Week Five: Women in Politics

For our last week (unfortunately!) of Young Feminists Club, we had to go out with a bang! So while we ate yummy Ian's Pizza, we discussed Women in Politics. We went over the unequal representation of women in Senate and the House of Representatives, with 21% and ~19% of each being made up of women, respectively. We discussed how women politicians are perceived differently due to their gender and how this is evident in the media. To illustrate this, we talked about how passionate women are often perceived as "angry" and how their clothing is widely scrutinized, while a male politician's outfits are almost never discussed. We were lucky enough to have another guest speaker, Brianna Koerth, who ran Hillary Clinton's campaign on the UW campus in Madison! She told us about her work to try to get more women running for elected offices, her internship in DC, and the important impact women can and will have in politics. After asking her a few questions about if she had met Hillary (of course she had!) and about any hardships she faced in her work based on her gender, we worked on activity to allow the students to voice their political concerns. Each student wrote a letter to either Senator Tammy Baldwin, Senator Ron Johnson, or President Donald Trump. We had some insightful notes that both criticized and thanked these political representatives, sometimes even offering their own suggestions for change. Our last week of The Young Feminists Club was an awesome one and we are bittersweet watching our project come to an end.

Week Four: Women in Journalism

This week we focused on women and their contributions to journalism! We began by touching on two women who revolutionized journalism through their work-- Nellie Bly and Ida B. Wells. Then we discussed how women in sports journalism have dealt with sexism in their work by sharing reactions to NFL quarterback Cam Newton's sexist comments to a female reporter recently. We were lucky enough to have a guest speaker, Darby Hoffman, editor in chief of Moda Magazine. She shared wisdom about her own work in journalism and what inspired her to work as a journalist. Then we used magazines in our own creative way to make collages! We had some silly, beautiful, and fun collages created on this Tuesday afternoon!

Week Three: Women in Science

For our third week at Black Hawk, we focused on women in science. However, we did forget that this meeting fell on Halloween, so everyone munched on some candy as we learned about notable women like Marie Curie, Jane Goodall, and Rosalind Franklin. The attendees had recently learned about Jane Goodall in school, so they ended up teaching us about her! Then we focused on how women in STEM fields has been increasing in recent times, but how we still have lots of work to do since women are still greatly underrepresented in fields like engineering, computer science, and astronomy. We then challenged the attendees to be engineers themselves, when we conducted an "Egg Drop" experiment. With only the tools of a cup, a few cotton balls, some tissues, and tape, each person had to design a way to hold the egg in place, so that when thrown from atop a chair, it would survive the fall. We had quite a few cracked eggs, but some survived the drop! It was another exciting and fun day and we are already looking forward to next week.

Week Two: Women in Sports

For our second week, we focused on women's contribution to sports. We had special guests join us, the UW Madison Women's Club Basketball Team! We began with a presentation discussing the discrepancies in pay between women and men in athletics and how athletic advertisements have been known to objectify women, displaying them with minimal clothing. Then, the students had an opportunity to ask the players about what it was like for a woman in college athletics and the team offered extremely insightful information to the budding young athletes. Afterwards, we all headed outside for some Knockout and 5-on-5 in the beautiful sunshine. A huge thank you to the UW Madison Women's Club Basketball team for joining us for this super fun event!

Week One: Women in the Arts

Our first week at Black Hawk Middle School was focused on Women in the Arts! The 11 students involved discussed different artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe (a Wisconsin resident!), Frida Kahlo, Yayoi Kusama, and Kara Walker. We also discussed how most notable artists tend to be male and why more attention has historically been paid to men in the field. Then, in the style of photographer Dorthea Lange, we gave the students disposable cameras to shoot their environments at school. There were lots of selfies taken, some nature pictures, and some awesome group shots.