While we are watching our tuition go up due to budget cuts for education, other government social programs are also seeing their funding drop. But funding has remained steady or even increased for a program that may be doing more harm than good.
An OU student hopes to open minds and challenge perceptions with her new documentary on a subject about which she is passionate: the issue of female incarceration in Oklahoma. The film screens Tuesday in Gaylord Hall.
Amina Benalioulhaj is a women's and gender studies senior who has been working on her film "Women Behind Bars" for about 11 months now. Benalioulhaj said she decided to make a documentary after working as a research assistant for sociology professor Susan Sharp, reading Sharp's research on the topic and working together on interviews.
“After I'd done all of that, I got the feeling that this is something I could really do,” Benalioulhaj said.
According to the annual Kids Count Factbook from the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, Oklahoma incarcerates more women per capita than any other state, and their children are five times more likely to end up in prison than their peers. The majority of these women are nonviolent drug offenders whose crimes in other states would not require prison time. These are just a few of the shocking statistics that led Benalioulhaj to focus on this issue for this film, her senior capstone project.
The film focuses on incarcerated women and their children, but also includes interviews with others, such as Department of Corrections personnel and people who compile statistical research without actually coming into contact with any of these women. Benalioulhaj said that the interviews were extremely time-consuming, but very rewarding.
“It's really cool to see all these different people who are talking about one [subject] but coming from a different perspective,” Benalioulhaj said. “You really start to see all the different threads together.”
Although she said some people were apprehensive about her ability to execute such a large project without a film degree or much funding, Benalioulhaj said she also had supportive friends who encouraged her and let her use equipment that she lacked. Because she is a WGS major and not involved in film, the help from others allowed her to focus on the important issues.
“As a WGS major, I've studied domestic violence, the gender wage gap, the feminization of poverty, divorce, single motherhood, abortion, reproductive rights [and] sexual health education,” Benalioulhaj said. “All these issues that touch women in particular touch incarcerated women disproportionately because they are minorities and they are poor, and they come from these backgrounds. Over 90 percent of them have been victims of domestic violence, over 60 percent were victims of sexual/physical abuse in the home as children, and they all suffer from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. These are the people that we need to be helping in our society.”
Benalioulhaj said that she hopes people start to think about these issues and question the status quo as a result of seeing "Women Behind Bars." She also said she hopes perceptions of crime and criminals will change for viewers, as they did for her as a filmmaker.
“The most important thing that I learned interacting with these women and their children is that they're human,” Benalioulhaj said. “Just like anyone else in our society, my opinion and understanding of criminals has been shaped by media and by the way that crime and criminality is portrayed on TV shows and the news. There's a lot of fear associated with it, there's a lot of othering and labeling that happens. But they're women, they're human, they're just like me and you, they're no different. Meeting with them dispelled a lot of fear that I had, whether it was conscious or unconscious fear.”
Benalioulhaj's plans for the future include pursuing social justice for incarcerated individuals and women's rights in general. She said she may send the film to some festivals, depending on the festivals' requirements.
The film is screening tonight and will be followed by a panel discussion with others who worked on the film and are involved with the issue, including Sharp. Benalioulhaj said she hopes that people come see "Women Behind Bars" so they learn about the issues and maybe get inspired to do something about it.
“The research I read really touched me,” Benalioulhaj said. “I wanted other people to know about it. It was too important not to educate the public about.”
If you go:
WHAT: Screening of "Women Behind Bars" with panel discussion following
WHEN: 7 p.m. Tuesday
WHERE: Gaylord Hall Room 1140
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
cketrick 1 year, 7 months ago
Screening was amazing! Thank you to everyone who came out! 215 people came out!
MaleMatters 1 year, 7 months ago
Anyone who has spent time in gender studies as it is commonly taught is naturally going to defend even the worst of women.
Amina Benalioulhaj seems to think women commit crimes only because of past abuse -- something she would never allow for male criminals. In other words, perhaps according to this gender studies senior, women are naturally angelic and men naturally demonic. That's the stuff of far too many "gender studies" where a male point of view is never heard.
Here's an example of what is taught even in an all-girls school:
“Hannah Walk: I’m young enough that I’m part of the third generation of women on both sides of my family to attend college. ...I received the greater part of my primary and secondary education at an all-girls school. All-girls education means a few different things for my views as a feminist. I wasn’t taught that men and women are equal, I was taught that women, like the pigs in Animal Farm, are more than equal. I was taught that women deserve specific rights of their own. Women, my teachers told me, are special and deserve to be treated as such.” See "On Feminism" at http://perpetualpost.com/?p=8982
See also "The Doctrinaire Institute For Women's Policy Research" at http://battlinbog.blog-city.com/a_comprehensive_response_to_the_institute_for_womens_policy.htm
MRambrose 1 year, 7 months ago
MaleMatters,
Boohoo I'm so sorry that you THINK the "male voice" is left out of women's and gender studies. First of all, it's not (feminism includes intersectionality that doesn't just focus on gender issues, but race, class, etc.). Second of all, even if it was, the male voice and gaze dominates the rest of education and... pretty much everything else. Your conclusions are pretty elementary... equating all-girls school to OU's WGS program? Equating Amina's studies to a weird quote about all-girl's schools? Your usage of the terms "naturally" is actually anti-feminist and problematic. Your whole argument is, well...dumb, inaccurate, ignorant, and misinformed.
Amina is amazing. Her work is amazing. I hope you come to the screening tonight and learn a thing or two about women being incarcerated in OK. That would be the smartest thing you did all day! (maybe it will inspire you to actually take a WGS class! Crrrazy, huh?)
Love, M.R. Ambrose
waytrendy 1 year, 7 months ago
MaleMatters,
"Anyone who has spent time in gender studies as it is commonly taught is naturally going to defend even the worst of women."
Gender/Queer Studies are rooted in the cultural exploration of gender. Quite simply you can't have the male without the female; one cannot discuss the masculine without the feminine, it is inherently a binary relationship with infinite shades of grey in between. I take exasperated offense to your oversimplification that discussing something from a feminine perspective somehow excludes the male; quite to the contrary, when one is being discussed so is the other because they are fundamentally understood in relation to one another. You presume that Gender Studies indoctrinates people to favor one gender over the other, whereas I would argue that contemporary American culture is the actual artifice that perpetuates the dominance of the male over the female, the masculine over the feminine.
An all girls school is no more like a Gender Studies classroom than a reform prison is a hell for un-angelic women turned lesbians. Your false analogy and inclusion of angels and demons in this argument is quite troubling, and something that you should have retained from 12th grade English class. Mistakes of argument such as these make your rhetoric crumble under its own inability to correctly form and express critique.
I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume, somehow, that you just don't know any better. But I am left with an acrid taste on my palette because you represent the worst kind of reductive non-thinker. Your article was written out of the fear that women will magically have more rights than men. Which I find hilarious considering the litany of struggles for women to gain even a modicum of equality with men in the home, workplace, their own bodies, and every other structure in society. A real man is comfortable enough with himself to realize that women are still dispiritedly imprisoned into social models that don't fit, forced to wear masks that aren't relevant, and systematically disadvantaged in favor of the male throughout the structures of status-quo America.
I postulate that you are not a real man, but an insecure little boy poorly regurgitating a reprehensible worldview that he picked up in piece meal from other insecure men children who dominate easily accessible discourse in this country.