Set Your Sails, an open forum to discuss issues facing women and their supporters, will be co-hosted by The Women's Leadership Institute in the College of Liberal Arts and the Office of Faculty Engagement in University Outreach. Primarily, the forum will focus on the issues women face within academic institutions. The forum will pick up and continue discussing topics explored at last year's symposium co-hosted by the Tuskegee Auburn Women's Leadership Alliance.
Barbara Baker, executive director of the Auburn Women’s Leadership Institute, cited specific examples of these issues at Auburn University.
“At Auburn, for example, we have never had a woman president, and women are underrepresented in all facets of the organization,” Baker said. “We have only two women among 18 members on our Board of Trustees, for instance. This lack of representation sets up an environment in which women feel (sometimes invisible) pressures that suggest that they cannot excel in the same way that their male counterparts do.”
Listening to women speak from positions of authority, from different Panhellenic organizations, from all levels of faculty, staff and administration opens the lines of communication among all of us, Baker said.
“The format is an open forum, and our intention is to create a space in which everyone feels comfortable to speak,” Baker said.
The forum is a free session that will be hosted this Friday, March 24, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in the Auburn University Hotel and Dixon Conference Center. Registration for the forum is required, and students can register by emailing barbara.baker@auburn.edu by March 22.
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