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Annarose
Fitzgerald
Intern in Action, May 2003
Intern
for the Cornell Institute for Women and Work
 When
Barnard junior Annarose Fitzgerald met Francis Moccio, the
director of the Cornell Institute for Women and Work (IWW),
last June at a Ridgewood, Queens, Democratic Club meeting,
she seized the opportunity to network. She discussed her experience
taking Barnard’s women’s studies courses with Moccio,
who teaches women’s studies at Cornell. She and Moccio
continued their correspondence over email, and Fitzgerald
learned more about the IWW, a research institute that increases
awareness of women’s working conditions across diverse
cultural and financial backgrounds, from professional women
trying to break through the "glass ceiling" to immigrants
working in sweatshops or as domestic housekeepers. Within
a few weeks, Fitzgerald was offered an internship, and she’s
been interning at the IWW since September.
For one of her first assignments, Fitzgerald helped Moccio
prepare testimony for her panel appearance at a legislative
hearing on a bill to extend New York State unemployment insurance.
Fitzgerald researched how the economic crisis in New York
City post-9/11 had affected women, especially those previously
employed in the hospitality industry, one of the hardest-hit
sectors. Fitzgerald’s report was distributed to New York
State legislators, Department of Labor members and New York
City advocacy groups.
"Not having much prior experience with public policy,
it was really interesting to observe a bill being discussed
with all of the different opinions and interests of the panelists,"
Fitzgerald said. "I learned a great deal about how complicated
the bill process is—I had always wondered why it takes
the government so long to get things done!"
Fitzgerald, 20, originally from Milford, Connecticut, received
funding from the Barnard Office of Career Development to attend
the Public Leadership Education Network’s Women and Public
Policy Seminar in January. The nine-day program brought 60
female college students to Washington to talk with women involved
in women's policy issues. The students visited the Senate
and the State department. Fitzgerald was actually in the Senate
building on the day the federal unemployment insurance extension
passed.
"It was incredible to hear people on Capitol Hill talking
about an issue on the national level that I had been involved
with on the state level!" Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald currently works on the IWW’s Immigrant Workers’
Rights Project, which examines the experiences of immigrant
women in the workforce. She conducts interviews with women
on common concerns and problems, so that the IWW can develop
educational materials and generate ideas for bills to that
will serve their needs.
"The best part of this internship," Fitzgerald said,
"is that I get to see how the political and feminist
theories that I study in the classroom apply to the real world."
Fitzgerald is now taking a course taught by Janet Jakobsen,
the Barnard Center for Research on Women director, called
"Theorizing Women’s Activism," in which students
merge classroom readings and discussions with the fieldwork
for activist organizations. "The connection between my
internship at IWW and the work in this class has been an incredible
learning experience," Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald has recently been chosen as one of the first fellows
for the Francene Rodgers Fellowship Program in women's social/public
policy, made possible through the generous donation of Rodgers,
a Barnard trustee and graduate in1967. Fitzgerald will receive
a stipend to continue at the IWW for the summer to contribute
to a research study on sexual harassment and discrimination
in both upper and lower income occupations.
An English major minoring in Women’s Studies, Fitzgerald
hopes to become a journalist to bring women’s workplace
issues to public attention through the press. Fitzgerald has
written stories about sexual harassment for the Barnard Bulletin
and has interviewed prominent women activists like Grace Paley.
She has also written fiction and narrative pieces on women
and hopes to continue creative writing alongside journalism.
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