Katherine Hanson

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Katherine Hanson is a prominent feminist in the United States, who has accomplished much for her cause. In the 1990s, she was the head of an organization known as the Women's Educational Equity Act Publishing Center, which was known for producing educational material for American schools that was considered by the organization to be 'gender-fair' (meaning non-biased towards men). Under President Clinton's Department of Education, this organization produced more than 350 publications and distributed material to hundreds of educational conferences. By the year 2000, the organization had received over US$75 million in federal funds. Hanson has now gone on to create the Gender and Diversities Institute, where she serves as "Principal Investigator of five major National Science Foundation (NSF) projects, including two large scale research projects on learning and technology."³

One of the publications that the Women's Educational Equity Act Publishing Center produced, which has similar attributes to much of the material written by the company, was an antiharassment and antiviolence guide for teachers of Kindergarten through Third grade, titled Quit It!. The guide instructed teachers on, among other things, how to run their classrooms in ways that prevent abuse and harassment. For instance, one chapter talks about asking the children how they feel about playing tag before going out to play, in order to make sure none of them feel hurt or left out by the game.

Bernard Goldberg criticizes Katherine Hanson for exaggerating statistics about violence toward women in America. According to Goldberg (citing Christina Hoff Sommers),¹ Hanson said: