By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Jetta Smith, Fort Hays State University senior, organized an event Thursday on the FHSU campus, “The Power of She,” in which lecturers spoke on preventing gender violence, finding equality in the work world and encouraging women to be their best selves.
Smith, a communications major, is the reigning Miss Butler County and has logged more than 1,000 community service hours in the last year.
Her platform is to raise awareness of gender violence, especially through empowering bystanders to intervene.
Smith said the idea for the “Power of She” came to life after a very heated discussion over who was the best super hero. Smith insisted that it was the modern-day woman.
“The modern-day women has the ability to empower, encourage and enlighten millions of people around her,” she said. “So why do we as women silence ourselves and not use our ability to our full potential? I hope today when you leave this presentation you are enlightened, encouraged and empowered to speak up, to speak out and to know that your voice has power.”
A bystander can step in and prevent an act of gender violence from happening, can prevent an outcome as well as deal with an outcome, said Smith, who herself is a survivor of sexual assault.
Sixty-six percent of all violent crimes happen in front of a bystander, and bystanders are present during 29 percent of all acts of sexual violence.
“It can be something as simple as body language and you see something happening and you make eye contact from across the room, crossing your arms, changing your body language,” she said. “As a communication major, that was something that I took on instantly.”
A bystander can distract or interrupt, such as spilling a drink if you see someone in an uncomfortable situation with a person of the opposite sex.
“Choosing not to laugh at a joke … Intervention is not always about confrontation,” she said. “It can be the simplest things such as movement or body language or just saying, ‘Hey, that wasn’t funny.”
There are four stages of intervention: notice the event, interpret it as a problem, feel responsible for dealing with it and possessing the necessary skills to act.
Smith explained our personal biases may affect our choice to intervene. She described a recent video she watched on Facebook.
A man dressed in rags was lying in the street. No one stopped to help him. When the same man dressed in a suit re-enacted the scene, people rushed to his aid.
“Why are we afraid to step in when we know we can?” she wondered.
Smith said there are a variety of reasons people choose not to intervene. These can include social influence, audience, diffusion of responsibility, fear of retaliation, or ignorance. Some examples of this could be a fear you might not be thought of as cool; shyness or fear of bringing attention to yourself; and the rationalization that someone else will intervene.
Smith related an instance she wished had intervened during her first year at FHSU. She was at a bar and she noticed a young women who was being pressured by a man. She said she could tell by the woman’s body language she was definitely not interested, but he was overly interested.
“All I had to do was sit at that bar and turn, and say, ‘Girl, I haven’t seen you forever!’ I have never seen this girl in my life. All I have to do is that simple thing, give her hug, the guy gets the hint and he walks away,” Smith said.
All you need is your voice and your body to intervene.
“The Golden Rule is to only intervene when it is safe for you to do so,” she said. “If it is not safe and an emergency, dial 911, call campus security, call another friend over. That way it is not just you in a one-on-one intervention.”
When Smith was a freshman and a sophomore, she was a student athlete. She used her influence to promote parties or trips with her friends.
“When the situation flipped and I became a victim of sexual assault, I didn’t think my voice mattered any more,” she said. “I did know I had a voice. But in reality that same voice I was using to promote those parties and whether we were going to Hays or not was that same voice that could have been promoting that one in three women will be victims of sexual assault.”
Power of she in the workplace
Dr. April Park, associate professor, spoke on disparities between the genders in her field of psychology.
When Park came to the United States to study psychology, more than half of her classmates were women. However, that has not always been the case.
In 1970, only 20 percent of the PhD recipients were women. Now it is more than 70 percent. The trend has been a increase in white women, and, to a degree, minority women receiving doctorates in psychology.
Despite these increases, the profession has not seen a correlating increase in the number of women in tenure positions on college campuses or in leadership positions in the field.
At the lecturer level, there are more women, but those numbers decrease as you move up in the academic ranks. Less than 30 percent of full professors in psychology are women.
Among the American Psychological Association’ more than 130 presidents, there are only 11 women. Of those 11, eight of them have been elected in the past 10 years.
Pay gaps are also found in the field of psychology. At a two-year university as of 2010, female employees made 80 percent of what male employees earned.
“What was a little bit more disturbing to me was that trend wasn’t really reducing, but it was actually widening in the past years,” Park said.
She said the culture and tradition in the tenure process plays a role. The makeup of the tenure committees and the leaders in the departments tend to be men.
“Also if you think about the high demands of the job to reach a full professor rank and you think about the work that has to be done in the house, and if women can’t find a good and work life balance, that is going to put them at a disadvantage,” she said.
APA is recommending women advocate for gender wage equity, encourage policies for salary transparency and promote leadership skills in women.
One factor research has determined that contributes to lower pay for women was a lack of salary negotiation skills.
“When you first get a job, the base salary is going to be very important because all of the additional bonuses you get and incentives you get will be proportionate to the base salary,” Park said. “If you are not making an equitable base salary compared to a man, then you are going to have a hard time reducing that gap.”
Park said she also thinks having a mentoring system for women is important.
With her own students, she tries to encourage them, but also urges them to readily accept encouragement.
“The female students I work with are very, very strong, they are so extremely talented, but when I encourage them, ‘Hey you are doing a good job, just keep on doing that,’ a lot of times they will say, ‘I don’t think I did it enough or I don’t think I did it good enough.”
She also encourages students to get involved in organizations and take responsibility for their actions.
“But as you do so be very gracious to yourself and other people,” she said.
‘It’s your deal’
Dr. Teresa Clounch, FHSU assistant vice president of student affairs and compliance, spoke to the group on the theme, “It may not be ideal, but it’s your deal.”
Clounch first gave this advice to a student who was asking for guidance about taking a job after graduation. The student was unsure if the job would be right for her.
Clounch found a few years later she was saying this to herself.
Only about a month after Clounch moved to Hays to take her position at FHSU in 2017, her father died.
“Understand while I was stricken with grief and thought someone who was such an integral part of my life, from whom I get my good looks and great sense of humor, has now left this world. Now I am in a new place, where people just barely know who Dr. TLC is. I go back into my mind when I think about that spring of 2013 when I told that student who was ready to graduate and step into a new chapter of her life, ‘This may not be ideal, but it is your deal.'”
She had to look at a world without her father in it.
“I looked for support from my family, my siblings, neighbors, my new colleagues her at Fort Hays State, my sorority sisters and everyone who was willing to provide me support,” she said.
Clounch said it was difficult for her to take support because she is a proud person.
“Yet, I knew at this point in time, at a new place and being four and half hours away from my family, while this was not ideal, it was my deal to work with,” she said.
She created a new support system.
“I also realized I needed to encourage others in this process,” she said. “I did that for my family; I did that for the friends who were near by. I did that for my colleagues because someone else had gone through what I was getting ready to go through.”