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Feminist activist Gloria Steinem said patriarchal religious institutions use baptisms to take the miracle of birth away from women.
Steinem said the church perpetuates the idea that it is responsible for the birth of children in that babies are considered reborn through religious practices, such as baptism.
“We’ve been dissuaded from really talking about it,” she said. “Its purpose is to take over the women who are giving birth.”
Steinem was the keynote speaker for the 40th anniversary celebration of the UNM Women’s Resource Center and Women Studies Program.
Before taking the stage, Steinem said she was very pleased to be a part of the celebration and that WRC and WMST are crucial to have on campus because they help promote wellbeing and cross-cultural understanding.
“In a real sense, women studies, Native American Studies, African American studies, Asian American Studies, Gay and Lesbian studies — they’re all remedial studies,” she said. “So, one day we’ll be studying human history.”
Steinem spoke on a wide array of topics including reproductive rights and health, domestic violence and women in politics and education. She said it’s important for women to continue to fight for their rights and for their voices to be heard.
“The biggest danger for all the movements of change is the notion that they’re over, that they’re in the past,” she said.
Steinem said that issues such as equal pay are seen as social rather than political, which causes problems because it’s difficult to make consistent policies that are fair to women if the issues are not treated in a political manner. She said women make about 78 cents for every dollar a man makes, and that making women’s pay equal to men’s would help women support their families and help the economy.
Steinem said that according to The Institute for Women’s Policy Research, equal pay would insert $200 billion into the economy and that the influx of money would create more jobs, because women would spend the money they earn.
The celebration also recognized the founders and organizers of both WRC and WMST at UNM. Former director and one of the original founders of WMST Ann Nihlen said that when the program started in the 1970s, it existed in one room in Mesa Vista Hall. She said that organizing courses and events was difficult because the administration at the time was not supportive.
Nihlen said she and her colleagues were barred from teaching a course on lesbianism and organizing an all-female dance. She also said members of the department were threatened with violence and that there were drive-by shootings at the Women’s Center.
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“When Women Studies got in the building we were allowed in the basement,” she said. “We had almost nothing. And out of that starting, building a program that we had no idea how to do.”
Nihlen said that over the course of many years, the program gained the support it needed to succeed and now has large spaces in the Humanities Building and Mesa Vista Hall and offers both a major and minor to undergraduates.
Gail Baker, the first coordinator of WMST, said she’s very proud of the strides the program has made during the last 40 years. She said the first women studies course began in spring 1971 at the Free University, which provided free classes to students. She said it took a lot of very strong women to start the program and the WRC in the ‘70s, and that it will take strong women to continue them in the future.
“Now, I hope that they keep going and growing,” she said.
