Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Beth Beck
Shelli Chidakel
Maggie McGrane
Angela Moorjani
Leslie Morgan
Janette Robinson
Wendy Salkind
Lisa Voelkel
and co-chairs
Zoya Fansler
Simmona Simmons-Hodo
The founders of the Women's Center had to ask themselves some really big questions:
Who does the center serve?
What services will be provided?
Where will it be located?
Who will run it?
Where will funding be obtained?
It's hard to answer these questions and the answers change over time. They're influenced by national trends, events, and policies and by campus climate, resources, and need.
Early Women's Center events and groups are centered around women's health and women's roles at home and on campus. Meetings for mothers, women who are caregivers for elderly or ill family, and women in STEM fields met regularly. Most of the events and workshops centered on topics like breast health, menstruation, and body image. While archival and founding documents show a clear and purposeful feminist politic, the Center leaned heavily on the side of providing services and less on political activism.
The first campus-based women's centers in the mid 1960's were generally targeted towards married women who were returning to school. These Continuing Education for Women centers offered career counseling and space where women students could become integrated to a campus of younger students, most of whom were men.
Today, the Women's Center is a major agent in the changing and creation of institutional policies and campus climate that affect student populations such as sexual assault survivors, trans and gender non-conforming students, and black students.
As they met and organized and built community within these centers, women discovered they shared similar problems. With the rise of the Women's Liberation Movement in the 70's, new centers focused more on younger women students and were founded as a place of activism and feminist consciousness.
Some CEW centers expanded their services and evolved with newer centers to develop political ideologies and missions while some pushed back against politicization. These centers remained in the private sphere and served women in traditional roles. Today's centers walk a fine line, balancing the need to provide services for women on campus with the drive to enact change outside the center.
The Women’s Center at UMBC advances gender equity from an intersectional feminist perspective through co-curricular programming, support services, and advocacy for marginalized individuals and communities. We prioritize critical social justice as our community value, with a deliberate focus on women, gender, anti-racism, and feminism.
All are welcome as long as they respect women.
Their experiences. Their stories. Their potential.
Its mission would be to assist women in achieving their full potential in
education, work, and personal lives
through personal empowerment,
academic and intellectual growth,
and professional development
“…the Women’s Center will enhance the lives of people…It will be an advocate for women fighting persistent marks of social inequality and prejudice that limit their potential—whether they are students, staff, or faculty…There is no doubt that the Center will play an important role in attracting students to come to UMBC and in improving the quality of their university and subsequent careers…”
-Angela Moorjani, Women’s Center Committee member, 1991
In what is likely an early attempt at trans allyship, we tracked transgender students as a separate gender category. October 2004 is the only instance of this.
The Women's Center has always supported LGBTQ students and student organizations on campus, but we were not always actively involved in movements for change or setting aside intentional space for queer students.
Today, LGBTQIA+ students are some of our most frequent visitors.
We host two bi-weekly groups for queer students and events centered on topics affecting and voices from the LGBTQ community on campus. Many of our professional and student staff identify as queer and are excellent resources for students and faculty/staff alike.
Tracking who uses our space and why is one of the primary ways we collect data about our visitors and what they gain from us. This data is essential when it comes to funding and understanding the space.
Up until about Fall 2011, we tracked visitors by gender. As we grew and understood gender in a more complex way, we realized that it is not only impossible but awkward to try to visually interpret the genders of the people who come to the center.
In order to be a better ally to transgender students, we eliminated the gender category. The Women's Center is dedicated to improving its allyship, making an effort to provide space and voice for trans students, faculty, and staff.
The Women's Center has always been a safe haven and place of support for survivors of sexual violence. Through the Clothesline Project, Take Back The Night, and numerous workshops and presentations, the Women's Center is a fierce advocate for survivors on campus.
Our new mission, updated Fall 2015, intentionally includes the word "anti-racism." It was a conscious choice made by students, staff, and the advisory board because we acknowledge the ways in which women of color are excluded and erased from the history and narratives of feminist activism and because we recognize race and racism as structures of violence.
We hold ourselves accountable to anti-racist work, especially within the Baltimore community, because race is a pervasive institution in all of our lives whether we know it or not.
When searching archival material, it is clear that the Center was thinking about women of color around the world. The film series the Center hosted each semester for a number of years often focused on the lives
and struggles of women in other cultures and around the world. But, it is also clear that the center was not prioritizing the lives, works, or voices of women of color on our own campus and our own community.
We hold space for women of color to build community and heal together, showcase the many talented students on campus, and hold critical discussions on race, anti-blackness, and whiteness in order to uphold our anti-racist values.
As the needs of marginalzed students change, so must the Women's Center, its programs, and its policies. It is our job to listen to students and create space for their voices, lest we become yet another outdated institution creating obstacles for the groups it is meant to serve.