2015 Association for Women in Psychology Conference

The presenters in this symposium work in the same University department and campus community. Our work addresses current challenges confronting women: microaggressions, rape culture, facing chronic illness Parkinson’s Disease) at a young age, and the drastic increase in selfies on social media. Our responses to these issues vary in scope and innovation but our intention is to offer symposium attendees a model for community collaboration. This year, the United States celebrates the 50th anniversary of the civil rights act. “Empowering Change”, was a campus-wide initiative to celebrate this act and most panelists were heavily involved in the planning and implementation. This initiative allowed us to examine current racial and other microaggressions that occur on our campus through a classroom generated photo campaign. Images are powerful and increasingly used in activist strategies like the above mentioned photo campaign. Two of us use images in very different ways. Selfies have exploded in popularity yet virtually nothing is known about the effect on self-esteem, body image, and attractiveness in young women who post these images on social media. New data will be presented on this phenomenon. Working with a filmmaker, one of us combines personal narrative with images of a young single mother newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. With the changes in Title IX reporting on sexual assault and rape, college campuses need to understand those student groups who are more at risk for being embedded in rape culture and adopting rape myth attitudes. Data from a study examining rape myth acceptance will be shared. It is hypothesized that those in Greek life and who play sports will show higher rape myth acceptance scores than those in other extracurricular activities.