The Women’s Center and Gender and women’s studies department hosts a panel for women to share their story. PHOTO CREDIT: Maddie Bataille | Photo Editor
The University of Rhode Island held its International Women’s Day Panel on Tuesday, March 8 to commemorate the celebration that has been recognized in the U.S. for over a century.
This was one of the first announcements by coordinator Kathleen McIntyre, associate professor of URI’s Honors Program and an assistant professor of the gender and women’s studies department.
The panel was hosted by Kendall Moore, professor of journalism at URI. Moore started off the event with a land acknowledgment for the Narragansett Tribe that once lived where the Kingston Campus now stands.
The panel featured seven women a part of the URI community who spoke about individual women’s rights topics that mattered most to them.
The first speaker was Katie Riedy, an event planning and education specialist at the Gender and Sexuality Center at URI as well as the co-chair of the trans inclusion curriculum subcommittee. She spoke and represented trans women through her portion of the panel.
“Over the past decade, there’s been this huge increase of trans visibility, which was a lot of major improvement for trans rights worldwide,” Riedy said. “So now, because of this, trans people are a huge part of dialogue and we’re seeing it more and more.”
Riedy went on to talk about the increased rights that trans people have because of their fight for rights, but also the pushback they’ve faced.
According to Riedy, 2021 was the deadliest year recorded in history for trans people, with a seven percent increase in murders committed against transgender people from 2014. According to her, 96 percent of these murders were of trans women. Through her portion of the panel, Riedy made this topic apparent to people in attendance to understand the struggles trans people face and be mindful of their fight for the rights and safety they deserve.
The second speaker was Ndaya Cynthia Malambi ‘20 who talked about her experience as an immigrant woman of color.
The third speaker was Alla Hadid, a faculty member for the Bilingual and Dual Language Education program at URI. She spoke about her experience working as an educator and as a Muslim woman from Syria in America.
Mary Parlange, the first lady of the University of Rhode Island, reflected on her experience attempting to get a doctorate in astrophysics, but ultimately changing her plans and becoming a science writer.
The fifth speaker was Lorén Spears, director of the Tomaquag Museum. She spoke about her experience living on stolen land and working with the University to promote higher education for not only women but all Narragansett Tribe students.
Next was Anna Santucci, a former faculty development specialist at URI. Santucci will be relocating to the University College Cork in Ireland in April to work as a senior lecturer in teaching and learning enhancement.
Finally, Roberta C. Opara, URI’s program coordinator and facilitator of the Diversity and Inclusion Badge Program at the URI Graduate School, spoke about her experience being born and raised in Nigeria and coming to the University of Rhode Island.
Through her journey, Opara said she learned to be an “open door” and that women should embrace the experiences that come their way. Opara had the audience take part in an exercise where she listed things that could happen to anyone in life, such as being an educator, mother or artist and the audience responded with “make peace with it”.
“I say that the dissonance of the journey and the elements around it affect and the mass and the uplift the value of the challenge and who you are,” Opara said.
The University hopes to continue to host these types of events and empower women within the community, according to McIntyre.