WOMEN'S CENTER

The Northwestern University Women's Center is dedicated to fostering a campus climate that promotes equity and enriches the personal, professional and academic lives of all members of the University community, particularly women students, staff and faculty.

The mission of the Women's Center is a commitment to advancing women, gender equity and inclusion through engaging the Northwestern University community.  As catalysts for change, we foster the development of individual and collective strengths to cultivate socially responsible students, staff and faculty.   

 

---

2019- 2020 Theme

 

This year we acknowledge how positive change for women and other gender minorities in educational settings has been brought forth incrementally and only through extraordinary effort and struggle. We will take an expansive approach to gender and gender equity, placing them into conversation with race, class, sexuality and other social categories that shape our experience in and with education.

Our year of programming will confront the persistence of inequity in higher education, the presence of bias in the classroom, and the particular obstacles facing women and other gender minorities in STEM fields. We will challenge ourselves and our communities with a series of introspective questions: What forms of knowledge and community are valued within higher education? Who receives credit for the production of knowledge? How can classrooms, departments, and institutions, actively counter misogyny and other intersecting forms of prejudice that threaten spaces of learning?

We will take time to celebrate those who have stood against gender oppression in education and evaluate the state of our ongoing commitment toward making the educational experiences of women and other gender minorities equitable, safe, and liberating.

---

Original hand-drawn chalk art by Renisha James, www.reneweddesignsonline.com