Could We Ever…Achieve Gender Equity?

[Ricardo] We’re recording? Okay. Welcome to “Could We Ever,” part of the column okay.

[Danyelle] Welcome to “Could We Ever,” part of the UT Dallas CometCast Network.

[Ricardo] Could We Ever shines a light on our experts and ask them to tackle questions you never knew you needed answer.

[Danyelle] From science to art and more.

[Hidden Figures-Mr. Szalinski] There is another opening in engineer training program. A person with a engineer’s minds should be an engineer. You can’t be a computer the rest of your life.

[Hidden Figures-Katherine] Mr. Szalinski, I’m a Negro, one. I’m not gonna entertain the impossible.

[Hidden Figures-Mr. Szalinski] And I’m a Polish Jew whose parents died in a Nazi prison camp. Now I’m standing beneath a spaceship that’s going to carry an astronaut to the stars. Let me ask you, if you were white man, would you wish to be an engineer?

[Hidden Figures-Katherine] I wouldn’t have to. I would already be one.

[Ricardo] That was a clip from “Hidden Figures” which tells the story of three brilliant African-American women working for NASA during the preparation for the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit. The trio crossed gender and race lines, inspiring others to dream big. Today our question is could we ever achieve gender equity?

[Danyelle] Our guest today is Jacqueline Prince, assistant director for Women’s and Gender Equity programs at the Galerstein Gender Center here at UT Dallas. Hi Jacqueline. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you do here at the University?

[Jacqueline] Sure. So my official title is assistant director of Women’s and Gender Equity programs for the Gender Center. And so what that means we kind of split it up into three categories. We do education, programming and advocacy. So the programming, you may see events that we do that highlight and celebrate women. You know, a little bit of men’s and masculinity programming that we’re hoping to come around the bend and then for our education, we offer many workshops and trainings. Our Safe Zone Ally training is meant to help create allies for the LGBT community and then our Culture of Equity training is meant to create champions for gender equity. I help to you know promote some of those educational efforts. And then for our advocacy work, you may be aware of some of the lactation spaces that are on campus that are called lily pads. You know, we know that real estate on our campus is really tough to prioritize, right, but our lactating parents are absolutely worth it and we really want to create safe and clean spaces for them to pump. So those are that’s just an example of some of the things that we do on campus.

[Ricardo] How did the center get created? Like when did it get created?

[Jacqueline] Its origin story?

[Ricardo] Yes.

[Jacqueline] So in 1996 is when it was founded. Our director Lauren DeCillis, you know worked together and I guess its beginnings was really in trying to help faculty and staff on campus, the women navigate issues of sexism and you know different more Title IX things that might have happened and it evolved into something even greater. Like I said with the education advocacy and programming. So yeah.

[Ricardo] I didn’t know that-

[Danyelle] I didn’t realize that it was started that long ago.

[Jacqueline] Yeah yeah.

[Danyelle] That’s cool.

[Jacqueline] Yeah, its very like peak 90s, right, to like address issues of sexism.

[Danyelle] Girl power.

[Jacqueline] Mmm-hmm.

[Danyelle] When did you start here?

[Jacqueline] I started here in the spring of 2017. It was a great year.

[Danyelle] That’s cool. That’s awesome and you’re also enrolled in grad school?

[Jacqueline] Oh my goodness, yes and loving it. I’m in the Masters of Humanities program and I’m really wanting to shape my experience to be around history which ties right into gender equity work, and I think it feels like a-hop-skip-and-a-jump away from gender equity work but really building it on a foundation. I want my gender equity practice to be built on a foundation of movements from the past and how they can inform a more ethical, efficient and inclusive future.

[Danyelle] So it sounds like education is super-important to you.

[Jacqueline] Oh yeah.

[Danyelle] I’m excited to get educated today! [Ricardo] Speaking of getting educated, so we, whenever you, whenever we first came to you for this podcast, we had addressed it as could we ever achieve gender equality, but you told us that the phrase gender equity would it be a better fit for it.

[Jacqueline] Yeah.

[Ricardo] Why was that?

[Jacqueline] Yeah, I love this question and it’s just such a fun conversation to have because I think that depending on your goal at the time, equality is kind of a nice first step but equity I think, for us in the Gender Center and then just you know my own personal practice, is absolutely the goal. I will use different examples for different folks depending on you know what you’re most interested in or what will really hit home for you but you know just generally speaking something that I’ll give an example for is, if you are in a building, and okay I’m in the humanities, we’ll use my own example like I’m I’m getting my master’s degree and I am going into a specific building for classes. I have an equal opportunity to achieve that degree, but if there’s no women’s restrooms, which is the restroom that I would utilize, then is it really an equitable experience, educational experience? If I were to have to go to another building and utilize a restroom there, that’s class time that I won’t get back and opportunities to learn and ask questions and engage with my classmates that I I won’t be able to actually have because I’m, you know, like traveling to try to go to the restroom. So I think that it’s examples like that it can be really helpful to explain the difference between equity and equality. You may have an equal opportunity to get a service, to be a part of a program or an organization but if you don’t have the system or you know things set up in place to have it be an equitable experience, then is it truly equal. Does that make sense?

[Danyelle/Ricardo] Mmm-hmm.

[Jacqueline] Yeah.

[Danyelle] Before we get any further Jacqueline felt that it was important to give a brief disclaimer.

[Jacqueline] For the purposes of this podcast and the time that we have together, I will be referencing things a little bit more basic and sometimes in a binary way while acknowledging that things exist beyond a binary and we didn’t intend to leave anybody out and again this is coming from someone who assists. So I have a privileged perspective in this way but you know definitely wanted to talk about the work that we do and how we advocate for this community.

[Danyelle] And now back to Could We Ever.

[Ricardo] What are ways that we could achieve that outside of the workplace or just the kind of in the real world?

[Jacqueline] Yeah, absolutely. I think that within this space, and even in outside spaces, childcare can be a big barrier for people. It’s, it can be incredibly expensive and so if you’re looking at you know getting involved, more involved in your community and wanting to get involved in your community center, if that’s what you have or if you’re a part of a faith group, providing childcare and that again really speaks to gender equity because a parent can be someone of any gender and that would be something that would unlock a lot of possibility for someone to become that much more involved within their communities.

[Danyelle] We also want to talk about another teaching moment when we sent you our original proposed outline for this, we said gender and sex and you suggested that we say gender identity and sex assigned at birth. So can we talk about why you made the distinguishment, use the phrases you used and then what are the difference between those two terms?

[Jacqueline] Yeah, so the short version is we like to utilize sex assigned at birth as a separate distinguishment from gender identity and the reasons why we talk about that is because for some people those two things aligned. The sex that you were assigned at birth with how you later on actually identify your own gender, but for some people those two things don’t align and you know the sex assigned at birth is something that happened to you. You know, a doctor said hey I think that this is a boy, hey, I think that this is a girl, and then later on you kind of come into your own experience moving through the world and you feel however you feel and you identify however you identify. This is, like a, it can be a pretty complex thing and so we talk about it a lot in our mini-workshops that we have in our center and through our Safe Zone Ally training. We talk about the differences between the two and how oftentimes we collapse the two together so frequently and why that can be harmful for different communities. So I think you know I’m gonna be sharing this as a cis women and-

[Danyelle] Can you explain what this is for anybody who might not know what it is?

[Jacqueline] Absolutely. So me identifying as cisgender means that the sex assigned at birth to me aligns with the gender identity that I have now. So I was assigned female at birth and later on I was like yeah, my vibes. I’m a woman, and so for some people their experience is different. They may have been assigned one sex and then later on, through you know their journey, their gender identity is different than that how that can be harmful and studies have shown that you know when people collapse those two things together. They are maybe referred to differently. People may use pronouns for them that do not align with their identity and that is incredibly marginalizing and harmful for one’s mental health and so we’ve seen that when we allow space for those two things, sex assigned at birth and gender identity, to be uncollapse, to separate them, we start speaking to people differently. Something that we really love is when we address a crowd, we’ll say y’all. I mean I’m a Californian in Texas, I love the discovery of y’all. I use it all the time but we say y’all will say folks to a large group and you know I could be talking to any particular person in that group. When I hear you know someone say, hey guys, it’s not necessarily something that it feels like it includes me. So that’s just kind of a small example from my cis perspective but we do have research that says it directly negatively affects the mental health of folks, when we don’t allow for those things to be uncollapse.

[Ricardo] You can find the research she is referring to in our show notes and now back to Jacqueline.

[Jacqueline] That’s why i really like to emphasize gender identity because here’s the thing, as we’re connecting with each other and learning more about each other and, you know, in a workplace, I don’t necessarily need to know your sex assigned at birth. That has nothing to do with me and even gender identity can be a little bit personal to people, but it can be helpful if you share with me, you know. The pronouns that you use and how i can refer to you about this awesome conversation I had with Danielle and Ricardo, was so great. I got to meet her and chat with him. That can be really helpful you know but when it comes to the specifics of sex assigned at birth, it’s just a really personal distinction that that doesn’t really need to be discussed frequently.

[Danyelle] Thank you for clearing that up. That is something that needed to be said so we weren’t just like going on with terminology everyone might not have.

[Ricardo] And so what are some of the growing pains with just the whole gender equity movement?

[Jacqueline] Oh my. Yeah, I think that there’s quite a bit of growing pains that you can see from folks over time within each movement. So you know, just speaking more specifically about feminism, people generally refer to them in the four waves of feminism and within those you can see different, like maybe more specific focuses that each one took. The first wave, the focus was on suffrage or women receiving the right to vote and then you can kind of travel down and what I’ve noticed about the different waves is that each one is kind of building off of the other in figuring out, who did we leave out in the last one. And so, I think that, you know, looking at the wave that we’re in now, and this could be debatable, but for our purposes, I definitely believe we’re in a fourth wave of feminism because of the creation of the Internet giving platforms to people, who previously didn’t have platforms. You know I now as a queer black woman get to see what other queer black women are doing and you know previously that, some of the role modeling that was out there, I didn’t see myself reflected in and so I think that, you know, that is kind of what we’re moving towards, is always, and why I think I emphasize history so much. You know, looking over our shoulder a little bit and saying who did we leave out, you know, who did we exclude, who’s experiencing the most amount of the discrimination and violence and who essentially needs who needs help the most right now, and moving forward with that and trying to make it as inclusive as possible.

[Danyelle] So do you think the internet is a good step in the right direction of achieving gender equity?

[Jacqueline] You know, I think depending on who you talk to I have I’ve heard just a lot of people share concerns about the internet and what it’s done to our interpersonal skills and things like that. Something that I don’t know that gets highlighted quite as much is, how it’s been a liberation tool. You know, I think that depending on who you’re talking to references to hashtags can be like either an eye-roll or with enthusiasm and so I guess from me you’ll hear enthusiasm because I think that it’s an organizing tool that we’ve not seen before because right now if you are someone who has access to a cellphone and has access to the Internet you can from your phone share thoughts ideas and receive thoughts and ideas. Even if you don’t have access to the Internet through that, many people can have access through their public libraries. That’s incredible. So that means that you can go on and go through Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or Tumblr or etc-

[Danyelle] Mmm-hmm.

[Jacqueline] -and I think that that is just incredible. People who are experiencing some of the same things as you, I think, is just next-level organizing and a solidarity and just incredibly liberating like I said.

[Danyelle] We wanted to talk a little more about intersectionality and inclusion in the context of the efforts taking place at the Galerstein Gender Center.

[Jacqueline] I think intersectionality and inclusion are both terms that are incredibly important by themselves and sometimes they work together. So intersectionality does feel like a broad term but we can zoom in just a little bit in saying that it is a term and more so a legal theory created by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 80s. So you know this was pretty powerful at the time, you know, she was representing a client it was a black woman and was experiencing discrimination. Well they went back to the company and said hey you know this discrimination is happening here and they looked at their numbers and some data from their company and said well no see here look the women are fine our numbers are pretty great you know satisfaction is pretty high and they went to black individuals and saw those numbers no those are pretty fine you know the satisfaction is pretty high among black employees so we don’t see the problem here. Kimberlé Crenshaw argued to have a consideration that this client was experiencing sexism and racism together in a way that hadn’t been looked at before because when they said women they were looking at white women of the company. When they said you know black individuals they were looking at the black men who were in the company. So the black men were not experiencing the sexism that her client was and the white women were not experiencing racism that she was. So it feels important to like reference the creation of that term because I think that it sometimes we go down the rabbit hole a little bit and think about it’s just two ideas that intersect together right and that’s not necessarily the case. It’s really looking at the ways in which those two marginalized identities together can further marginalize someone in a way that’s different from the larger group.

[Ricardo] It’s just quick side-note, Kimberlé Crenshaw did a TED talk about the urgency of intersectionality back in 2016. We’ll leave the link to that in our show notes if you want to check it out. Now back to our conversation.

[Danyelle] What’s another example of a marginalized identity besides black woman?

[Jacqueline] Yeah so, something that you know we’ve had discussions in the Gender Center quite a bit about is, so you know we participate in the Pride Parade every June which is a parade that celebrates LGBTQ plus people and community and brings people together in a parade. We’ve had discussions about you know some intersecting identities of our LGBTQ students who want to participate and people who identify as disabled. How do they navigate and how can we help them navigate those kinds of situations? So you’re talking about two marginalized identities coming together to create, you know, a specific way in which our society or our communities don’t necessarily take care of them as well as we could.

[Danyelle] Okay and then what about inclusion?

[Jacqueline] So inclusion, you know there’s a lot of really great memes, again thank you Internet, that point to try and explain the differences between you know inclusion or diversity inclusion, justice those kinds of ideas.

[Danyelle] Just a quick interruption, during the recording Jacqueline was referencing a meme but we couldn’t find the exact one she was thinking of so she sent us a couple of images later on and we’ll include those in the show notes. One says diversity is being invited to the party inclusion is being asked to dance. Now back to our chat about that quote.

[Jacqueline] It’s a little bit more fun, I like to bring as much fun into the discussion as possible because some of the conversation can get a little dark. It’s important but any areas that I can, I’m like party let’s talk about it.

[Ricardo] In your past, how were your initial conversations about it? Were they dark or were they lively? When did that help you? [Jacqueline] You know, um that’s a great question. I think that’s some of my initial conversations about it were more so asking me questions so and I say me but really a part of my class. You know, I can think about it wasn’t until college that some of these inequities were really highlighted for me. I think I might have felt them but I didn’t necessarily, I didn’t have a name for them again like I’m hashtag in internet right now through our conversation but I guess it was a professor who had asked us different questions about how we may move through the world and how that’s either a little bit easier or or a little bit harder because of those identities that we have and it was her asking those questions and highlighting it for us as a class that really got me thinking like, oh dang but this is unfair and this is really challenging and imagine I think probably like a more sad thought I had was, you know who could I be if I didn’t have all these barriers in front of me, and so I kind of had like a moment about that, but another part of the class was really empowering and like well you can work together with other people and organize and remove those barriers not just for yourself but for everybody else that comes after you and I was like challenge accepted.

[Danyelle] That’s nice. I like that call to action because I feel like sometimes things I see on the internet, shout out to the Internet, it’s just like, waa waa waa this thing is happening and sucks, and I’m like it is and it does but how are we gonna just continue to cry?

[Ricardo] So at this point we wanted to take time to learn more about Jacqueline and her background.

[Danyelle] What did you do before you worked at the Gender Center ?

[Jacqueline] That’s real, I was a I worked in housing. I worked in in Residence Life and so I know that-

[Danyelle] Here or another campus?

[Jacqueline] On another campus.

[Danyelle] Okay.

[Jacqueline] So it’s kind of interesting, I guess my trajectory is a little bit abnormal but that makes it more fun, right? I got into housing being an RA in college and I loved it so much, you know again going back to that connectedness thing bringing people 0:23:29.260,0:23:36.670 together with a common goal and purpose living together and then I got another job overseeing a women’s hall and the things that I saw like the particular challenges and barriers that I saw for people in that hall were just really intriguing and I was like, I think I’m on to something here. I was a residence director at Texas Women’s University and so I got to, even on an even larger scale, you know see and think about and talk to really empowering women on that campus and it just I think congealed there, my my passion. It was kind of snowballing at this point of this is something that I feel really really called to do and to think about and so the program, programming that I was encouraging in my residence halls were like, we’re gonna acknowledge equal pay day and the fact that there are multiple equal pay days for people we’re gonna talk about that and but it’s like I was working in residence life, so it didn’t, I like made it fit and so when I had this opportunity come up to work in the Gender Center I was like, home.

[Danyelle] Do any of your identities do you think play into your like excitement and hmm I don’t want to say love but like I don’t want to ask too much but you you mentioned that you’re queer obviously mentioned that you’re black, also have eyes I can see that you’re black. That’s your gender identity and so like do any of those busy intersections affect your love and passion for the subject of gender equity?

[Jacqueline] Firstly, I want to acknowledge you putting into practice pretty immediately some of the skills that you talked about. I think it definitely informs and directly is reflected in the immense joy and deep heartache that I experience for our communities and I think taps into my empathy for other marginalized groups for sure. I think that part of where I try my hardest every day to you know have my feelings meet my practice is that even though you know I hold those those identities and I’m super proud of them and will always do work to liberate myself and others in my community, that that’s not necessarily exactly how other people who have marginalized identities that are different than mine experience that kind of oppression. Does that make sense, like I think that it, absolutely my role pops into my my love of my community and others within it and the even the great diversity that’s within those identities I shared but I also try to remember that in the work that I do, it is for everybody. So the education piece is absolutely for allies and champions but it’s also for for folks that that are in my shared communities that are learning these things for the first time because I referenced you know my own educational experience of having certain questions posed to me that lit my brain on fire in the best way of like, oh my gosh things aren’t fair even though people told me that they were and things aren’t equal things aren’t equitable and what are the differences between those two things or all of those things and getting to do that and be a part of that for people on campus and outside is is really incredible and probably is powered by my deep love and heartache for my community.

[Danyelle] That’s beautiful.

[Ricardo] That’s a core right there. Are there any misconceptions in the fight for the gender equity?

[Jacqueline] I mean so many but one I think that’s probably most alarming to me is that these efforts are for women only. I think that you know when we include people of all genders we have different people contributing to the challenges that they’re facing you know. I know I referenced childcare and lactation. When we leave men and masculine people out of the conversation with childcare or just parenthood in general, we’re leaving a huge portion of people out of a really important conversation and it’s almost furthering a couple different disparities you know. So we have, you know the gender pay gap disparity. I know it doesn’t seem connected all the time but you know I think the when you you leave parenthood and the act of childcare to one gender then you leave the financial responsibility to another gender and it’s those kinds of rigid expectations that really harm everybody because you have women who are, one who are really passionate and wanting to expand their careers, who are not necessarily able to in the same ways, and you have men who are passionate about caring for their children, who are are discouraged away from that. So I think that there’s a major misconception that this is women’s work or that this is only something that benefits women and FEM people.

[Ricardo] What does a world with gender equity actually look like?

[Jacqueline] Yeah that is such a beautiful daydream. I think that a world in which, I think the most realistic thing that I that I’m brought to is a world in which gender equity is working and we’re starting to move forward is we’re seeing boxes that people have been put in disintegrate. We’re seeing barriers that have been put put in front of people come down. We’re seeing we’ve seen some movement and TV and in movies a long way to go, but we’re seeing you know some perspectives and stories being told that, you know a larger part of society has not been exposed to before and that’s incredible.

[Ricardo] So could we ever achieve gender equity?

[Jacqueline] Absolutely. I know that if you asked depending on the day to that you might ask someone there’s a lot of heartache around it and you know some some exhaustion for people who are doing the work day in and day out but I just feel incredibly hopeful that when those barriers are removed and when we have everybody on board, especially decision makers, that’s the key here, when you have decision-makers who who can who can really leverage their influence to remove barriers, we can absolutely achieve gender equity. Now there’s not a timeline on that. I wouldn’t put a timeline on it but I do think it’s possible when you, you know kind of have all hands on deck this is absolutely something that is achievable and worth trying.

[Danyelle] Okay now it’s time for some very, very shameless plugs.

[Jacqueline] Yes!

[Danyelle] Thanks to the efforts of the Galerstein Gender Center, UT Dallas received five out of five stars on the national campus pride index and was ranked the most LGBTQ plus friendly campus and Texas, and number seventeen in the nation. You can check out a video on the UT Dallas YouTube channel and we’ll leave a link to that in the show notes. We wanted to see what Jacqueline thought about that ranking.

[Jacqueline] Which was really incredible to be acknowledged in that way because we have had students who contact us or stop by the center who are like I came to UTD because of the rating. The rating is something that communicates to LGBTQ+ students, but also some staff and faculty talent, who are attracted to campus because they know that there there are certain standards and practices that our institution has to support and protect our LGBTQ+ community. You can find us on Twitter at UTDGGC or on Instagram at UTD_gender_center.

[Ricardo] So a big shout out to Jacqueline Prince for being our guest today and thank you for listening. Make sure you tune in this summer for some bonus content. We’ll see you back in the Fall for season two. Bye. Come back now you hear. The UT Dallas CometCast is a podcast network brought to you by the UTD Office of Communications.

[Danyelle] A special thanks to senior lecturer Roxanne Minnish for our music. Be sure to follow the university on social media. Check out Could We Ever and our other shows at utdallas.edu/cometcast. So listen out for us next time.