And the Semester Starts.

I rarely talk about my profession as a Professor at Stephens College in Columbia MO.   However today is the first day back at school.  Stephens is a very unique educational environment and draws a unique student. The school is a small college in a big college town, it is all women and has been around since the 1830's.  We have small classes and intense student faculty connections.  I advise students as well as teach and frankly I love it.

I wanted to mention how amazing it is to teach all women.  No offence intended Dudes.  Yet these ladies have made the choice to come to Stephens and be in an all women environment. There are many reasons  they choose it, course offerings, environment, freedom, legacy, connections etc.... What ever their reasoning, I want to congratulated them for taking this journey.

So my first class today was Lead Her Ship. This is a freshman experience course focusing on the skills we need to navigate the professional world as women.  It is going to be great fun.  Today we launched the class and watched a YouTube video with an 2011 interview with Gloria Steinem   It is a great kick off.

Some things to think about from this video:

• We can't have equality in the work place until we have equality in the home. 
• Quantity of women in the work place is not quality of jobs held by women. 
• The Pink Ghetto is made up of jobs we can't or will not outsource.  
• Poor women always had two jobs, one in the work place and one at home, now most women have two jobs.  
• Women do not need to become men in the work force. It is not about integrating into a not so good system it is about transforming to a better system.
• Patriarchy is the control of women's reproductive rights in an effort to restricting bodies of superior group while exploiting the bodies of inferior groups to maintain class and exploit cheep labor.

This semester is going to be such good fun.  Look forward to lots of great stuff coming your way.