Final Project

Namra Arshad      

Professor Cacoilo

Acts of Resistance: Activists, Interlopers and Pranksters 

May 7, 2019 

                

       My semester project revolves around women of color and their role in field of science. In starting, I was just blindly focus on role of women of color in biology field as I am a biology major. But as I continued with my research, I was shocked to come across the overall brutal number of women working in STEM major. There are many reasons why we don’t see a balance. One of those many reason is not enough recognition of those women of color who contributed so much of their life working in these fields but were never recognized to encourage those who came after them. All these careers are known to be “masculine.” According to a study done in 2018, across regions,women are less likely to enter, more likely to leave STEM careers because their career peak about ten years into their fields. Many other factors include Isolation, hostile male-dominated work environments, ineffective executive feedback, and a lack of effective sponsors are factors pushing women to leave their STEM careers. So, there’s more women leaving their careers in STEM majors than entering every day. The share of STEM degree is even smaller for women of color. There were less than one-quarter (24%) of women that were employed in STEM careers. There were only 11.3% of women of color that earned a degree of bachelor’s across all STEM fields in 2014-2015 and those numbers haven’t change much in past few years. Those 11.3% included 2.9% Black women, 3.6% Latinas and 4.8%Asian women. 

             In order to bring a change in these fields, we have to encourage girls overall from a very young age to be not hopeful. We have to encourage them to pursue their dreams. While working on my project, we were introduced to a book “Confession of Guerrilla Girls” in class. They motivated me in every possible way to go out of my way to do what I believe. Guerrilla Girls are feminist activist’s artists known to speak for gender equality in every field. 

            My goal for this project is to create an Instagram page and introduced those women of color, who worked very hard in these fields and made their name by contributing their lives. By exposing these role models to young girls, I intend to encourage them as I was while working on this project. Through this page, I will be sharing stories and achievement of women of color who made mark in STEM fields. I hope to create a world through this page for young girls where their dreams are not just dreams. I aim to motivate them to pursue their dreams to create a balance world. Below is one of many stories from the page: 

A screenshot from the page 

A story 

 Link to the page: https://www.instagram.com/scienceandwomen/

Work Cited:

https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics-stem/

https://toolsforchangeinstem.org/double-jeopardy-gender-bias-women-color-science/

https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2015/02/barriers-women-color-science

Final Project

Christopher Pastor

Final Post

            Gender, a very controversial word today many would claim that there are only two genders and dismiss you if you say otherwise. Others would say gender is a social construct, and some people may just not care. In Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble” he says this “The cultural associations of mind with masculinity and body with femininity are well documented within the field of philosophy and feminism” (Butler, Gender Trouble). When analyzing gender, this is an obvious observation that many do not think about or tend to dismiss. We see this in society in everyday life, from the beginning of the semester, of John Berger documentary, in advertisements that we still see to this very day. My project is made to open your eyes in a way, to recognize gender and femininity and masculinity and how its been as Butler put it, “Produced maintained and rationalized, because the “patriarchy” has enforced set rules or gender roles if you will, and negatively affects our society. In today’s day feminism has such a bad connotation, and referred to as “men hating”, I think many people tend to dismiss feminism texts when reading Bell Hooks “The Will to Change: Men Masculinity and Love” one of the first texts we read was Chapter 2: Understanding Patriarchy, and in the very first paragraph you get this sense of urgency and intense vibe. “Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation.” (Hooks, 17). You instantaneously get her disdain for the patriarchy, and a man might just stop reading and dismiss her as a “man hater” but when you read further into the chapter, she is very insightful, and she goes on to explain about her life and how the patriarchy has negatively affected it personally. In all 3 of my woman’s gender studies classes I’ve taken, I tend to focus on toxic masculinity specifically violence against women, and how gender norms and roles only hurt us. However, for my final project I decided to focus on masculinity, and in Jackson Katz’s documentary “Tough Guise” you really get a sense of this negative tone of how men are expected to act, Katz talks about the pressure to conform and be outcast, and in a very powerful scene you hear words that demean and emasculate men that do not conform, and men are usually brought up to be more violent and aggressive, and it shows in media news outlets and our stories and films. Which is why I had chosen my topic, gender, in every picture I am wearing nails and I focused on and took pictures with thins and places that I personally tend to associate with masculinity, as well as a few feminine ones. I think if we stop forcing men into these roles like “men don’t cry” or we also encourage women to go outside and do sports and say that they matter, allow them to embrace their sexuality as freely as men do, and stop this notion that men are more business driven and women have to be family orientated. I think my project is clear and conveys this and intertwines masculinity and femininity and blurs the line between them.

My tumblr: QTcles

Bibliography

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge, 2006.

Hooks, Bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Washington Square Press, 2005.

Jhally, Sut, Susan Ericsson, Sanjay Talreja, Jackson Katz, and Jeremy Earp. Tough Guise:   Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity. Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation, 1999.

Final Project

Sejin Kim

Acts of Resistance: Activist, Interlopers, and Pranksters

Professor Cacoilo

May 7, 2019

            In the United States, people discriminate based on race/ethnicity, age, gender, and education level. There is a very present gender wage gap in the U.S. It is also known that male-dominated industries tend to have higher wages than industries and occupations made up mostly of female workers. To face all these problems, I made several posters which tackle the notion that equal work deserves equal payment and that we should not discriminate people solely based on their gender.
I could say that the Guerrilla Girls inspired me the most for my semester project. The Guerrilla Girls are an ongoing female activist group in the United States. The Guerrilla Girls are standing up against sexism in our society. They have made a lot of different types of posters that show they are against a lot of discrimination that women face in our society. Women have been discriminated or denigrated with their work all over the history. Women have been treated as an object of men’s property, have been ignored or have had their ideas stolen by men. Every human being deserves equal rights without any kind of discrimination.

Trump - Gender Equality is Priority

The first poster is about Donald Trump, the president of the United States. As many people know, president Donald Trump is a symbol of a patriarchy. Donald Trump is a white man, who owns various hotels, casinos, and golf courses. After Trump became president of the United States, he obtained more power and honor in the political world. I believed president Trump would be perfect as a character for my activist poster since he is a well-known man with power who very publically belittles women. There is a well-known campaign slogan spoken by president Trump, “Make America Great Again”. I have used this line to point out that America needs to fix the gender gap to become a better country. President Trump is holding up his index finger in this photo, and his index finger can be viewed as a number one, which will fit well with the line that I have added on poster. I have added “Gender Equality is Priority” because it is a fact that we must make our society equal for everybody no matter what kind of gender you are. Trump is known for being a man who insulted women in the public, and I made this poster by twisting his actions.

Poster "It's Just a Symbolic Feature It Does Not Define Who You Are"

                                  

The second poster is regarding how our society labels us and noting that we are more than how these labels define us. People would often say that a boy should like the color blue and a girl should like pink or boy should be more tough and girl should be more emotional. In our society we often divide each other based on our gender, however, we are all similar human beings who are capable of anything. I wanted to talk about how we have no difference between man and woman in my poster.

The third and fourth posters are about how everyone deserves equal amount of payment through equal work. In Korea, men receive better opportunities and payment than women because Korea still has a patriarchy system. People in Korea often say that man should earn money and woman should take care of their children. This patriarchy system is getting fixed more and more, however, there are still a lot of old fashion minded people still discriminating women.

Equal Work Deserves Equal Payment - Food Industry

                          

Often food is something that a woman has to make for the family in our society. In a society ruled by the patriarchy system, they often say that a female must know how to cook and male should not be near the kitchen. Even with cooking as a job, male chefs often receive better opportunities and payment than female chefs. In Korea, many of the chefs that come out in  TV shows are mainly male chefs. These are the reason why I made this poster to stand against the patriarchy system even in the cooking industry.

Equal Work Deserves Equal Payment - Construction Industry

                         

In the construction industry or any place that requires strength, they often do not give an equal opportunity and payment to female. However, it is not about the gender. It is more about who that person is. There are men who are weaker than women and women who do have better skills than men. However, in these industries they often do discriminate females.

Bibliography

Blenman, Joy. “The Companies Donald Trump Owns.” Investopedia, Investopedia, 5 May 2019, https://www.investopedia.com/updates/donald-trump-companies/
“Earnings and Wages - Gender Wage Gap - OECD Data.” TheOECD, https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm

“The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap.” AAUW, https://www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “The Gender Pay Gap for Women Food Processing Workers.” Narrow the Gap, https://narrowthegap.co/gap/food-processing-workers-all-other
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “The Gender Pay Gap for Women Construction Managers.” Narrow the Gap, https://narrowthegap.co/gap/construction-managers

Final Project - Martena Grace

      Martena Grace
      Final Project
   
       Discrimination against women goes beyond unequal pay and biased promotions. Women are often belittled and treated as inferior to women in all aspects of their life. Unfortunately, they experience sexual and verbal abuse constantly and no one shines light to it. My entire project was surrounding the idea of giving women the strength to take control of their life by taking control of their bodies.
      The self-defense classes I organized were a way for women to gain confidence in their lives and empower women to be as strong and powerful as they desire. I held 4 classes on Saturday from 2-4 pm every week and the women that attended were taught basic and semi-advanced self-defense moves. Superficially, this is a straight forward class in order for women to know how to defend themselves in dangerous physical situations such as attacks, rape, etc.. This is the foundation of the class but the benefits were as much physically as they were psychological.

This is one of the students that came to most of the classes.
Action Shot in one of the simulations

        A lot of the females that attended my classes had previous experiences in which they were attacked or sexually assaulted and saw this as an opportunity to better themselves. These classes are rooted in self-confidence because to take your opponent down, you have to believe deep down that you can do it. Once you have that spark of self-confidence and empowerment that you need in these classes, it ignites a fire inside you to wanna grow that confidence.
     These classes are an amazing resource to women as they thrive for equality. They are accessible to everyone as they are free of charge. You leave feeling empowered and not scared to stand up for yourself. Women often look down when a guy is looking at them or cross the street to avoid them. They can get too intimated to speak up and voice their opinion in a man dominated meeting. This is a baby step to looking that man right in the eyes and showing no fear or speaking up for yourself. This does not have to revolve around man and women power but also power in general.
      This was something that engaged the community in an injustice that has been around since the beginning of time and I saw first hand the influence of my classes in my conversations with women who stayed after class. After class, I received comments such as " wow I never thought I could do that" and " I feel so good". I had one person come to all 4 of my classes because she saw the potential change it can make on her life.  I am hoping this causes a ripple effect in their lives and they inspire all the women they know to believe in themselves.
       This project is something that I honestly fell in love with and will continue as long as I keep training
      An art project that inspired me and will continue to inspire my future women empowerment projects is a performance art about gender roles and how women are treated and expected to take the abuse. I watched this video a few times to get a good understanding of it but it is extremely powerful in its precise movement and facial expression to show dominance. It highlights how women are expected to be. As a ground fighting specialist, I would love to demonstrate some rape simulation moves in public to bring attention and eye to an issue that is considered shameful to many people. So people can see women in a different light. I only really got exposed to performance art two weeks ago and that gave me that idea but the weather has not permitted me to do a public class since then.
           


This is a PowerPoint link with the photos & videos from my classes that visually explain my project and the impact it had on my students.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11gf34hSyJa3n3mciWPfjlsihVcP_DcJ7cjkeiEMPtRI/edit?usp=sharing

Final Project - Criminoladies

My project wasn’t creating something you can touch or hold, but a hub for people to read stories and change their views of activism beyond how people may immediately view it. So much attention is brought to legal change as simply writing a piece of legislation and having important, influential figures sign it, but these are options not available to everyone. There is a certain status you must have to even get your foot in the door for these things. Nato Thompson talks of cultural capital, and this is undoubtedly exemplified in how the women experience a lower cultural capital than the white man who could yell at fellow white men about a law or practice that needs to be changed. He goes on to say that cultural capital displays “power disparities” between different groups regarding race, class, ethnicity, location, and gender. Each of the activists featured on my page have a low cultural capital as women, but some of colour, some of lower class, they have all used unconventional means of bringing change.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BwV1kfBn-in/

I began with Clarice Starling, who holds a fondness in me due to the inspiration she offered as a woman entering a male-dominated environment, albeit fictional. I’d discuss aspects of the women’s struggles and how they overcome them, in this case, I used screenshots from the film to exemplify what I was referring to in the post itself. Within 2200 characters, I’d try and cram in every wonderful thing that post’s figure had accomplished despite the push backs, because of this, they aren’t too long or daunting-to-read big walls of text. This was one of my biggest struggles because I could write pages about some of these women, despite history trying to snuff some out, there’s records of their achievements that warrant the attention and recognition. The women in this project weren’t all brought to my attention through school textbooks, in fact, only one was. The rest were unnamed revolutionaries thrown in with the most basic facts, and others went unmentioned altogether. Because of the different stories of these women, I can't take the information from all of the same sources so I've compiled a list of their sources, both information and image, in the final two images of each post so anyone looking for further information can find it easily and immediately

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvnUCSYHqux/

The Interventionists book is filled with artists and activists who interrupt your day through various means, some with taxi screens that project messages to outsiders, some with an inflatable home for the homeless to hit you with the reality of not only homelessness itself but a wasted resource. With this project, I hope to ‘interrupt’ the typical flow of an Instagram feed; fashion, a healthy breakfast, a work out regiment, and more beauty figures. In between these, a dose of female empowerment can’t be a bad thing. Much in the same tone as interruption, Pussy Riot’s performances disrupt the peace of certain areas to tackle issues from economic struggles brought on by the government to overpowering church influence. I’d like to think this project is a tribute to their, and other Interventionists work.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvyFDCRnJVh/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvyFDCRnJVh/

Each of the images used here were all from different posts to avoid spoiling too much if you would like to visit my page yourself to read about influential women of criminology. Here's a link; https://www.instagram.com/criminoladies/

Presentation of project: https://prezi.com/view/GH6YbCrdDr56zSKlWydM/

Final Project

            Activism is a way to promote or prevent social, economic or environmental change. There are many forms of activism like media, protests, or street marches; and now we have the internet. A person or a group can post something he or she is concern of an event and wants a government to be aware of it. The project that I worked on is on global climate change and throughout this semester I was trying to figure out how I can connect this to my major which is criminal justice. Trying to connect these two was hard because there was little to none research that connects with the environment and the criminal justice system; however with the help with Professor Cacoilo we were able to find a website the is similar to what I was looking for. The Prison Ecology Project focuses on the increase population in prisons and the effects it can have in the environment. Their mission statement states “The mission of the Prison Ecology Project is to map the intersections of mass incarceration and environmental degradation, and create action plans to address the multitude of problems found there” (Ecology Project). The issues they address are few like damage of sewage and industrial waste and the loss of land because of ongoing construction of prisons; these are few problems they state. One of the main causes of global climate change is carbon dioxide and humans are responsible for the release of carbon dioxide. This gave me an idea to connect carbon dioxide and prison population into a poster.

I got this idea of a poster because the guerrilla girls were able to grab people attention when they are fighting sexism and racism within the art work; and a good way to that is to make posters with statements that will make people uncomfortable; however it is true. Even though I already know what to do I still did not how the poster will look like; after looking over posters on JUSTSEEDS a poster of Chip Thomas Rethink Coal gave me the idea for making this poster.

Rethink Coal by Chip Thomas

The connection to an artist for my project is John Gerrard; he is an Irish artist and he is known for his sculptures and digital simulations display using computer graphics. One of his works is called Western Flag and the image locates in Spindletop,

Western Flag by John Gerrard

 Texas and that place is known for the world first major oil discovery and 100,000 of barrels were extracted a day. His work is computer generated and a flag is created out of black smoke which it is represented as America culture.

Bibliography

https://nationinside.org/campaign/prison-ecology/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/artists-take-on-climate-change_n_5ba25163e4b04d32ebfea0d4?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFHQbitVp0Pp2vg598QmvTJEQWPYjBm1IyYYDnNs-PqrD4dwwaUoP8ork_np49huDx65d203AmqYH94QAXVLPlpFkDvu_Huai0QrXVUdCnOl-fFp5et4FmWkrp4Vjkkb7xDMJVt4vKQPdfkD4SwaSPsRlOZYpK0G6vW-DxEjYKS2

http://www.johngerrard.net/western-flag-spindletop-texas-2017.html

Final Semester Project

Johanna Riera

Acts of Resistance: Activist, Interlopers, and Pranksters

Dr. Cacoilo

May 7, 2019

Final Semester Project

            Throughout history, women have made grand contributions to their societies. Among these women, some are well-known while some are not. Despite, their levels of recognition, women have significantly helped advance the world. In 400 BC, Agnodice was the first recognized female gynecologist who courageously practiced medicine in Greece during a time when women would face death penalties for taking part in such a field. Today, women make up only 24% of computer science jobs. Fortunately, there are successful women like Kathryn Parsons who is a co-founder and co-CEO of Decoded. Which is a company that teaches people to code. Such a powerful woman has been a driving force across many campaigns that aim to bring more women into business and technology. Despite strong woman, statistics support that there is still a gender gap within the STEM field.  According to the United Nations, for every dollar earned by men, women earn between 70 and 90 cents.  Microsoft has released statistics where only 6.7% of women graduate college with a STEM degree (consistent across all ethnicities). Being a woman pursuing a science career, I have faced different many adversities. Both my gender inequality experiences and statistics have propelled me to activate against such inequalities via an Instagram blog (@womankess).

            I believe that in order to deviate from such unequal rights, it is important that young girls are encouraged to pursue a STEM field by being exposed to role models early on in their life. This applies to older women too, the lack of women in STEM makes it seem as “It is impossible to accomplish”. Presently, there are many organizations and groups that provide resources to raise the participation of women in STEM. Amongst many include, the Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, Medicine and the National Center for Women & Information Technology. Groups like the Guerilla Girls also activate on women rights in general. Personally, I have decided to create an Instagram blog that spotlights both successful women and current women pursuing a career in the STEM field. Through this blog I hope to create an interactive community of women who encourage one another to pursue their dreams despite the adversities we may face as women along the way. In addition to spotlighting some women, I also created my very first interview video. 

Interview with Dr. Natalia Coleman, Cancer and Stem Cell Biologist 

Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/S6MFpzmMZl0

Description: For women, or anyone interested in being empowered and inspired, here is an interview with Dr. Natalia Coleman, a Cancer and Stem Cell Biologist. Dr. Coleman shares her insights about her journey in becoming a successful woman, how she has dealt with adversities, and how she has overcome them.

Screenshot of youtube video

Background scenes during interview filming 

Instagram Blog (@womankess) 

Link: https://www.instagram.com/womankess/?hl=en

Screenshot of Instagram 

Upcoming Posts 

Note: The below students have agreed to collaborate but have not been posted on instagram. They have yet to submit consent forms. 

Christina Faltas

Student at New York Medical College pursuing her PhD

Alix Duarte 

Student at Columbia University pursuing her Master of Science in Nursing 

Marisol Soula 

Student at NYU Medical School pursuing her MD/PhD 

Lindsey Remark 

Student at NYU Medical School pursuing her MD/PhD 

Juliana Remark 

Student at NYU Medical School pursuing her MD/PhD 

Christina Puntiel 

Student at Stevens Institute of Technology pursuing her BS in Chemistry 

Work Cited: 

Http://Interactive.unwomen.org/Multimedia/Timeline/Womensfootprintinhistory/En/Index.html#front

“[PDF] Confessions Of The Guerrilla Girls Download EBook for Free.” Frontpage Hit Counter, ebook4scaricare.com/gratis/confessions-of-the-guerrilla-girls/.

“Research Guides: Women and Gender Equality: Statistics.” Statistics - Women and Gender Equality
Research Guides at United Nations Library Geneva, libraryresources.unog.ch/c.php?g=462669&p=3162803.

“WomenWatch: Directory of UN Resources on Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women.” United Nations, United Nations, 

www.un.org/womenwatch/directory/statistics_and_indicators_60.htm.
“Gender Stats-Education.” Gender Stats-Education, genderstats.org/.