Women in the Human Services

SEHNAP Women’s Studies Commission / 1982

Click here to read the full announcement of the Women in the Human Services series. 

In an April 1982 letter, the SEHNAP Women’s Studies Committee announced the inauguration of a series of courses under the heading “Women in the Human Services.” At that time the WSC included Judie Alpert, Pat Carey, Vivian Clarke, Berenice Fisher, Iris Fodor, Marcia Leventhal, and Mary Sue Richardson. These elective courses were intended to supplement graduate programs with a women’s studies perspective and award a Certificate of Study. The series included six core courses and various related courses in other departments including Cultural Foundations, Educational Psychology, and Health Education. The core courses were: 1) History And Theory, 2) The Woman As Professional, 3) Feminist Practice, 4) Women As Human Service Consumers, 5) A Theoretical And Experiential Approach To Body-Mind Interaction I: The Fundamental Physical Self And Its Implication For Conceptual Change, and 6) A Theoretical And Experiential Approach To Body-Mind Interaction II: Cognitive/Behavioral Approaches (later combined into one course called A Cognitive/Behavioral Perspective).

Figure 1. A flier for the Women in Human Services courses offered in fall 1982 and fall 1983. Many of these new courses did not appear in the 1982-1983 SEHNAP bulletin, and the WSC needed support to publicize their efforts by posting this flier and asking colleagues to inform students of the upcoming courses. 

Click here to see the Women in the Human Services listing in the 1985-1986 SEHNAP bulletin.

Through interviews, Berenice Fisher’s 2002 article, and SEHNAP bulletins, I was able to learn more about the courses, professors, and students in the Women In the Human Services program. In “Women’s Studies in the ‘Women’s Professions,’” Fisher wrote that her students had years of experience and commitments including full time jobs and families. They were very serious about professional education and expected concrete outcomes from their NYU education (2002, p. 296). Fisher wrote, “At worst, this pressure toward practicality could lead to a refusal to engage in studying anything that did not have immediate application,” but in teaching her course Feminist Philosophies of Educations she “found that most students already perceived contradictions within their chosen professions and wanted help in thinking about them” (2002, p. 296). Teaching these students also proved revelatory for the feminist faculty members. Fisher wrote that while she could facilitate class discussion, she “could not offer neat answers to the complex questions students faced in their different work settings. I could only insist that both the personal and the professional were political - that professional life involved political choices that could not be evaded” (2002, pp. 296-297).

Figure 2. Listing for Fisher’s Feminist Philosophies of Education course in the SEHNAP bulletin. This related course was in the Cultural Foundations department.

In my interviews, I asked the WSC members about their experiences teaching courses in the Women in the Human Services program. Professor of Physical Education and Sport Emily Wughalter taught a course called The American Woman in Sport. She told me that because it wasn’t required it was hard to get numbers, but her involvement in the WSC connected her to students who were studying with other members. Professor of Science Education Pamela Abder-Fraser told me about joining NYU as a Caribbean woman in 1989, a time when her department’s student population was majority white due to the high cost of tuition. She said, “The first problem I encountered was people not understanding the different cultures. In some cases, they had never seen someone who is not like them, far more have a conversation with them or interacted with them in any way.” Abder-Fraser started to find grants and created a way for people without master’s who were already teaching in NYC public schools to join the Science Education program and was able to structure her classes in a way that allowed students to meet and bond with different people.

Figure 3. Course listing in the 2005 bulletin. This related course was in the Teaching and Learning department. Of her class, Abder-Fraser told me: “We were looking at what was happening in the US and globally in terms of gender and culture. Why are women not being included? What were the drawbacks? What was happening in classrooms? Why are girls taking science? Why would girls not take science?” 

On her courses, Mary Sue Richardson said, “The lack of attention to gender in the 90s was impossible to conceive. There wasn’t a lot available, so you could make it up.” She was hired in Counselor Education, and the linked courses made it so students in her department could take several WGS courses while still adhering to their required track. She said her students were terrific and she loved working with them, but the courses kind of fell apart because faculty moved on, and WGS became more intersectional. She told me that she thought “Women’s Studies should have been more important in a school like Steinhardt,” and I agree! It is so interesting to have a focus on feminism in a school of education and human services professions. While in my M.A. program, I have tried as much as possible to bring a feminist lens to many of my HESA assignments and focused on issues including the experience of black women students and campus sexual violence. I think I really would have benefited from a more institutionalized approach to WGS in my degree and the option to take some of the Women in the Human Services courses as electives.

Fisher also wrote about how the WSC “often found it difficult to talk about racism and to conceptualize the role of antiracist critiques in our collective work…the women of color on the commission continued to carry the major burden for keeping racism on the agenda” (Fisher, 2002, p. 298). Dean of Students Pat Carey reiterated this when she spoke to me, saying, 

There are particulars about these -isms. While black women are women, we're also black. So at that time we had to push for making a difference together. Because if black women are left out, then white women have won nothing. In the kinds of activities and events we were part of, we knew that gender, race, and sexuality affected teaching and learning.

Figure 4. Listing from the 2005-2007 Steinhardt graduate bulletin. On the name change, Fisher wrote, “I was happy that we could find a fresh formulation to support feminist, antiracist efforts in our school. But it saddened me to let go of our earlier name” (2002, p. 301).

The end of the 1990s marked the 20th anniversary of the WSC, but at that point Fisher writes, they “had exhausted the impulse behind our group…A number of us agreed that if we did not transform we would simply fade away” (2002, p. 301). After outreach and discussions with a larger faculty group, the mission statement was revised and the Women’s Studies Commission was renamed the Commission on Gender, Race, and Social Justice and housed in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in the Professions. The course that once was Women in the Human Services: History and Theory was reworked into Diversity and Professional Life, and all other offerings were related courses in departments including Teaching and Learning, Art and Art Professions, Administration, Leadership, and Technology, and Applied Psychology.

Figure 5. Listing for Diversity and Professional Life in the 2005-2007 Steinhardt graduate bulletin.

References

Commission on Women’s Studies, 1985; The Guide to the Administrative Files of the Dean of the School of Education, Daniel E. Griffiths; RG 26.0.1; Box 1; Folder 29; New York University Archives, New York University.

Fisher, B. M. (2002). Women’s Studies in the “Women’s Professions.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, 30(3/4), 294–303. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40003264

New York University Archives Collection of Course Bulletins, 1983-1987; New York University Archives Collection of Course Bulletins; MC 286; Box 101; Box 102; Box 103; Box 104; Box 105; Box 106; New York University Archives, New York University.

Women’s Studies Committee, 1984; The Guide to the Administrative Files of the Dean of the School of Education, Daniel E. Griffiths; RG 26.0.1; Box 12; Folder 6; New York University Archives, New York University.