Five women who have made significant contributions to the Las Vegas community will be honored Oct. 16 at the opening reception of the UNLV-based Women's Research Institute of Nevada.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place from 3 to 5 p.m. at the UNLV Foundation Building, located at the northeast corner of the UNLV campus.
The women who are to be honored for their outstanding achievements are:
-- Florence McClure, founder of Community Action Against Rape.
-- Business pioneer and philanthropist Kitty Rodman.
-- Emilie Wanderer, the first women to practice law in Las Vegas, and a donor to the institute's oral history project.
-- Civic leader Thalia Dondero, a member of the Board of Regents of the University and Community College System of Nevada.
-- Philanthropist and business pioneer Claudine Williams.
The reception will give guests the opportunity to learn more about the state-wide institute. Founded in 1999, the institute is housed in UNLV's College of Liberal Arts.
"The Women's Research Institute of Nevada is the only research facility in the state to focus specifically on issues that impact women," said Joanne Goodwin, founding director of the institute.
"The institute promotes inclusion," Goodwin said. "We want students to look around and understand how women and men built the state, how research -- whether on health or the economy -- may have different outcomes by one's sex or race or income.
"One of our primary goals is to encourage and support research, both by faculty and throughout the University and Community College System of Nevada," she said. "We intend to foster interaction among researchers across the various disciplines because issues do cross boundaries."
One of the institute's earliest projects is the Las Vegas Women's Oral History Project, which was started to address the scarcity of historical research on women in Nevada. So far, more than 40 women whose lives and work provide insightful perspectives to the story of Nevada have been interviewed.
Another project with which the institute is involved is the Nevada Women's Archives. In 1994, Goodwin worked with Jean Ford and a number of UNLV faculty to preserve documents and photos that depict the role women have played in the development of the state. The archives, which currently include more than 250 collections, are housed in the special collections section of UNLV's James R. Dickinson Library and are available to the public.
Future plans for the institute include the publication of a book of 100 biographies of Nevada women and a study of "The Status of Women in the States" in collaboration with the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington, D.C. The institute also will be making a bid to be designated as a leadership development site for the Center for Women and Politics, which is based at Rutgers University.
For additional information on the opening reception or on the institute and its projects, call Goodwin at 895-1026.
