The Women and Gender Studies Department held a presentation about gender and theologies of survival on Thursday, Oct. 20.

The presentation was hosted by Professor Marian Youssef, who is part of a Greek survival community.

She told her story about being an immigrant in the United States, and about a culture that doesn’t treat women as real humans.

Youssef spoke of her motivation behind this presentation.

She said, “The main [change] that I want to see is more roles open for women, leadership roles, opportunities to participate, to be visible, to be counted, and for their voices to be heard.

“Whatever we can do [to] open up new leadership opportunities and [find a] way for women to be active participants in our community is really important to me.”

She inspired a lot of students with her life because she detailed all the struggles that she and her family had to face, like learn [English] and adapt to a new culture here in the United States.

Psychology major Elizabeth Aispuro said, “First, I learned about the survival communities and what the term means. I learned that I am part of a survival community. I learned my professor’s own survival community and how she was influenced to get her degree in women studies and how that kind of parallels to the way I’m influenced by women studies and gender in all of that.”

Aispuro believed her story growing up was similar to Youssef’s.

Youssef agrees that women don’t have the same privileges as men.

Graphic Design major Monica Perez said, “She is my teacher and this helps me know her personally. She is very professional in the class and now that she is lecturing about gender equality based on her personal life it makes me think of her as wonderful teacher and woman.”

Youssef explained that religion can be a thing that is treated differently from others.

She mentioned that she [and the people who practice the same religion as her] have to have written in her ID what religion she was part of. She and her family were afraid of how cops would treat them just for their religion.

She described how in the church she went to when she was little, women couldn’t be in the choir. When a woman got into quire she claimed the church told her it was just for an experiment to see if women could sing as well as men.

She understands that maybe she is not going to be able to see the changes that she is fighting for, but she is contributing to her community to have a better future.