Barbara R. Bergmann - Professor Emerita, Department of Economics, University of Maryland

Expertise - women's place in the economy and the family; the labor market problems of women and African Americans; social policy, gender, labor economics, poverty and affirmative action.

Bergmann says -

"During Women's History Month we should take stock of the fact that women still labor under big disabilities that need correction: discrimination in the market for women's labor, unfair housework burdens in two-earner couples, the high chance of poverty that single motherhood brings, domestic violence. These are issues that women's studies professors and students at Maryland should be addressing, as well as the cultural issues that get most of the ink."

"Women's history boasts loud and influential voices for women's equality: Christine de Pisan (14th Century) Mary Wollstonecraft (18th Century), the Grimké sisters, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (19th Century) Where are their likes today?"

Credentials - author of numerous books including: The Economic Emergence of Women; Is Social Security Broke? a Cartoon Guide to the Issues and In Defense of Affirmative Action. Along with numerous government economic posts, she served as president of the Eastern Economic Association, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, the American Association of University Professors and the International Association for Feminist Economics.

Contact - (202)-537-3036 (home); email: bbergman@wam.umd.edu

Bonnie Thornton Dill - professor and chair, Women's Studies, and director of the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity.

Expertise - African-American women and families; curriculum transformation; work, family and poverty; the intersections of race and gender.

Dill says -

"Women's History Month is important because it calls attention to not only the important contributions of individual women throughout U.S. history, but to the ways in which women as a group have shaped our past and will impact our future. For women of color whose experiences have often been ignored and distorted, Women's History Month provides a time to focus on rewriting history to more fully account for our place within it."

Credentials - author of numerous books and articles including Across the Boundaries of Race and Class: An Exploration of Work and Family among Black Female Domestic Servants. She is the founder of the Center for Research on Women, University of Memphis.

Contact - 301-405-6877 (office); email: btdill@umd.edu

Webpage - www.womensstudies.umd.edu/dill.htm

Mady Wechsler Segal, professor of sociology and associate director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland.

Expertise - women in the military; military sociology; military personnel and family issues.

Segal says -

"Women now make up 15% of the U.S. military (up from less than 2% in 1972) and they serve in many specialties, some of which have been opened to them in the past 20 years. Women are allowed in combat positions in the air and at sea, though they are excluded from offensive ground combat jobs and service on submarines. African American women constitute a much larger percentage of military women than their representation in the population. The main limitations on women's military opportunities stem not from their performance, but are due to traditional cultural values and the active opposition of conservative pressure groups."

Credentials - chaired the Scientific Advisory Committee for the U.S. Army Research Institute's Army Family Research Program; member of the National Academies' Committee on the Performance of Military Personnel; human resource consultant to the Secretary of the Army; special assistant to the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army; and a member of the Congressional Commission on Military Training and Gender-Related Issues; author, several books, including Peacekeepers and their Wives: American Participation in the Multinational Force and Observers.

Contact - 301-405-6433 (office); email: msegal@umd.edu

Webpage - www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/faculty/msegal.html

Larissa A. Grunig, emerita professor of communication, University of Maryland.

Expertise - women and public relations, development communication, communication theory, gender issues, organizational response to activism, organizational power and structure, and scientific and technical writing.

Grunig says -

"The roots of public relations may be as old as history itself, but contemporary practice can be dated only from the end of the 19th Century. Even so, we know little about its history-and less still about the roles women have played. We do know that women have been present, in fact active, at each stage of our past. With the huge influx of women into the field since the late 1980s, however, we have a pressing need not only to know how things were for female practitioners but how things ought to be today."

"How has the new female majority changed the field? Without idealizing women's roles, have we begun to shed our roots in press agentry to embrace an ideology of cooperation and community? Like most histories, ours probably is one of conflict, of adversarial relationships, of winning and losing battles fought in the court of public opinion...but undoubtedly women's rich contributions to public relations may point to a brighter future. Along the way, we need to understand how female practitioners-women managers, in particular-are being treated in the workplace. What, if anything, have their employers begun doing to help lift them up out of the technician's role they more typically play?"

Credentials - the former chair of the President's Commission on Women's Issues at Maryland. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Maryland Work-Life Alliance. Founding co-editor of the Journal of Public Relations Research and lead author of the first book about women in public relations.

Contact - 301-405-6532; email: lgrunig@umd.edu

Webpage - www.comm.umd.edu/people/faculty/lgrunig.html

University of Maryland Resources For and About Women:

Women's Resources On and Off Campus (wide-ranging list) - Including: