“The history of women is a history of dissent. Women have been in perpetual struggles to change the status quo in order to raise their legal, economic, and social positions in society. By incrementally improving their status, women have also enhanced the quality of life for their families and communities. However, for every step forward, women experience backlash, and now and then, backslides. I feared that post the 2016 elections there would be tremendous backslides. One change that is essential, but not sufficient, to continual improvement in the status of women and prevention of backslides, is having more women at the public policy making tables: in legislative and executive positions, and on the judicial benches at all levels of government. Hence, my membership in PWNEPA!”
-Dr. Jean Harris
Dr. Jean Wahl Harris, a founding mother of the PWNEPA, has been an advocate for improving the political, legal, economic, and social status of women for decades. She is a tenured, full professor teaching for the Political Science Department and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of Scranton. In addition, she serves as the coordinator of the University’s non-partisan Ready to Run™ Northeastern Pennsylvania Program, which offers campaign training and political engagement programs for women. Her scholarship focuses on women as political actors and public policies, particularly those with gendered effects. She is co-author of American Democracy Now, an American Government textbook, now in its sixth edition with McGraw-Hill Education
Jean earned all three of her college degrees from the State University of New York at Binghamton: her Bachelor’s Degree is in Law and Society, and her Master’s Degree and Doctoral Degree in Political Science.
Join Jean and sign up for PWNEPA now!
