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- THE WEEK, Page 33SOCIETYGenius over Gender
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- This year's MacArthur award winners include a majority of women
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- The prestigious MacArthur fellowships are known as "genius
- grants," but it doesn't take an Einstein to recognize that men
- have consistently won the bulk of the awards. Now the balance
- has shifted: 17 of the 33 fellowships for 1992 will go to women.
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- This year's crop includes the usual eclectic mix of
- talent. There are scholars, like historians Suzanne Lebsock of
- Rutgers and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich of the University of New
- Hampshire. There are creative artists, among them choreographer
- Twyla Tharp. There are social activists, including Janet
- Benshoof, a campaigner for women's reproductive rights, and
- Unita Blackwell, a small-town mayor and civil rights advocate.
- Oh, and there are some males, like Harvard philosopher Stanley
- Cavell. The winners get from $150,000 to $375,000 over five
- years (younger recipients get less money) to spend as they wish.
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- -- The MacArthur Foundation wasn't alone in hurdling
- gender barriers last week. For the first time since the U.S.
- began naming a poet laureate, in 1986, the position has gone to
- a woman: Mona Van Duyn, 71. Van Duyn, a 1991 Pulitzer
- prizewinner, has often written about human relationships,
- drawing on her 48 years of wedlock to versify about "the
- complexities, bumps and humor of marriage."
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