Co-Education Symposium
By: Writers: Atishay Jain, Clark Wu, and Selim Kim
Content Warning: This article contains a metaphor involving sexual assault.
“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Feminist journalist Gloria Steinem, one of the most widely recognized leaders of the Women’s Rights Movement since the mid -20th century, spoke to the Academy on Friday, April 23 at the Co-Education Symposium event An Evening in Conversation with Gloria Steinem.
The event, a part of the Academy’s celebration and reflection on its 50th year of coeducation, involved moderator Sarah Odell ‘06 and scholar panelists Charol Shakeshaft, Jennie Weiner, Naomi Snider and Keisha Lindsay. The panel of scholars hosted a lively virtual discussion on Saturday, April 24, followed by individual breakout sessions where student, alumni and scholar leaders spoke of their individual experiences with gender and feminism.
Odell shared that the symposium was held to curate a story that empowered the experiences of women at Exeter. “Becky [Moore], Alex [Myers] and I, really wanted to make sure that we honored the diversity of experiences of Exeter women, and also honor the complexity of what it means to be a woman or a girl moving through Exeter,” she said. “I think we can mark the 50th and hold two things. This is not a perfect institution. It still needs to grow in many ways. But we also honor what went well while we were there.”
According to Moore, the symposium “sought to focus particularly on the experience of women graduates who ranged in age from mid-sixties to 20s.”
The Co-Education Symposium had over 650 attendees, including alumni, faculty, students and parents.
At the first event, Moore and Odell introduced the speakers. In Odell’s opening address, she discussed the subjects of the symposium: the absence of women in narratives, especially in Exeter narratives, and how women must traverse feminism, race and sexuality in 2021.
“Nobody loses their voice, rather they are silenced,” Odell said. “This is not the typical story of Exeter. In the typical story, success is a captain of an industry, prowess on the athletic field, celebration of a large financial donation. Success has been such a hallmark on the Exeter story.”
“At times in my own life as I found it difficult to advance in my career I felt like a failure because of my own inability to navigate the leadership pipeline did not comport with an Exeter identity,” Odell added. “But as many of my peers would tell you, if you are not a white heterosexual man, that pipeline is more of a labyrinth, and certainly not a straight line.”
Odell called for a step towards amplifying women’s voices at the Academy, a step towards recognizing the values women’s identity and presence bring. “I imagine portraits of all of our mothers, many of whom never had the opportunity to attend Exeter, but no doubt made sacrifices for us to be here,” she said. “I hope that you have a portrait up in the Assembly Hall, too. And I hope at the end of this weekend you can see yourself in those portraits too.”
Next, moderators History Instructor Hannah Lim, Meredith Hitchcock ‘06 and Ciatta Baysah ‘97 held a discussion with Steinem.
One topic brought up by Baysah pointed to recent concerns in both racial and gender minorities’ burden of representation in the classroom, including how some in the community found Harkness discussions to be racist and male-dominated and rewarding of these behaviors.
“The Harkness table isn’t a real circle,” Steinem said. “I’ve found that when students take their chairs and put them in a circle it already changes the atmosphere. Maybe move away from the oblong, oval set up and use a talking stick that is passed around. Harkness should not be finished until everyone has said what they wanted to say. A circle of sound is symbolic but real at the same time.”
“To provide instant democracy is to listen as much as we talk, and to talk as much as we listen,” Steinem said. “If the means create the ends, that is likely to create democracy as we go. It’s not so easy. Many of us have been taught not to speak, or only to speak. But I find it quite comforting to think about history in instantaneous moments as we proceed and create democracy in that way.”
“If we are in a group and addressing a problem or hope, and the group doesn’t look like it includes the people in question, then I think we should wait to start that discussion,” Steinem added. “The means are the ends. The tree grows from the roots, not from top down.”
“It is ridiculous that I am the world’s most famous feminist,” Steinem said. “I don't even know why that is true. I am speaking and writing about the women’s movement, and I guess I do not have any other title.”
Moore explained the organizing team’s multiple reasons for inviting Steinem. “Steinem, as a feminist leader in her mid-eighties, was person who brought a historical perspective on the feminist movement in the 20th century U.S. that could span the lives of the invited graduate,” Moore said. “In turn, as her memoir My Life on the Road shows, Steinem had partnered with Black and Native American women throughout her career as a speaker for community organizing in the feminist movement.”
Additionally, Moore mentioned that the symposium was Steinem’s second time speaking in front of the Exeter community. “Steinem had spoken at Exeter before when she participated in a conference on women and girls organized by the National Association of Independent Schools – we thought it would be interesting to have her return with an updated perspective,” Moore said.
The second event of the symposium, Making Present: Current Scholars on the State of Feminism, included four panelists: Shakeshaft, Lindsay, Snider and Weiner. The panelists discussed the nuances that exist in feminism and the patriarchy in different spaces of society.
According to Moore, the Academy offered discussion groups on the scholars’ work prior to the panel. “We hoped to build a community of reading and discussion on five Sunday afternoons from February to April with each individual scholar’s work,” Moore said.
Moore began the webinar asking the attendees, who ranged from alumni to current students, to consider what their education at Exeter meant for them at its various stages of co-education. Odell then launched discussion by referencing Steinem’s talk from the previous panel and asked speakers what part of her speech resonated with them the most.
“I love Gloria’s capacity to capture something that could be so nuanced, but say it so clearly with such a punch, and her braveness is doing that,” psychoanalyst and co-author of WHY DOES PATRIARCHY PERSIST? Naomi Snider said. “One thing she said was, ‘There should be a focus on what is taught… We are participating in the r[*]pe of our minds.’ That really resonated with me and made me think of what it’s like to be a feminist in a racist and capitalist society.”
Panelists then shared their thoughts on feminism and patriarchy in education.
Weiner mentioned the power dynamics at the Harkness table and the non sibi motto of the school. “When we get new information or a slogan… I have an existing schema...If I have been socialized to believe, even prior to entering Exeter, what a good boy does and what a good girl does or how to behave in particular contexts, then I reframe ‘not for oneself’ in the ways that I already operate in the world,” Weiner said. “To what extent do we impact what ‘not for oneself ‘means?... ‘Not for oneself’ may be about self-care, about making money or not making money.”
In the breakout rooms that took place after the webinar, each room was joined by a moderator and a panelist and attendees shared their experiences and questions.
Snider especially appreciated the small groups.“For the breakout group, I didn't think I ran in really with a goal of what I wanted to communicate so much as I was very interested in what I was gonna learn,” Snider said. “I was very curious to hear sort of what participants experienced and how the discussion had impacted them and what their questions were.”
Moore described the benefits of having graduate and faculty moderators. “We had graduates and current faculty serve as moderators and breakout room leaders so that participants would have a chance to hear from younger graduates and current members of the school community,” Moore said.
Overall, panelists and attendees enjoyed the symposium. Snider later shared in an interview with The Exonian that the webinar allowed for important educational moments. “I think it's really useful for me to get continually reminded of why this work is so important and what about it is important for people,” Snider said.
“For example, one of the questions that came up in our webinar really stumped me and I'm still thinking about it,” Snider said. “They asked, ‘Well how do we create awareness?’ We know that people might be unconsciously racist, and patriarchal but we aren’t aware of the impact. How do we create awareness around that? And I suddenly realized after our session how important a question that is for me, to now take forward in my thinking. What do I have to offer to that question? And these types of questions were what I wanted from the webinar.”
Lindsay, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison in Gender and Women’s Studies and Political Science, also spoke in the second session of the symposium and shared her thoughts on the significance of the symposium.
“The core message that I wanted to get across was whether [or not] you are a student, I think it's really productive to recognize the ways in which gender always exists in relationship to other categories of being, whether it's religious identity… nationality, etc,” Lindsay said. “For me, that is not just an intellectual exercise… because of that lack of intersectionality, we often end up proposing solutions that just fall flat.”
Snider shared similar thoughts in the message she wanted to get across. “I think people tend to see patriarchy as male domination of women, and I wanted us to get the simplistic view of it, “ she said. “Patriarchy is a thing, a structure, a set of norms that divides everyone from parts of themselves and therefore is harmful to both men and to women alike. I think that's such a crucial kind of idea...and I think that I wanted to create awareness of the way some of these things play out.”
For Lindsay, when it comes to the feminist movement and gender disparity, it is important to consider tangible actions. She thought the symposium, “helped spark memory and spark internal comparative analysis.”
Lindsay said, “I think this kind of symposium is an opportunity to really sort of take a nuanced approach. And to consider, is co-education better for certain kinds of girls than others? Is it worse for some kinds of boys and others.” Regarding the idea of co-education, she said, “We should not assume necessarily that this type of education is all good, or it's all bad. And I think sometimes people fall into kind of silos around that issue.”
Snider especially appreciated the structure of the symposium. “The overarching thing that really struck me is how different this panel was for me than other experiences that I've had. I felt very held by the other panelists. We were all coming from different perspectives, different experiences and different men...I'm a psychoanalyst, one of us was speaking specifically about sexual assault, the other one about intersectionality. I found it to be such a sort of a very open and respectful group in which it was going to be okay to challenge and disagree with each other. We were speaking the same language.”
“There's… this idea that to have a round discussion of something,” Snider said. “We need to get someone on the panel who says patriarchy exists and someone who says it doesn't exist and now we're going to have an argument about where the patriarchy exists or not… We went in agreeing on basic things and then we were able to kind of build on each other… You can actually open your eyes to something in a very useful way.”
Attendee Jade Chao ‘88 P’24 connected to a comment Steinem made during her talk about gender equality through the years. “[She] was talking about older women and [how] the advantage of being older is knowing how bad things were and how much things have changed for the better now for women by comparison,” Chao said. “But that for the younger women, especially ones who are still in school, their impatience is also very good because without that, things will not continue to change. So it's good to have both.”
Odell was grateful to have hosted the symposium. “I hope that the attendees see themselves in what they heard this weekend. And I mean that in terms of the good, the bad and the ugly… but I also hope for alumni in particular, to be kinder to themselves.”
Snider agreed. “I hope that people listening found something in what we were saying that resonated with their experience… I hope that there were men in attendance who were moved to consider that privilege within a structure… and that this isn't just a women's issue,” Snider said. “I hope that they felt sort of that burning anger that pushes them to have more conversations to act… I hope it moved [the parents in the audience] to ask about their children's experience today.”
Finally, Moore dedicated the Symposium to women faculty who had “their lives cut short by ill health and death.” “As the Academy committee asked for suggestions about how to structure our yearlong recognition of Exeter’s 50th anniversary of coeducation, I thought back to Marcia Carlisle, my late colleague in the History Department,” Moore said. “Marcia, a proud feminist, was the first in her North Dakota family to go to college and then to earn a Ph.D. After Bennington, NYU and Rutgers, Marcia taught at Exeter from 1989 to 2005. She believed in building knowledge through research as well as broadening the circle of the voices needed to be researched. She also believed in discussion; she would have suggested that Exeter hold a symposium—and so we are.”
“Marcia was one of a number of women on the faculty whom I think of tonight. They did not have the chance to complete their teaching careers at Exeter, their lives cut short by ill health and death. This symposium is dedicated in their memory, to their teaching and strength, Moore said. “Along with:
Marcia Carlisle, Instructor in History
Addie Aquelino, Instructor in history
Anja Bankowski Greer, Instructor in Mathematics
Polly McMullan, PEA‘76 Instructor in French
Betty Ogami-Sherwood, Instructor in Drama
Christine Robinson, Instructor in English
Lynn Watkins, Instructor in Health Education
We miss them and honor them.