Women and Politics Reading Group
http://www.hhh.umn.edu/centers/wpp/programs_outreach/women_politics_reading_group.html
Two women, one being a professor here at the U, Sally Kenney (directorof the Center on Women and Public Policy) and Mary Rosenthal (DFL Education Foundation) started up this book discussion group in 2003.
Right now, they are going to discuss Candidate: The Truth Behind the Presidential Campaign, by: Emily O`Reilly.
The meet ever other month (on a wednesday) in the Freeman Commons in room 205 at the Humphrey Center (301 19th Avenue South).
Some other books that they have read cover topics on republican women and feminism, black women, lesbians, the suffrage movement, and so on. You can be an avid member, or come when the current book is of some interest to you.
If you would like to know more about the co-founders:
Sally Kenney - http://www.hhh.umn.edu/people/skenney/index.html
She has received numerous degrees from Princton University, Magdelon College, Oxford, and University of Iowa. Her interests include feminist movements, politics, judicial selection, and pregnancy discrimination.
Kenney also wrote a book called For Whose Protection? Reproductive Hazards and Exclusionary Policies in the United States and Britain.
I couldn't find any information on Mary Rosenthal, however, if you're interested in hearing her perspective on the question for the month of May 2005, it is posted below:
PHILOSOPHY CORNER
Philosophy Corner features multiple perspectives on a different question posed each month.
This month: How can work be a creative means for people to connect to others and produce something of significance instead of just a job?
"Capitalist society has arbitrary ways of rewarding work. Baseball players command million dollar salaries while home health aides receive slightly more than the minimum wage. It also has arbitrary ways of developing people's skills and talents. Large amounts of private and public dollars are spent on enhancing the skills of professionals, while workers in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs are left to "just doing a job" and their creativity is undervalued.
"In such a society, unions play an invaluable role. They have come up with creative approaches to turning dead end jobs into the first steps up career ladders. In the 1970s, with visionary foresight, Henry Nichols, the president of the hospital and health care workers Local 1199 in Philadelphia, created the 1199C Training and Upgrading Fund for his union's members. It now serves more than 17,000 people a year and responds to the needs of 59 Philadelphia hospitals, turning transport aides into nurses. In Las Vegas, in 1996, the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union bargained for funds for a Culinary Training Academy. Harold Meyerson, in the American Prospect, writes of a worker who started out busing tables at the Luxor and is now a wine steward-the result of courses taken at the academy and the consequent move up the career ladder.
"Unfortunately, there is little unionization in most industries. And there appear to be no other institutions in society that take low wage workers, their concerns, their abilities, their hopes and their dreams seriously. Declining rates of unionization (the rate fell to 8% in the private sector this year, the lowest in 100 years) means that this avenue, even for represented workers, may soon be lost. If we care about a culture of work for all, about jobs that can become more than just jobs, we must strengthen those institutions that play a vital role in creating opportunities for those who work the dead end jobs of our society."
(Mary Rosenthal, DFL Education Foundation)
http://www.publicwork.org/news_archive/snapshots_0505.html#5