Vive le féminism!

by Christina Starr

On a humid and uncomfortable Toronto day in 1985, I sat with my first year law school Torts exam in front of me. I was sickened to realize it did not make sense. Was this my fault or a mistake on the exam? Was the new name that appeared three quarters of the way through the text really a new character in the drama, or (which made much more sense) an existing one with the wrong name?

I had to make one assumption or the other. For an exam that counted as 100% of my mark and assigned me a grade which summed up eight months of studying, it was a serious decision. I assumed the name was wrong. But being furious at having to face this dilemma and having already decided I wasn't going to return to law school I addressed my professor directly at the end of my paper: "It is completely irresponsible and inexcusable that a mistake like this should appear on an exam. First year students writing 100% exams are under enough pressure without having to waste precious time deciding how to handle it."

This mistake (as I'm still sure it was) was one of the proverbial last straws which ended my entrancement with law school. I found the pedagogical style extremely competitive, the work load exhausting, the subject matter irrelevant, and professors generally unapproachable. According to my LSAT score I should have been a top student; instead it was the worst academic year of my life.

Thankfully, there has been something of a feminist revolution in legal education. Considering the bastion of male supremacy that law has traditionally been, some of the advancements Dr. Patricia Hughes describes are remarkable. This is undoubtedly due in part to the growing numbers of women in law school, some becoming professors, others strong enough to insist that feminist issues be addressed. And certainly, according to the old trickle-up theory, as more of these women become professors, judges, Supreme Court Justices, or political leaders, the revolution will continue.

But what do women themselves, women who have entered a training program to upgrade their skills for a better job, women who may not have encountered feminist ideas about learning and education, think about a feminist revolution? Judith Grant tells us in "Women's Studies: Women's Lives" that taking women's studies courses is, for many students, an eye-opening, legitimizing, uplifting experience. Yet Paula Chegwidden took the same question to women in Nova Scotia and got some surprising responses. Not all women like learning in a group, and some found life skills exercises "wishy washy." This disenchantment may be more a comment on how we need to better organize women's training and understand women's learning; Dolores Gagne and Kari Dehli give us different accounts of how to address these issues.

As we go on revolutionizing education, we forget at our peril that decidedly unfeminist forces still maintain control in our institutions; Barbara Yitsch pokes apart the politics of those in academia who fear the politically correct.

The revolution will continue, however, as long as there are organizations like CCLOW and publications like Women's Education des femmes (among others) to carry on the work. In this issue we have inserted a subscription offer for Herizons and, as the ad at the side indicates, every subscription ordered using one of these inserts earns us $5 bucks back. So order Herizons, renew your subscription to Women's Education des femmes, support CCLOW, and fuel the revolution.

Christina Starr is now happily a writer, mother and activist, and the Editor of Women's Education des femmes.