from the director
Ali P. Crown

This is my final director’s message. I’ll be step ping down from the helm of the Center for Women in early summer. My decision to do that is timed with the celebration this year of our fifteenth anniversary. Along with the President’s Commission on the Status of Women at Emory, celebrating its thirtieth year, and Women’s Studies, its twentieth year, we have been com memorating the theme “Women at Emory: Past, Present, and Future.” This issue of Women’s News & Narratives is also tied to that theme, as is Women’s History Month at Emory.

One cannot live in the moment without a sense of the past and hope for the future. That is especially clear to me in reading the articles in this issue. They speak about personal and collective paths, marked by many steps on long and sometimes arduous journeys, to create change in women’s lives. They give us hope. And they give us purpose.

I was particularly struck by one profound point made in two of the stories. In 1963 I went to extraordinary means to terminate a pregnancy. I could not have contemplated then that abor tion would be legal in ten more years. In 2007, nearly four and a half decades after my experience, Allison Dykes and Jill Johnson--a lesbian couple--went to extraordinary means to begin a pregnancy, an event that never could have been contemplated only a few short years ago.

I believe you’ll find that all of the articles in this issue illustrate that, despite our progress, we must keep on challenging some deeply held beliefs, speak out, tell our stories, and champion our causes. They make a valid and compelling case that the journey to full access for women, girls, and gay people is not over. Indeed, the path continues and beckons. Read these pages, be a part of the purpose, and together we will discover hope for the future of our children.