Promoting Equality

As chair of the women's studies program, Ellen Gruenbaum brings to light the societal divide between women and men

By JENNIFER PALMBERG

It’s a great time to be a woman, especially right in the thick of Women’s History Month, and especially if you’re involved in the women’s studies program.

Ellen Gruenbaum is enjoying her first year as director of the women’s studies program at Fresno State. An anthropology professor, Gruenbaum has spent years studying people. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in anthropology at Stanford University. Then she received her doctorate from the University of Connecticut.

“I have George and Louise Spindler to thank for [my degrees],” Gruenbaum said of two of her Stanford professors. “When I went to study over in Germany, they really taught me to look at culture from an insider’s point of view. They taught me how much fun it is to explore different ways of discovering the world. That’s what got me interested in anthropology, and anthropology got me interested in women’s studies.”

Gruenbaum’s interest with women’s studies inspired her to develop a women’s studies program at California State University, San Bernardino, where she was director of the department. She came to Fresno State in 1997 as dean of social sciences and anthropology, and became a full-time staff member this year when she was appointed to fill in for Loretta Kensinger as director of the women’s studies department during Kensinger’s leave of absence.

“I love teaching women’s studies,” Gruenbaum said. “There’s so much controversy surrounding the topic. It’s just one of those things that makes you think.

“The goal of feminism isn’t to guy-bash, but rather to promote the intellectual life of the community and force people to criticize not just the inequality of women, but the inequality of all biases in society. We focus on the inequality of mothers in the work force, children, lower- and even middle-class citizens, et cetera, and we work to help erase the barriers and biases that prevent people from living to their full potential.”

Gruenbaum said she believes society has taken huge steps in the right direction these past few years in correcting inequality in society, but there are still areas of concern.

“Equal opportunity in education has improved a lot, but there are still other areas in need of improvement. Economics, politics and positions of leadership are three of these areas,” she said.

Gruenbaum said it’s rewarding, as a teacher, to see her students go out and show leadership and take initiative in women’s rights activities. She said a few of her students participated in V-Day, a campus organization that arranges activities to promote women’s rights awareness.

“Women change America,” Gruenbaum said. “Part of feminism is challenging society to take a look at women’s role in history and getting it published in school texts, or criticizing society for studying diseases that affect more men than women, and encourage them to research breast cancer as much as they do prostate cancer.

“We’ve had a tremendous effect on the development of the United States and even in some other parts of the world.”

Despite the strides the women’s studies program has made, however, Gruenbaum said there is more on the horizon.

Now the program is making steps to bringing a female presence to the Peace Garden, which already has statues of Mahatma Ghandi, Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr. She said an artist has been signed to create a statue of Jane Addams, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who’s known for her efforts as a social worker, who helped immigrants in the United States.

“We would like to see a woman added to the garden,” Gruenbaum said, “not just for the sake of having a female in the garden, but rather to have an image and role-model for women to look up to and be inspired by.”