Dinner Conversation
By Mark Hager, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, with Lisa Ann Villarreal, Ph.D., Senior Editor
What would Frida Kahlo, Kamala Harris, Audrey Hepburn, and Margaret Thatcher talk about at a dinner party? Students in my course Psychology of Women in Organizations study women in twentieth/twenty-first century history and stage conversations between them, seeking to imagine their way into their subjects’ perspectives in order to understand the social and psychological factors that influence women’s experience. The course arose from the desire to craft a better understanding for students about women’s changing roles in organizations. Mindful of the challenges of a man teaching this content, the importance of allyship and our individual and collective understandings of feminism still spurred me to take on this course when the faculty member who designed it was unavailable. Using her guidelines, we explore topics such as gender stereotypes, communication styles, sexual harassment, leadership, and life/work balance, and give special attention to the specific challenges facing women of color, women entrepreneurs, and Silicon Valley women. Approaching this study through the lens of psychology allows us to examine the systemic features of the organization, but also to get at the lived experience of individuals in organizations. Alongside gender studies, we look at studies of abilities and disabilities, of racial and ethnic identity, and how these aspects of the individual intersect. The project for this course grew out of a desire to let students explore the content in a creative way while still hitting the depth of psychological science that informs our twenty-first century understanding. The concept derives from the intersection of works by two contemporary feminist artists. Judy Chicago is a feminist visual artist, and her installation The Dinner Party (currently housed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art in the Brooklyn Museum) inspired the visual element of this project. Designed to make visible women’s experience in and contribution to history, the piece gives women a place at a table from which they have historically been excluded. The
25 WINTER 2022
