Nonprofit profile: Gilroy AAUW celebrates women’s suffrage in 2021
Nonprofit dedicates park bench to women’s suffrage centennial
Tech Trek instructor Nancy Fohner works with students during the 2017 event at Stanford University.
Photo courtesy Gilroy AAUW
By Marty Cheek
The Gilroy branch of the American Association of University Women planned last year to celebrate the centennial of women’s suffrage with the dedication of a plaque on a bench at Gilroy’s Cydney Casper Park. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, got in the way of that event happening in 2020. The members persevered and set up the ceremony for May 25.
Sabra Dupree, co-president of the Gilroy branch of the AAUW, believes the dedication serves to bring attention to the centennial and reminds people the struggle for women’s rights still goes on.
“It’s so that women can work for equal pay, equal opportunity for education, equal opportunity to get a job, equal opportunity to be promoted on the job, equal opportunity in sports, freedom from sexual harassment,” she said.
The Gilroy nonprofit was founded in 1966 by several local women who saw the need to encourage leadership from women. Among them was Roberta Hughan, Gilroy’s first woman council member and first mayor, who served as the first AAUW Gilroy Branch president.
Even though men are welcomed, all its current 45 members are women, Dupree said.
Like most AAUW club across the nation, members of the Gilroy branch had plans to organize events to honor the male and female activists and reformers who persevered for nearly 100 years for women to win the right to vote. On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
Connie Rogers looks back on the 55 years of the branch’s history with pride. The members have had a hand in shaping policies in city and county government as well as influencing young women to pursue college and careers in fields such as science and engineering.
“We have quite a track record,” she said.
Among the many examples of what the Gilroy branch of the AAUW accomplished during five and a half decades is preserving the local environment, Rogers said. In 1977, members conducted a study on the Uvas Creek and the impact on urbanization on its ecological health. At that time, a bureaucracy of eight different government agencies managed this waterway but not one took action to protect it. The AAUW used the study to encourage the city and county to create the 125-acre Uvas Park Preserve.
Members of Gilroy’s AAUW have also become involved in politics as well. In 1978, the club formed a focus group called Women as Agents of Change, when they noted that no women served on the city council or on any of the city committees. Their efforts, including a regular one-day conference called “A Woman’s Affair” at Gavilan College, has led to women leaders rising to positions of power and influence in local government.
The AAUW during election seasons also seeks to educate voters by holding candidate forums for the Gilroy City Council and board of education seats. It also used digital technology to encourage citizens participation in the 2020 election, said AAUW co-president Sandra Makela.
“The AAUW played a big part in trying to get out the vote with our Facebook campaign,” she said. “So every week we put out new slogans telling people that women have the power but they have to take the power in order to use it to change things.”
The Gilroy club stays active in the national AAUW’s organization to have positive influence on women’s lives through lobbying on the state level as well as in Washington, D.C., Rogers said.
Public policies include: economic security for all women, supporting a strong system of high quality public education, and a guarantee of equality, individual rights and social justice for a diverse and inclusive society.
The organization is now pushing California lawmakers to improve the quality of life for women in the state. The March 24 California Lobby Day event brought clubs together virtually on several bills. They include Senate Bill 92 which provides help to low-income families by waiving fees for childcare service providers, and Senate Bill 62, the Garment Worker Protection Act that requires paying these employees for time spent working rather than paying them by piece rate.
“The AAUW pays for lawyers for those suits,” Makela said.
Encouraging Gilroy girls to pursue college and technology careers is another activity the AAUW club members spend time on. Through quilt show sales and other fundraisers, they raise money for three $1,000 scholarships given to high school seniors every year.
The AAUW club also uses funds to send several girls from local middle schools to Stanford University to go through the summer Tech Trek program, said member Nancy Fohner. (The program was cancelled last year and will be held virtually this year because of COVID-19.)
“We particularly target seventh grade girls because that age group is losing their interest in math and science,” Fohner said.
The girls learn about robotics, circuit boards, and other engineering topics. About 96 percent of participants go on to college and of those who do 70 percent study math and science.
Fohner has a doctorate in bio-chemistry and has been an instructor in Tech Trek for more than two decades. She is always impressed by how the students bloom from their time at Stanford.
“When they get back, we usually invite them to a luncheon in late September, and they come back with so much confidence,” she said. “They meet other girls who are interested in math and science. They do math and science all day long on a college campus. A lot of them haven’t had a focus before and they come back so excited to learn — and to be leaders, too.”
The Gilroy club members also believe in education for all residents. As an example, member Judy Bozzo led an effort to set up a “little free library” for people to donate or take books.
When the city council did not approve a small wooden book container at Cydney Casper Park, she decided to install it on private property in front of her home on Fifth Street so adults and children can find reading material.
“We put books in it and people are putting books in or taking them out and enjoying reading,” Bozzo said.
Dupree encourages men and women of all ages to get involved, especially those who are retired and would like to be active helping local women to grow as leaders.
“People like me who are older, we still get to contribute,” she said. “We still get included because we can help our communities and our society — and we like to do that.”
