HERSTORIES: meeting the forgotten she-roes of history

Madison Gill, presents the story of her sheroe, Tara Burke, who is regarded as the founder of the #MeToo movement. Gill was one of nine students to present her sheroe in the HERSTORIES Chapman University event held March 11 in celebration of Women’s History Month. MADDIE MANTOOTH, Staff Photographer

Students and faculty made their way to Smith Hall March 11 to attend the HERSTORIES event, where attendees were greeted with buttons featuring the faces of some of history’s most valiant women. The conversation that would follow was a tribute to the trailblazers depicted on each of these pins, as a group of  seniors provided a series of short presentations describing their female heroes — or “sheroes”. 

The March 11 celebration of femininity was hosted by the women's and gender studies senior seminar students and overseen by CK Magliola, the director of the women and gender studies minor at Chapman University. On Chapman’s event calendar, HERSTORIES is self-proclaimed as a “much-needed remedial education” in the unsung sheroes of history.

“The idea (of HERSTORIES) is that when you’re not taught about very, very important people, it can have very pernicious effects; it’s not just an oversight,” Magliola said during the event’s introduction. “And the point is that when we learn about really incredibly important figures, it will change us to continue the work they’ve done, so we don’t have to start over from scratch.”

The WGST 498 class, which Magliola also teaches, focuses on exploring the feminist theory, examining current debates around feminism and learning about the different waves of feminism through readings and documentaries.

“(The HERSTORIES event) is a way the women's and gender studies minor celebrates Women's History Month with Wilkinson College,” said Madison Gill, a senior biological sciences major who presented at the event. “Each student in the capstone class (is) presenting a feminist activist and/or scholar and discussing the historical and contemporary significance of their feminist ideals and activism.”

Gill presented her shero, Tara Burke, the founder of the #MeToo movement. Gill explained that Burke encountered a lot of sexual violence survivors in her work at a youth development organization called 21st Century, which, in addition to Gill’s own experiences, inspired her to fight against sexual violence.

“(The #MeToo Movement) was a way for victims of sexual violence to share their stories and connect with other survivors,” Gill said in her presentation. “(It) was created as a way for young women to share their stories (and) promote the idea of empowerment through empathy.”

Charlie Jackson, a senior theater performance major opened her presentation with a quote from her sheroe, Nawal El Saadawi, an Egyptian feminist activist who fights against female genital mutilation: ““My trouble started the day I held a pen between my fingers.” 

Jackson then asked the attendees if anyone had heard of El Saadawi before, to which the audience responded they hadn’t.

“It was a lot of pressure to try to pull out the facts that were the most relevant without skirting over an entire life of activism and complexities, so I just kind of looked at interviews with El Saadawai, watched a Ted Talk with her and (I) really tried to paint a broad picture while also going over more specific parts of her activism that I really connected with,” Jackson told The Panther. 

Jackson expanded on El Saadawi’s history, explaining how El Saadawi underwent a forced clitorectomy when she was little, which inspired her to start her activism. El Saadawi later went to medical school and became the United Nations Adviser for the Women's Programme in Africa and the Middle East until she published her book “Women and Sex” in 1988, which was later banned in Egypt for two decades and made her an enemy of the state.

According to Jackson, highlighting El Saadawi’s story is vital because of how often feminist activists from developing countries are forgotten and rarely heard. Jackson also believes it’s essential to acknowledge the women fighting on the frontlines in these countries instead of assuming they need saving.

“It’s so interesting to be able to read firsthand perspectives from the women who were activists or suffragettes and realize that a lot of their views and a lot of the issues they were fighting for are things that we’re still fighting for today,” Jackson told The Panther. 

Burke and El Saadawi were not the only women featured during the event; students also presented on Pauli Murray, Yuri Kochiyama, Sophie Scholl, Judy Heumann, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde and Sylvia Rivera, who are all women activists ranging from scholars to lawyers to political activists. 

“I think it’s really important to keep up the celebration of women and femininity in general, because a lot of the time, in the society we live in, women are looked down on,” said Leilani Zbin, a sophomore health science major and the Chapman Feminists club social media coordinator. “:So I think it's important as (Chapman Feminists) to encourage (the) celebration of woman, because they're not always put at that front, and they're always left on the behind — especially marginalized women.”

The HERSTORIES event is one of many events happening in March to celebrate Women’s History Month. This year, the theme of the month is “Women Providing Healing, Promoting Hope”  in recognition of both the work of health workers and women worldwide who have provided hope in history.