The American Society for Cell Biology
Women in Cell Biology Committee
A Women's Professional Problem Solving Group
The audiotape is from the Women in Cell Biology Committee presentation at the 34th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco. The session was entitled, Beyond Survival: The Evolution of a Women's Professional Problem Solving Group.
Speakers and their affiliations were:
Beth Burnside, University of California, Berkeley
Ellen Daniell, Roche Molecular Systems
Carol Gross, University of California, San Francisco
Christine Guthrie, University of California, San Francisco
Judith Klinman, University of California, Berkeley
Mimi Koehl, University of California, Berkeley
Suzanne McKee, Smith-Ketterwell Eye Research Institute
Helen Wittmer, University of California, Berkeley
The following presentation summary was developed for those who wish to establish a local group.
How the Group Works: The formal organization of group meetings is based on the format developed by the leaders of the Radical Therapy Movement in the early 70's. Their objective was to organize leaderless groups which provided mutual support and problem solving sessions and thus empowered their members.
Optimal group size is around eight; this is small enough to make it possible for everyone to work at a fully attended meeting, yet is large enough to ensure that for most meetings at least four people are in town. To facilitate the work, each group member formulates a contract to accomplish some definite goal. The contract objective is a positively stated, desired behavior or attitude change. This focuses the work and ensures that each member charts her own course.
The group meets every two weeks at a different member's house from 7:30 to 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. (and often later!). The hostess serves as facilitator and each member signs up for the amount of time she thinks she needs for her work that evening. Generally, this runs from a brief "report" of 5-10 minutes, to more intense "work" of 20-30 minutes. An important emphasis of the group is to work cooperatively together, being sure to share the time, work hard on each other's contracts, give straight feedback, keep no secrets, and not rescue each other. To "rescue" in radical therapy means to attempt to take care of someone as though she were helpless and powerless. Instead, the emphasis is on urging each other to take power, to ask for what we want, and to take steps toward obtaining it. Group members give feedback during a member's work, validating their feelings, offering insight from their own experience, suggesting alternative views of a situation or alternative strategies for handling an issue, or just emphasizing. Originally, our group dealt exclusively with professional issues, but with time we have dealt more and more with personal issues that have come up in our lives.
After all members who wished to have worked, we retire to the dining room for food and "strokes." "Strokes" are specific compliments that any group member wishes to express to another. "Stroke etiquette" requires that strokes be acknowledged and accepted gracefully by the recipient and not discounted or brushed off.
How we got together:
The group was originally assembled among faculty and staff at UCSF, then gradually, as people left, group members would suggest replacements. This would be discussed, and if all agreed, new members would be introduced into the group. Only one of the original group members remains; most have been in since 1977-1981; and one has joined us recently. Thus, the present group is self-selected, each member having been brought in by another member of the group.
Listen to the Audio *
* The presentation is 37 minutes. You will need RealPlayer Basic (free) or RealPlayer Plus. If you do not have this program on your computer you may download it here:
