A discussion is to be held on campus this week regarding how women use their power to advance several goals and causes such as the human rights of women, children and other groups.
The “Women and Power: Meeting Contemporary Challenges” forum will take place Thursday at 7 p.m. in the MSU Colvard Union Ballroom. Admission is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.
The program will feature four women who have made a difference at the national, state and local level.
Mary Finch Hoyt, Clyda Rent, Helen Taylor and Janet Rafferty will each speak on an individual topic, with an open question and answer session with the audience to take place following their presentations.
Hoyt, press secretary to former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, will discuss the subject, “Politics, Press and a First Lady,” which examines what it was like to work in the East Wing with the former first lady, a social activist who became the third first lady in American history to be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Hoyt has served as bureau chief of Ladies Home Journal magazine, as well as press secretary to the wives of U.S. Sens. George McGovern and Edmund Muskie. In addition to her most recent book, “East Wing: Politics, the Press, and a First Lady,” she has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Weekend, among other national publications. An MSU faculty member since 1977. Hoyt will be in the MSU Bookstore signing her book on Wednesday from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursday from 10:30 a.m. to noon.
Clyda S. Rent, president emerita of Mississippi University for Women and current sociology professor and research fellow at MSU’s Social Science Research Center, will discuss the importance of “A Woman’s Look.” Rent also serves on the advisory board of the National Women’s Hall of Fame and has served on the Southern Growth Policies Board and Commission on Colleges for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. In 1993, she was named by Working Woman magazine among the nation’s 10 most admired women managers.
Helen Taylor, founder and chief executive officer of Starkville’s Brickfire Project that includes three child care centers, two tutorial sites, a technology center and self-sufficiency services for Starkville Housing Authority residents, will speak on “The Power of Compassion.” The topic will tell about Taylor’s passion for promoting programs that benefit Mississippi’s children.
Taylor has administered nationally competitive federal Housing and Urban Development grants and has been honored by HUD for opening the first computer learning center in public housing. She was appointed by Gov. Ronnie Musgrove to the Southern Educational Institute on Early Childhood and serves as president of Voices for Children, a statewide organization for child care providers.
Janet Rafferty, a Phi Beta Kappa faculty member in anthropology and North American archaeology at MSU and state chair of the Green Party, will discuss her role as a leader at the local level in protesting a possible war with Iraq in “Organizing Against War and Other Horrors.” Rafferty now conducts archaeological research primarily in the Southeast and has published widely.
Meg Murray, director of the MSU Women’s Studies Program and the forum’s principal sponsor, remarked on the how she felt about the forum.
“I do think [the forum] is important,” Murray said. “I think it will be a quite lively evening-given we begin with the assumption that women are in every way men’s equal and have the right to hold as powerful political and military positions as men-and certainly have the same right to protest what they see as an unjust war, etc.”
According to Murray, the topic was inspired by a desire of Women’s Studies committee members to explore the unique opportunities offered by women in power, problems they confront and methods for dealing with them and other issues.
The forum will be moderated by Daniel Melder, president of the MSU College Democrats, with questions and answers moderated by political science associate professor Diane E. Wall.
The event is being sponsored by the MSU College of Arts and Sciences’ Women’s Studies Program with support from the University Honors Program, Holmes Cultural Diversity Center, School of Human Sciences, NOW, AAUW, MSU UNICEF, President’s Commission on the Status of Women and the Division of Student Affairs.