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Ep. 2: Cultural Contexts and Feminism · Wellness in Today's World

• 0:01
  Hello, everyone.
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  I'd like to welcome you to Wellness in Today's World with Dr.
• 0:05
  Kawahara, where we discuss the latest insights in psychology, wellness trends, and everything in between.
• 0:14
  I'm Dr.
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  Deborah Kawahara, and thank you for joining me today.
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  March is the time where we celebrate Women's History Month, as well as on March 9th.
• 0:26
  I'm sorry.
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  We need to, I need to start over there.
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  March is a time where we celebrate Women's History Month, as well as on March 8th is designated as International Women's Day.
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  For both of these, we celebrate and honor the contributions of women to history, culture, and society.
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  It is also a time to recognize the long history of women's activism and fight for universal rights.
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  and to make a bold call for action for equal rights, equal opportunities, and equal power for all.
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  Today, my guest is Dr.
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  Oliva Espin.
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  Dr.
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  Espin is a Cuban-American counseling psychologist known for her pioneering and intellectual contributions to feminist therapy, migration and immigration, sexuality, and
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  women's study.
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  and her advocacy on behalf of immigrant and refugee women.
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  She is also a dear friend of mine and mentor to me.
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  So I am especially pleased to have her here today to talk with us.
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  Dr.
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  Espin, welcome.
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  I'd like, I'm gonna call you Oliva up from here on out.
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  You know, I...
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  I've known you for a long time.
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  I know part of that you wrote your memoir, which kind of documented your childhood in Cuba.
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  But I also know then your life journey took you all over the world.
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  And I wanted to start with, over the course of your life, what would you say have been pivotal experiences?
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  pivotal events that have had a profound impact on you and kind of your life's work.
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  Well, you started saying that I've lived in many different places in the world and work in many different places in the world.
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  And from the fact that my childhood in Cuba was a very, a very marking experience, all the being in other countries also has taught me a lot.
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  about human beings and about, you know, as a psychologist, when I was an undergraduate student and I suppose even sometimes now, the human experience is described as if it was
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  one thing.
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  And one of the things I learned from being all over the world is that what seems very normal in one context,
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  it's completely inappropriate in another context.
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  And we are all the products of our sociocultural environment and historical experiences that become part of our own personal psychology.
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  And so all these variations of what human beings
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  are or considered to be normal behavior or appropriate or whatever.
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  And all the variations of that have taught me that psychology is not, human psychology is not one thing.
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  There are wide variations in what women beings are.
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  and appreciate and et cetera.
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  So I would say basically that's what I would say.
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  Yeah.
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  Oh, the other thing also is that the language has a big influence on thought.
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  And I would not go to the Wolfian psychology that people cannot think, Wolfian theory, that people cannot think unless they're speaking certain languages.
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  But it does influence your thinking and it does influence your emotions.
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  And in a way, each language expresses a different philosophy of life that is part of what is sort of the most important thing in human interaction.
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  And when we are talking about psychology, particularly if we are talking about psychotherapy, where what we do is talk, talk, talk, talk, it's very important to
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  understand that
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  languages are having an impact on what is being said.
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  Even for people who are perfectly fluent in English or whatever the language of the therapist is, there's something back there that has to do with another language that
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  influences who people are.
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  You know, as you talk about that, it makes me think about language as a cultural carrier.
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  And I know you've done a lot of work in that area.
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  And I know that the other cultural carrier often is the caregiver.
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  in many societies and culture, oftentimes it's the mother that is doing the caretaking.
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  raising the children and so oftentimes the mothers are the culture carriers that then infuse that cultural context, values, perspectives into the children.
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  And I guess what I wanted to understand from you is you've written about language, you've written about women,
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  and about culture and feminism.
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  I guess as you think about all of those things, how do you think that they intersect?
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  Well, all these intersect.
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  Again, what I was saying before, it's not the same to be a woman in rural Africa as it is to be a woman in New York or Paris.
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  But even within New York and Paris, there are variations of what it means to be a woman.
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  And even in rural Africa, there are variations of what it means to be a woman.
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  And although there may be some sort of basic premises and expectations, there are, of course, individual variations and variations that are influenced by race and culture and
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  sexual orientation and a bunch of different variables that make human beings.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  So, you know, because I understand, like, the cultural variations, social locations, intersectionality, which I know we've really tried to examine that.
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  And feminist analysis often talks about intersectionality.
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  And that's probably, I would say, a newer concept.
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  as we've gone through waves of feminism.
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  And oftentimes, because this is a newer concept, in the earlier waves, there were women that were somewhat invisible or not recognized, not looked at in that history, right?
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  Or in those waves of feminism.
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  And I guess I wanted to ask you, given that,
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  How do we ensure the diversity of women are represented in even Women's History Month, International Women?
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  How can we do this so that we ensure that the struggles is inclusive?
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  I think, okay, let me say something with that.
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  In a way, sort of paradoxically, talking about the fact that some women were not included in the feminist movement, in the act of saying that, which seems to be a way of wanting to
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  include, we are actually excluding and diminishing
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  women of different cultures and ethnic backgrounds and races who were there from day one.
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  I mean, to say, for example, there were only white feminists at the beginning of whatever of the movement in the US in this particular case, it's to deny that the women of the
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  Combahee River Collective were there, that Audre Lorde was there.
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  that Gloria Anzaldua was there and to say, oh, women of color were not included.
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  contributes to the silence that was not real when these things were happening.
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  And I think in a desire to be included, inclusive, sometimes we end up excluding people who were there from day one.
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  So I hear you saying they were there, but that I guess oftentimes when history is written about that these people were not documented in that history, even though they were as
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  impactful as the ones that we know about, know, typically.
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  Yeah, sometimes again, yes, exactly what you're saying.
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  And other times I want to sort of, in a way I'm repeating myself, that when we keep saying the women's movement did not include women of color, we are contributing to, you know, out
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  of the mea culpa, mea culpa, we didn't do the right thing.
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  Yeah.
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  In the process, we're doing another exclusion of women who were there from the beginning and were contributing to it from the beginning.
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  So that's,
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  Well, what I'm hearing you say is the narrative needs to be corrected.
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  That's what I'm hearing you say.
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  That they were there, they should be there, kind of needing to shift the thinking that they were there and we need to make sure that they're known for being there.
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  Okay.
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  Okay.
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  So, you know, one of
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  questions that I really wanted to ask you, because I'm always interested in people's, you know, what they've learned over time.
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  You know, what do you think key learnings, key lessons from the women's rights movement that we can take and that are still relevant today, you know, that still can be used?
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  Well, one of them, of course, is that women were always there.
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  When we study history, we study the generals and the, you know, these men who did all these things, when in reality, they were always women who were there, who again, in the
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  writing of history, have been ignored or not presented in the very
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  important roles they played.
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  And with all history, it's not only the generals and the presidents who do it.
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  It's also the foot soldiers.
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  Napoleon could not have won any battles if there were no French soldiers doing what he said to do.
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  and, you know, in the same, by the same token, things would not have happened if
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  Women had not been there doing a number of the things that were essential.
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  that, I think that's a very important part of it, to make women visible.
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  At the same time, in practically every context, women are the last things to be considered.
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  Hmm.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  to be considered.
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  The specific needs of women.
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  When we are talking, for example, about immigrants, which I have done a lot of, sometimes say governments or organizations pay attention to the needs of immigrant groups
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  as expressed by the men in the group.
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  Very frequently we do not hear the women because we assume these men are the leaders and therefore when they say our community this that or the other, they're expressing what
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  everybody wants.
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  And again, we're ignoring what women may want in the process of doing that, which in some ways coincides, yes.
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  with what the men are doing, but in other ways are also things that are very specific to women and sometimes in active contradiction to what the immigrant men want for their
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  community because...
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  I don't want to generalize, but I'm going to do it.
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  In most contexts, men think that their needs are the most important and that they represent everybody and everything.
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  And women may have very contradictory thoughts to that and may have needs that are very different from that.
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  And it's interesting.
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  because when we are talking about Europe or North America and when we are looking at immigrant groups, for example,
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  We think that what the group wants is this.
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  And we haven't heard what women really want, which sometimes is to get freed from those cultural norms that have kept them in their place for some time.
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  So again, it's important to listen to women's voices and look at what women are doing.
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  not just to assume that men represent everything that is to be said about any particular community.
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  And it's funny because we are a lot.
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  We know how, and we say we, it's a generalization, but we know how to understand in Western societies that what women want may be different from what men want.
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  That's what feminism is all about to begin with.
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  But when we come to people from other countries, we tend to think that they are all the same and they aren't.
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  Sometimes we have to listen to the women separately.
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  I mean, I know that that's one of the lessons that you have taught me is that if you are working with a group, you need to talk directly with that group as opposed to kind of
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  assuming or if going to the experts who work with that, you need to talk to the actual people to understand their lived experience, to understand the phenomenon.
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  And I really have taken that to heart because it's like, if you really want to do good work, it means listening and hearing their voices and finding out from them.
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  Yeah.
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  So know that you have passed that on.
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  And so I'm going to ask you about your work and
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  You know, I know that you've been someone deeply involved in women's studies and feminism and kind of wanting you to talk about how that has impacted kind of your work, your
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  advocacy, who you've become, and now where you're at in your life.
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  Well, again, what we said a minute ago, what you said a minute ago, listening to women, listening to what they have to say.
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  you know, when I say listening to women, you know, part of the work I've done is study women saints from psychological and feminist perspectives.
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  So when I'm reading what they wrote or other kinds of things by them and about them, I'm also listening to them.
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  And we tend to think, oh, in this historical period, XYZ happened.
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  And these women were all submissive and quiet and et cetera.
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  But then you look at what they wrote or you look at their actions and you realize
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  that there is a current through the centuries of women saying, I am here too and I don't like how this is going.
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  And in this case, they may be doing it around religion and in our times, it's known mostly around psychology as we know.
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  But to look at the theories and the thoughts and again, centuries back, the biggest influence for
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  Everybody was a form of religious influence.
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  And we see the women through the centuries struggling through that and also struggling to have access to education, have access to being able to learn and teach and create in
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  whichever way they can.
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  And at the same time, we see the destruction
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  of many women in the process of trying to do that.
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  And there are innumerable examples, women artists, women scientists, and there's this struggle to be heard that continues to this day, not only on people who may be educated,
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  but on women who are your everyday person, but struggling for access to something.
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  And the examples of obliterating the contributions of women are many.
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  One of the ones that most people don't know is that Albert Einstein's theory of relativity was written together by him and his wife.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  And when it came to publishing it, he told her, if the woman's name is there, people are not gonna take it seriously.
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  So I'm gonna publish it only in my name, but it would be ours.
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  But of course he took the credit, who knows who she is?
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  Very few people.
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  That's just one example.
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  I mean, we know about other kinds of scientific discoveries about other forms of
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  creation, stories of women who have written the books of their husbands who won prizes for what they had written.
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  And so that there's something that is there.
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  The other thing that I want to include or not forget is that violence against women, it's still very
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  prominent and very present.
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  And sometimes when we say domestic violence, the reality that the majority of the victims of domestic violence are women.
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  Not that women are not violent because sometimes they are.
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  But you know, so.
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  Yeah.
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  You know, being a victim or being oppressed doesn't make you into a saint.
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  So, you know, I'm not saying that women never do anything wrong.
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  That's not what I mean.
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  But the reality is that when we look at the statistics, the abuse, the beating of violence, sexual abuse of children, et cetera, the majority of the victims
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  the oppressed, if you want to use that word, are the girls and the women.
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  And in places in the world where families have limited resources, the boys go to school, but not the girls.
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  The girls are made to do work that the boys are not required to do.
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  And all that, and it also manifests in issues of
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  you know, sexual assault and rape and what is rape and how do you know who's the guilty one?
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  And frequently the law believes the men more than the women.
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  And that is a reality in the lives of women.
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  Yeah.
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  from day to day.
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  I we know, you you park in a garage at night and you're scared.
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  And maybe men get scared too, but I don't think so in the same degree, you know.
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  And that, the fear of violence, it's constantly present in women's lives.
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  Even when you're not,
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  conscious of that fear.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Yeah.
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  it's something that we cannot forget because it's a very, in all societies that is interesting because I've started by talking about their cultural variations, but something
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  that seems to be repeated in practically every context is that women are the most frequent victims of violence whenever there is.
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  And even in...
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  When we are talking about children soldiers, for example, where boys of course are mistreated, if girls are mistreated, it usually tends to be more dangerous because it
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  usually becomes sexual violence.
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  Hmm.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  And in terms of some of the rights that women need now, one very important right is reproductive rights.
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  Or if you want to say better and more encompassing, reproductive justice.
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  Because it's the right to not have children and it is the right to have children that you can feed.
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  It's equally bad to make you
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  have children that you cannot feed and you cannot support, then it is to create so many difficulties that you cannot have the children you want to have.
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  And in some societies, women have been sterilized.
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  So they don't have the children they want to have because of whatever prejudices the people who are in control.
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  So.
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  You know, I know I'm painting a very bleak picture.
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  So let me, let me, given, you know, all the things that you talked about that women endure, that women have to live with, you know, I started with a bold call to action.
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  What would you say if you had, you know, all the years and what would you say?
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  people could do in order to continue the fight?
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  What are some of the actions that people can do for equal rights and equal opportunity and equal power?
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  Well, again, it should start with listening to women and to what they really want.
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  And I mean all women, not just the ones who can write papers like we do.
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  So that.
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  Also listening to the voices of women even from the past who give us ideas.
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  about different forms of resistance.
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  to look at the little things women do every day to resist and to create.
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  And to the very fact of taking care of kids, mean, mothers and grandmothers are the ones who basically educate children.
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  And then teachers, which are usually women also, at least in elementary school.
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  So to encourage that, to respect it, to...
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  to see what we can learn from the reality of everyday life as opposed to airy theories about what should be.
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  So I think it's that staying close to the experience and staying close to not only the horrible things that can happen to women, but also the little ways and the big ways.
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  in which they have resisted and organized and created and being productive in many different ways.
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  I mean, it's interesting because on the one hand, we say all these things about glorifying mothers and, mothers are so good and et cetera.
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  But on the other hand, we really don't give that much support to mothers.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  even in our society, forget any other places in the world.
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  and so in the very fact that teachers and workers in daycare centers and etc.
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  are paid miserable salaries while people who build bridges or computers get high salaries.
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  Tell us what we are valuing, regardless of what we say we value.
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  And so again, it's important to listen to women have said, to look at the things women have created despite of everything and anything.
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  and to help them build what they would like to see built, to help them take steps on their own behalf and on the behalf of their children or dependents or other kinds of things.
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  Beautiful.
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  That is just so beautiful.
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  And I know just over the years that we've worked together, you you have always valued women, you have always validated women, and you have always made the women that you've
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  touched better.
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  And that includes me.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  So.
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  And you know I'm very proud of you.
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  I know, I know.
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  So, Oliva, what I wanted to do for this particular podcast is I wanted to make an announcement that's very special to me because I am the American Psychological Association
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  president this year.
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  And so I have the privilege of giving the APA award for Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology.
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  And I wanted to...
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  tell you today that I have decided to award you with that award.
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  And that we will, I will be able to present this award to you at the upcoming APA annual convention in Denver, Colorado on August 7th.
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  So congratulations, Oliva.
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  You know how dear you are to me.
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  you're making me cry, so...
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  Thank you.
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  you're very welcome.
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  I mean, I don't know if you know how much of an impact you have had on me, both professionally and personally.
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  And so I am just so honored that I can do this.
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  You so deserve it for all that you have done throughout your life.
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  Thank you.
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  We'll talk more details about what that entails.
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  But yeah, right now I'm just, you know, a little shocked and moved.
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  we will close up and I just want to end the podcast with saying wellness is not a destination, it's a journey.
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  And I appreciate you being here today.
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  You take care and we'll see you in the next time.
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  Thank you.
• 33:48
  Okay, bye, thank you.
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  Bye bye.
• 33:53
  Tony, are you?