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CORVALLIS - The Women's Center at Oregon State University is hosting the fifth annual Conference on Gender & Culture April 21-23 at Memorial Union on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis.

The three-day event features a variety of presentations and panels, a feminist film festival and a keynote speaker, Barbara Ehrenreich.

All sessions are free and open to the public.

Ehrenreich will present "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 22, in LaSells Stewart Center at 26th Street and Western Boulevard. Her talk is sponsored by the university's Convocations and Lectures Committee and also is part of the conference.

Ehrenreich, a social commentator, author and journalist, has been a contributing writer for Time magazine since 1990. Her articles, reviews, essays and humor have appeared in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, Ms., Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation and The New Republic.

The festival's presentations will be given by OSU students, community members and others. Conference topics include: reproductive rights and the election season, women in athletics, femininity as a way of discrimination, violence on the female body, images of women in the media, and self-defense.

The feminist film festival, sponsored and coordinated by the Women Studies Program, will be from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. on Friday, April 23. It is scheduled in Owen Hall Room 102. The films are "Body: The Value of Women," "Writing Desire" and "My Left Breast."

For a complete schedule or for more information, see http://oregonstate.edu/womenscenter/conference.htm.