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Gender Matters - Book Signing Party

On August 13, 2002, Harilyn Rousso joined the WEEA Equity Resource Center for a book signing and discussion for the newly published book Gender Matters. Twenty-five colleagues attended the event, including a group from a current WEEA-funded project (Working It Out Together II: College Women with Disabilities and Employment Project) and representatives from local universities and organizations working with people with disabilities.

To begin the session, Harilyn engaged the audience in an activity from Gender Matters. The activity required participants to form groups and brainstorm the names of ten famous women with disabilities who have made contributions to the world. The audience’s own difficulty in generating such a list was testimony to the underrepresentation of women with disabilities in school curricula and an ideal launching point for Harilyn’s twenty-minute discussion about the book and the issues it raises around the intersections of gender and disability.

After Harilyn’s presentation, Julia Potter, the WEEA Equity Resource Center’s Managing Editor, served as moderator of the session, fielded questions and guided the discussion. Audience members’ questions ranged from interest in the author’s own experiences growing up as a girl with a disability to inquiries into strategies for raising career expectations of girls with disabilities. Harilyn signed copies of Gender Matters after the Q & A session.

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