Dixie State University’s weekly “Dixie Forum: A Window on the World” will focus on international women with a panel discussion examining the treatment of women around the world. DSU faculty from around the globe will present from noon to 12:50 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 22, at the Dunford Auditorium in the Browning Resource Center on the DSU campus. Admission is free and the public is encouraged to attend.
The forum will open with an introduction from Dr. Florence Elizabeth Bacabac, the director of the Women’s Resource Center on the Dixie State University campus. Bacabac was born in the Philippines and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from the University of the Philippines-Diliman and a doctorate in rhetoric and writing from Bowling Green State University. She was a recipient of the 2011 and 2014 Utah Campus Compact’s Civically Engaged Scholar Award.
Following the introduction, Dr. Leonor Ceballos will present on how women in Spain balance maternity with their careers. Even though women’s issues in Spain have drastically improved in the last 40 years according to Ceballos, there are still things that need to be changed. She says that despite this need, Spain is ahead of the United States in supporting mothers in the workplace.
An associate professor in DSU’s Department of Humanities, Ceballos grew up in Santander, Spain. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Deusto in Bilbao before she moved to the U.S., where she earned a master’s in Hispanic studies and a doctorate in Spanish women writers from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.
The forum will then be turned over to Dr. Chizu Matsubara, who will speak about what is happening to women in Japan, where people who are 65 and older are predicted to make up approximately 40 percent of the population by 2060.
Matsubara was born in Tokyo. She worked in the hospitality industry for 17 years before she became involved in education. Her areas of interest are language acquisition, culture, and identity.
Dr. Theda Wrede will take over and present on family and work in Germany. She will talk about maternity and paternity leave and childcare options.
Wrede completed her master’s degree in Goettingen, Germany, and earned a doctorate from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. She has been teaching at DSU since 2006.
To end the presentation, Olga A. Pilkington will discuss Russian women in the workplace. She will talk about “female” professions, explaining what they are and what social attitudes surround them. She will also address women’s rights and responsibilities as employees.
Pilkington, an English instructor at DSU, was born in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, and has studied in Russia and China. She earned bachelor’s degrees in Russian, Chinese, and English literature from Southern Utah University and a master’s in applied linguistics from the University of Massachusetts. She is finishing a doctoral thesis in applied linguistics at the University of Birmingham, England.
Dixie Forum is a weekly lecture series designed to introduce the St. George community and DSU students, faculty and staff to diverse ideas and personalities while widening their worldviews via 50-minute presentations. Next week, Dixie Forum will continue with a presentation by artist Johnson Yazzie. The oil painter will speak at noon on Tuesday, Sept. 29, in the Dunford Auditorium.
For more information on Dixie State University’s Dixie Forum series, please email DSU Forum coordinator John Burns or call him at (435) 879-4712. Or visit the Dixie Forum website. Stay updated on the forums by liking the Dixie Forum Facebook page at or following @dixieforum on Twitter.
