Women’s Rights are Human Rights International Posters on Gender-Based Inequality, Violence, and Discrimination
Exhibit dates Hours/Calendar
Reception and Lecture
Friday, March 27 pm 4:00 PM
Reception: 5 - 6 p.m. in The Gallery at Penn College
Lecture: 6 - 7 p.m. in Davie Jane Gilmour Center, Lecture Hall 1056
Lines, Curves, and Clichés: Symbols of Feminine Identity in Design
This lecture examines how visual elements, such as form, color, and composition, are used to represent the female experience. By unpacking the design strategies behind these familiar symbols, the talk reveals both their empowering potential and the risk of reinforcing reductive stereotypes. Attendees will be invited to engage with a shared visual language while also challenging and expanding it, asking: What does it truly mean to represent womanhood in design today? Ultimately, the lecture aims to contribute to a broader, more authentic, and even unexpected cultural understanding of feminine identity.
Amanda Lenig is an associate professor of Graphic Design and Chair of the Department of Art and Design at Susquehanna University. She earned an MFA in Graphic Design from Marywood University and her work has been published in Graphic Design USA, Graphis, and Creative Quarterly. Her work has earned awards from American Graphic Design & Advertising, American Advertising Awards, and the Association of Illustrators London.
Women's Rights Are Human Rights is a very fitting title for an exhibition of women’s rights and advocacy posters, as it is a term used in the women's rights movement and was the title of an important speech given by Hillary Rodham Clinton at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. In her address, Hillary Clinton suggests that “if the term women's rights were to be interchangeable with the term human rights, the world community would be a better place because human rights affect the women who raise the world's children, care for the elderly, run companies, work in hospitals, fight for better education and better health care.”
Yet gender inequalities remain deeply entrenched in every society. Women lack access to decent work and face occupational segregation and gender wage disparities. Women are often denied access to primary education and health care, suffer from violence and discrimination, and are underrepresented in political and economic decision-making processes.
This exhibition features posters created by both men and women to celebrate and acknowledge the vital role that all citizens should play in protecting and promoting human rights while actively challenging gender inequality and stereotypes, advancing sexual and reproductive rights, and protecting women and girls against brutality. In their collective visual voice, these posters promote women’s empowerment and participation in society while challenging religious and cultural norms and patriarchal attitudes that subordinate, stigmatize or restrict women from achieving their fullest potential.
Organized and curated by Elizabeth Resnick, professor emerita, graphic design, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston.
Closed April 5
The Gallery at Penn College
