Feminist, former head of NOW to visit WSU
Patricia Ireland, one of America’s leading feminists, will be in Pullman this week to speak at a women’s leadership conference at Washington State University.
Ireland, who speaks Thursday night, is a former president of the National Organization for Women as well as the author of “What Women Want,” a memoir of Ireland’s own experience from being a teen bride to becoming a flight attendant, then a corporate lawyer and finally head of the nation’s largest women’s rights organization.
She served as NOW’s president for a decade ending in 2001. Her key successes included strengthening ties between activist groups concerned with issues like civil rights, poverty, homosexuality and feminism.
In 2003, she served a brief term as head of the YWCA. Some conservative groups criticized the appointment for Ireland’s positions on abortion rights, homosexuality and religion, and they campaigned for her removal. Ireland had served just five months in the post when YWCA’s board, possibly giving in to political pressure, decided to fire her.
Most recently, Ireland was the campaign manager for Carol Moseley Braun’s campaign for the Democrat presidential nomination.
“We’re lucky to get her here,” said Debi Robinson-Smith of the WSU Women’s Resource Center.
“She’s going to be mostly talking about how to be involved in politics and her own experience with that,” said Robinson-Smith. “We want to get across to our students that there is no part of your life that doesn’t have some part of political involvement.”
This is the third year of the National Education for Women Leadership Institute at WSU. The university is one of nine nationwide to host the residential summer program designed to educate and empower women to become more politically and socially active in their communities. About 40 women from around the Inland Northwest will attend.
While Ireland’s talk is the keynote event, many other women activists, politicians and professionals will head workshops on leadership, working across differences and developing action plans.
“Perhaps the most important thing we can do is to realize how much power we have in shaping our communities and our country by our everyday actions,” said Ireland in a 2001 interview with the Washington Post’s Bob Levey. “For some women, it is making sure their daughter’s school gives the same practice time, equipment and coaching to the girls soccer team as to the boys’. For some, it is keeping a straight face when someone tells a story they think is a joke, but it’s racist or makes fun of people with disabilities. All of us have voices, and most of us have votes. We need to use them and not be intimidated by people who call every woman who speaks out on her own behalf or on behalf of other women a lesbian, a communist, a hag, an ugly, hairy, humorless man-hater. And not lady-like besides.”
The conference starts Wednesday and runs through Sunday. Ireland’s speech, which is free and open to the public, is at the Center for Undergraduate Education, Room 203, at 7 p.m. Thursday.