Studying Work and Gender

'Work and Gender' will be the theme for four days of events as Grand Valley State University's Women and Gender Studies program kicks off its eighth annual WGS Festival.

The WGS Festival begins on March 15 with the annual WGS Film Festival, featuring 10 films shown free of charge at the Pew Grand Rapids Campus (films listed at end). On March 17-19 are three days of panel discussions, presentations by special guests, and a musical performance. Activities culminate on Wednesday evening with a keynote speech by award-winning family scholar Stephanie Coontz, author of the groundbreaking The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.

WGS Festival activities begin at 10 a.m. on Monday and Tuesday, and at noon on Wednesday. All activities are open to the public free of charge. Call (616) 331-2325 for a schedule of events.

Keynote speaker Stephanie Coontz
Award-winning researcher, author, and professor Stephanie Coontz will present the keynote address at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 19, in the Kirkhof Center, Grand River Room (2nd floor), Allendale Campus. Coontz' speech, titled 'Half the Workforce Doesn't Have a Wife,' examines work-life issues in the 21st century.

Coontz has published six books on family history, gender roles, and contemporary family issues, including a follow-up to The Way We Never Were, titled The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms With America's Changing Families.

Called 'brilliant and invariably provocative' by the New York Times Book Review and 'a treasure' by the Los Angeles Times, Coontz has written for The Wall Street Journal, Harper's, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vogue, and many other publications. News and talk shows she has appeared on include The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN's Crossfire, CBS This Morning, and documentaries hosted by Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters.

A well-known lecturer and spirited debater, Coontz has addressed audiences throughout Europe, the United States, and Japan. She currently teaches family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

Other featured events
On Monday, the WGS Festival will feature Katha Kissman, former president and CEO of the national organization, Leadership America, Inc., speaking on 'The Reality of Equality: The Value and Promise of Grand Valley's Women's Center.' Kissman, a 1977 alumna of Grand Valley, will speak at 7 p.m. March 17 in the Grand River Room, Kirkhof Center.

Tuesday's events are highlighted by a performance by Colombian singer/songwriter Claudia Gomez, followed by a panel discussion on the conflict in Colombia led by visiting Latin American scholar Mary Roldan. The performance and discussion are held 7-10 p.m. March 18 at the Loosemore Auditorium in the DeVos Center, 401 W. Fulton St. The events are also part of GVSU's Colombia Week; call (616) 331-3414 for more information.

WGS Film Festival
Saturday, March 15, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
Loosemore Auditorium, DeVos Center, 401 W. Fulton St., Grand Rapids
Open to the public, free admission

The daylong festival features 10 independent films made by women and exploring 'work and gender' issues across cultures and around the world. Schedule and descriptions follow.

11:05 a.m.
Harlan Hill County USA (1976,103 min., Barbara Kopple)
One of the great films about labor troubles. Explores a 13-month coal miner's strike that took place between 1973 and 1974 in Harlan County, KY. Kopple lived among the miners and their families off and on during the four years the entire story played out, focusing her camera on the desperate plight of people still living in shacks with no indoor plumbing and working dangerous jobs with little security and few safety rules.

1 p.m.
Nobody Knows My Name (1999, 58 min., Rachel Raimist)
Tells the story of women who are connected by their love for hip-hop music. Despite the fact that these talented female artists exist within a culture that revolves around self-expression, they struggle to be heard. Raimist explores a fascinating and diverse feminist community, which yearns to find a place in a male-dominated subculture that is, in itself, marginalized.

Grrlyshow (2000, 18 min., Kara Herold)
Powerful and rebellious message from new voices of fringe feminism and print media. Herold examines the girly Zine revolution and culture in such a way that the film intellectually and stylistically addresses anyone's question concerning whether or not feminism has reached its 3rd wave: the postmodern.

2:20 p.m.
Lip (1999, 10 min., Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg)
Entertaining video collage revealing the narrow margin Hollywood has allowed black actresses. 'Lip' is a proven art form in scenes from 1930s to present. Features a remarkable roster of undervalued actresses and their more celebrated white costars. Highlights how black characters and white characters still interact on screen.

Performing the Border (1999, 42 min., Ursula Biermann)
Set in the Mexican-U.S. border town of Ciudad Juarez, where U.S. multinational corporations assemble electronic and digital equipment just across from El Paso, Texas. Looks at the border as both a discursive and material space and explores the sexualization of the border region through labor division, prostitution, the expression of female desires in the entertainment industry, and sexual violence in the public sphere.

3:30 p.m.
Some Real Heat (2001, 54 min., Stephanie Jordan)
Explores the small and relatively new world of female firefighters in San Francisco and
their upward climb to gain access to a male-dominated field. Armed with axes,
chainsaws, muscle, heart and determination, six daring women demonstrate how they single-handedly turned gender roles upside down by putting their lives on the line everyday in one of the riskiest jobs around.

4:30 p.m.
Pain, Passion & Profit (1992, 49 min., Gurinder Chadha)
Inspirational look at women entrepreneurs through the eyes of Anita Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop whose motto is 'profits with principles'. African women who have successfully developed small-scale business enterprises in their own communities provide a focus for questions about how the role and status of women affects their enterprises and how those enterprises provide a means of community and economic development for women.

5:30 p.m.
Made in India (1998, 52 min., Patricia Plattner)
Powerful portrait of Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), the now-famous women's organization in India that believes poor women need organizing, not welfare. SEWA offers union membership to the illiterate women who sell vegetables for 50 cents a day or who pick up paper scraps for recycling from the streets. Important look at the power of grassroots global feminism.

Working Sister (1998, 27 min., Jennifer Stephens and Ellen Chu)
Examines the life of seventeen-year-old Xu Li Li, one among hundreds of thousands of young women who leave poor rural farms for urban factory work every year in China. Known as the da gong mei ¿ or 'working sisters' ¿ they make up the bulk of China's low-paid factory workers. A sensitive and in-depth picture emerges of a young woman at a crossroads, caught between independence and obligation in today's changing China.

7 p.m.
Sweet Power (1996, 98 min., Lucia Murat)
Stylish, sexy drama about the moral conflicts between careerism, political expediency, and personal and professional ideals. Set in Brazil during a tumultuous political campaign, veteran broadcast journalist Bia takes over as news director of a major television network. Amidst multiple candidates, corrupt colleagues, and personal intrigues, she is sucked into ethical grey areas from which it proves difficult to escape. Murat has drawn on her own experiences as a television journalist and human rights activist.

8:40 p.m. Discussion & Closing