valley Unified School District offered the use of Newbury Park High School. Several businesses donated money and equipment.
Therese Hughes, one of the conference organizers, had worried about attendance. The conference had been scheduled for a school holiday that marked the beginning of a three-day weekend.
But she needn’t have worried. She had hoped to attract 300 girls. Instead, 362 showed up, even some from other school districts.
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The setting last month was a science classroom at Newbury Park High School. Just for the morning, the classroom had been converted into a hospital laboratory.
Rachel Graham, a sixth-grader at Cypress School in Thousand Oaks, took her seat with 14 other girls, all of whom had chosen the conference over a holiday.
A row of test tubes and strange-colored vials were on the worktable before them. Then teacher Mary Coles brought out the blood.
Rachel squeezed a blob of blood into the bottom of a test tube, added a few drops of a sky-blue liquid, gently swirled the mixture and peered at it carefully.
The blood, which had come from someone identified only as “Donor No. 1,” separated into little pinpoints, like red static. Rachel and her classmates now had to decide whether the blood could be used for a transfusion to patient “JB,” who lay waiting in the emergency room--or whether it would kill him.
Coles, a senior medical technologist at Los Robles Medical Center, studied the pinpoints of blood.
“This is maximum clump,” she said, satisfied. “Now, can Donor No. 1 give to patient JB?”
“Yes, because he’s an O!” shouted Rachel. “He can give to anybody!”
The blood was a hit. The girls even got to test a “urine” sample--actually water to which Coles had added glucose.
Theresa Nguyen, a sophomore who was sitting a few seats down from Rachel, said she had come to Coles’ session because she wants to be a pharmacist. “This is real life. This shows me what they do every day at work,” she said.
After the morning sessions, as the girls lined up for pizza, some said they enjoyed not having to compete with boys for once.
“I don’t think we’re expected to do as well as guys. When we do it’s not appreciated as much as the guys,” complained Lila Hollman, a student at Los Cerritos Intermediate School. “More attention is given a guy when a guy raises his hand than when a girl raises her hand.”
“Some girls think they should just be housewives,” said Elana Anatole. “I’m interested in saving the earth and everything.”
For Briner-Schmidt, the conference’s success helped erase one unpleasant memory: the first day of freshman algebra class at Toulon High School in Toulon, Ill.
“I sat in the front row because my name came first alphabetically,” she said. “The teacher asked a question. I raised my hand. I heard giggles behind me. I turned around, and none of the other girls had raised their hands. That was the last time I ever volunteered in class.”
The goal of the science conference was not, however, to turn every girl into a physicist. “I am not saying that a woman has to go into a math or science career,” Briner-Schmidt said. “But she should do something because she has choices, not because it is the only thing for her to do.”
Encouraged by the turnout, the Thousand Oaks branch is focusing on another project for summer: a weeklong day camp that will focus on math and science. Boys and girls will be encouraged to attend.
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As you might guess, the agenda of the AAUW doesn’t end with math and science classes. The branch sponsors another program that is concerned with choices--choices of a broader scale than whether to sign up for calculus or creative writing.
In this program, girls are encouraged to think about the kind of choices they must make to be self-sufficient.
Appropriately enough, it took place in another Thousand Oaks school in recent weeks, as if in spiritual preparation for the upcoming role-model series.
The scene this time was the lunchroom of Westlake Hills School. While rain beat down outside, 10 Girl Scouts and their mothers arranged themselves into a circle.
The girls, all 12 years old, are poised at the cusp between childhood and adolescence. For most of them a $5 allowance is a lot of money. Yet their assignment this evening is to think about something that to them is as far away as old age: drafting a budget for a family.
“Imagine you’re 28 years old and you have two children,” class leader Lori Mahoney told them. “You have this beautiful family, and all of a sudden you’ve lost your husband, either through death or divorce, and you’re all alone. What do you do?”
Their first step was finding a place to live.
“Beverly Hills, 175 K down, assume 912 K mortgage. Three bedrooms, maid’s quarter,” said Mary Joyner, reading a real estate ad. “What do they mean, ‘assume mortgage?’ ” she asked.
The other Scouts decided Beverly Hills is too extravagant. They settle on a more practical two-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood for $680.
The girls have many other decisions to make. Should this single mother buy a used Volvo station wagon or a 1991 Nissan Sentra? (The Sentra, they decide, will be more reliable.)
How much will she spend on food? Children’s clothes? Movies? Eating out? What about child-care costs? Health insurance? Income taxes?
The final budget surprised even the mothers. This young single mother will need to earn $44,940 a year, or $21.61 an hour, to meet her budget. And she wasn’t even allowed to go to the movies.
“Now,” Mahoney said, “find a job .”
It is a gentle introduction to the realities of making a living, and a reminder that a job at McDonald’s just won’t cut it.
“Sixth-grade girls are just beginning to think about careers,” said Mahoney. “They don’t have the peer pressure that they’ll have in junior high. They haven’t cut themselves off from their mothers.”
But the message takes awhile to sink in.
Lizzie Minihane, for instance, said she has her career mapped out. She plans to be an oceanographer--and, when not at sea, an employee of a Penguin’s Frozen Yogurt shop. Lizzie figures that ought to be good for about a million dollars a year.
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Briner-Schmidt shows obvious satisfaction with these programs, noting that they don’t aim to make girls the same as boys--just to give them the same opportunities.
“We cannot sit back, gracious and polite,” she said. “We have to get active. Yes, we are not ladylike sometimes--and we have lost some members because of that--but we have gained many more.
“People have to grow but sometimes you have to nudge them, and sometimes you have to give them a good, swift kick.”
It’s nothing Maya Angelou or Margaret Bourke-White wouldn’t understand.
