YWCA La Crosse executive works to balance gender inequities
June 7, 2024
| By La Crosse Community Foundation |
YWCA La Crosse’s Laurie Cooper Stoll a lifelong activist
YWCA La Crosse Executive Director Laurie Cooper Stoll speaks at the “Tribute to Outstanding Women” event about the YWCA’s work in the community, including child care, supportive housing, restorative practices, and community education.
As executive director of YWCA La Crosse, Laurie Cooper Stoll champions the elimination of racism, the empowerment of women, and peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all. But creating that world requires dismantling deeply entrenched societal structures and beliefs, a complex and enduring task.
Cooper Stoll not only brings her lived experiences as a cisgender woman to her work at YWCA. As a sociologist, she has a deep understanding of gender inequalities, both obvious and subtle, and an understanding of the importance of social capital in forging systemic change.
What is intersectional feminism?
Intersectional feminism recognizes that systems of oppression work together in ways that produce injustice. To fully understand the impact of gender inequality on an individual as well as its impact on our policies, institutions, and laws, we have to understand how gender intersects with other systems, for example, race, class, sexuality, disability, socioeconomic status, and body size. In sum, intersectional feminism situates gender as both an identity and a social institution. The reason it is important to use an intersectional feminist lens is because only through doing so can we gain a more nuanced understanding of others’ lived experiences and the larger patriarchal social structure we live in. As Judith Lorber argued in “Paradoxes of Gender,” gender will continue to change in the future as all social systems do, but it will not necessarily change in the direction of greater equity. That’s where we come in.
What are some obvious and more subtle ways women experience oppression today?
Some of the obvious ways that women continue to experience oppression today include the inability to fully control our own bodies, lack of political representation, and gendered patterns of violence, to name only a few examples. While these may seem like obvious examples of gender inequality, there are far more examples that may be more covert in nature unless further explored. Education is a great example. Women surpassed men many years ago in the number of undergraduate degrees earned. On its surface, this has led some to argue sexism no longer exists in higher education and, if anything, men are now at a disadvantage. However, if you look just a little deeper at the intersection of gender, level of education, and household income, you will find that, on average, women with graduate degrees earn less money than men with bachelor’s degrees, revealing that inequality remains.
How can social capital be part of the solution?
The term “social capital” has a specific meaning for me as a sociologist. According to the influential sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, social capital is measured by the people we know and the access to resources we have because of those connections. Put simply, social capital is the collective value of our social networks. As a lifelong activist, I know that building community with others who are committed to social justice work is foundational to advancing the mission. Not only does it provide an opportunity to strategize with others about how to change policies and practices, but it also provides a support system for those working for change. The more social capital we have, the more resources we can access in order to build capacity and create real systemic change.