When thinking about a senior capstone project, some students are unsure of what they want to focus their final year on. For Leah Bluette Schutz, the choice was simple. She wanted to combine two things that were meaningful to her — textiles and feminism.
The Capstone Project
Schutz, a senior at the University of Utah studying interdisciplinary design, said feminism is really important to her, and she drew on her own experiences with having a “safe space” to talk about it with friends and family members.
Schutz said she started the project by studying feminist textile work, but then it evolved from there to focus on misogyny.
“I really just realized I wasn’t looking at feminism itself, but more our daily experiences with misogyny, as people in our daily lives,” she said. “So I’ve started trying to kind of open up the conversation of like, how are people seeing misogyny in their daily lives?”
A 2020 study conducted by the United Nations Developmental Programme found that nearly nine out of ten people worldwide have some sort of prejudice towards women.
The data showed that “almost half of those polled feel that men are superior political leaders, while more than 40% believe they make better business executives and are more entitled to jobs when the economy is lagging.”
“What really affects us daily are just those small things like being questioned by men about things we know strongly, that they don’t know strongly,” Schutz added.
Stitch and Bitch Event
After a series of smaller and more intimate events with people in her circle, Schutz entered a partnership with the Women’s Resource Center at the U.
They decided to put on an event to hear more about students’ experiences with misogyny, both on campus and in their personal lives.
The event was held on Thursday and was called Stitch and Bitch.
For this event — and capstone project as a whole — Schutz has been working on a quilt with multi-colored stitching worked on by many groups of people. She has had attendees of previous events stitch on the quilt with a specific color, like yellow, pink and orange while talking about main topics like misogyny in media, capitalism and labor and workforce violence. The colors for the Stitch and Bitch event were various shades of purple, which switched with each topic at hand.
Schutz and the Women’s Resource Center invited students to come and join to add stitching to the quilt while “bitching” about their own experiences. Students were encouraged to share their thoughts and experiences with misogyny.
One student who attended the event shared their experience with misogyny when it came to advocating for better wages and a raise where they work. They said that working in a housekeeping job that was mostly staffed by Hispanics, there was a lot more fear and anxiety that came from asking their male boss for a pay increase.
Another student named Audrey said she also had experience with misogyny in the workplace.
“There was one time I had a creepy boss,” she said. “He was maybe 55 and I probably would have turned 18 and he asked me on a date and I said, ‘No, thank you.’ And he would just comment on every Instagram post with heart eyes and like, ‘You’re so hot,’ whatever it was. And basically, HR was like, ‘Oh, we can’t do anything.’”
Leading up to the event, Schutz completed some outside research to get a better idea of student’s experiences. She put up posters around campus, which had a QR code that led to a survey. The survey asked, “How have you seen sexism this week?”
Schutz said the survey answers ensured that students stayed anonymous. Several dozen students submitted answers. These results varied and included experiences both on campus, in the workforce and in interpersonal relationships.
One participant in the survey said, “There’s not enough women’s bathrooms in the architecture building so whenever we have a class break there’s a huge line and I spend my whole break waiting in the line.”
shane • Nov 9, 2023 at 12:28 am
Fine with talking about Mysogyny but maybe we should ocasionally bring up the converse… On those posters with the QR code I wonder if any of those that experienced any sexism were men.. misandry.. and if Anyone ever at all on that University ever dared bring it up.