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Hello. Greetings. Here we are at Tuesday again, having tea, tea time, in week 7, the weekend
where we celebrated International Women's Day.
Today I thought I would use a tea cup from my home country, not a cup, really, a mug
from New Zealand, with the emblem of the silver fern. New Zealand is the first country in
the world where women got the vote, as you may all know. I would be surprised if you
didn't know that. So let's have a little cup of tea and talk
about a variety of things. I have a number of announcements this week,
but one thing I want to say about "tea," is that last week, as you may recall, I edited
a tea cup. We had a tea cup—was it last week? I guess it was. Yes. It had on it "End
*** in War," and I thought no we have to edit that and change it to "End *** and War."
And someone wrote to me. They really liked that, they liked it that I did this. And they
described my action "as outrageous"...oh, she said we have to engage in "outrageous
acts and everyday rebellion." She thought that that was an indication of my doing an
outrageous act and having my mini rebellion by changing the tea cup. Well, we have to
keep our eyes open all the time for all of this sort of stuff.
Well, we are almost at the end of this course. This is the second-to-last week. Next week
we are going to be talking about "aging," and then we are going to conclude the course
that week. This next week, week 8. And so we'll have two sessions on week 8, just as
we had for week 3 and week 7. And someone wrote asking whether for a Statement
of Accomplishment you had to do extra reading for the two parts of weeks 3 and week 7, and
we said "no." You can choose as you like from the videos and the readings in those weeks
which have two parts.
But in week 8, where the two parts are really quite, sort of unrelated—I mean the first
part of week 8 is to discuss aging, and the second part of week 8 is to bid you fond farewell.
And, incidentally, I think it is going to be quite an interesting, an interesting farewell,
concluding session. But in week 8, we would urge you to do all of the readings, from both
sides, from having to do with aging, and with the conclusion. There are one or two little
readings for the concluding session of this course.
Well, as I said, this "tea time" today is going to consist of quite a few announcements.
We hope to launch the MOOC again....maybe in four months or so in English. And there
are people speaking to us about doing it in other languages. And we will keep you posted
on that. But we will let you know when it's being launched again, so that you may wish
to revisit and hopefully to tell your friends about the course, because many of you seem
to have enjoyed it tremendously. There's a lot of activity on the forums, a tremendous
amount, and maybe this last week was particularly active because of International Women's Day.
But many people wrote about organizations that they knew of that were doing good work
on women's human rights, examples of programs in their countries, situations in their countries
about various issues. And there was a lot of activity on the forums.
And I wanted to say that we are going to not actively manage the forums after this class
ends, but they will be out there for you to interact on. In Piazza—you can just find
it on Piazza—and you can continue to be active on the forums. I certainly will be,
in the sense of dropping in and checking what are people writing, making comments about
them. You may have thoughts after this class ends on how we could improve the class. You
may have references, citations, that you think would be very valuable for others, and you
would like to send those to us. You can do that on the forums, after this class ends,
the forum will continue.
The other thing that will continue is our news bulletin. We have had a weekly news bulletin
running, thanks to a marvelous student of mine who keeps it up for us. And we are going
to continue the news bulletin on our website, probably putting it up every two weeks so
that we are not working as hard during those months.
Now: where do you find all of this? And I am going to announce this several times. You'll
find it on our community website, which will be up and available all the time. It is: www.internationalwomenshealth.org.
One whole word: www.internationalwomenshealth.org. And if you go there, you will find a number
of things.
You'll find the news bulletin. You'll find a "thank you" that we have put up to all of
the people who have been helping us with this, many of them former students of mine and some
current students who have been managing the forums and doing a variety of other tasks.
So we have a "thank you" note up at the moment on that website: www.internationalwomenshealth.org.
We also have something on the website that has just gone up. It is a wiki. Now a wiki
is sort of like a forum, I guess. We're hosting a wiki. And it's a new wiki, and it's up on
that community website. And that is a place where we hope you will go to take note of
and inform others about organizations that are working on women's human rights—health
and human rights (although the health field would be gigantic)—but women's health and
human rights. Share with us your ideas about organizations that you think are doing very
positive work, maybe even transformative work, that you feel may change the world, however
you define the world, locally or globally. So that's on that website as well.
Let me see....Yes: something else that I have mentioned in an earlier tea time, is that
I am going to be travelling. After this MOOC goes down, about a week after we end it, I
will be travelling to Turkey for a meeting. I 'll be there the last week of March, and
I'll be in Nepal, in Kathmandu, for the first week of April. And then I am just continuing
on around the world and going to New Zealand, where I am going to spend the month of April.
So if anybody from those countries would like to send me a note on the forum, we could meet
and have a cup of tea, in Turkey or Nepal, or New Zealand, for that matter.
Speaking of the end of the course, we have mentioned before that the course will be up
until April 4th. Anyone wanting to have a Statement of Accomplishment from Stanford
will have until April 4th to satisfy the requirements in order to get that Statement of Accomplishment.
And we will be in touch with you after that date with the Statement of Accomplishment,
if you done the requirements and finished them.
Many of you have been writing about the situation in your own countries about gender inequality
or gender equality, in your country, and we welcome you to begin threads on the topic.
We'll put up a note urging you to do so, just as an ongoing discussion, perhaps, even to
continue on the forums after the class finishes on April 4th.
Well, let me contemplate the tea, for a moment, and say that I think "that's it." I didn't
that week. What we found is that people, some people, are right up with us commenting on
women's work and globalization, right now, which was the topic of week 7.
So, let me close now, with a funny little personal comment. And that is that you may
be hearing "tweeting" in the background. This is real tweeting. I happen to have a bird
living with me in my house at the moment. And it seems that whenever we tape tea time,
the bird listens and seems to want to say something too. So you'll hear the tweeting
in the background. That bird may go to live outside soon, so who knows whether next time
you'll hear my little bird.
Thanks so much for being with us, and we'll see you
next week.