March marks Women’s History Month. UW-Superior’s Gender Equity Resource Center dedicated time in the last week of March to celebrate women’s history month, collaborating with other campus organizations to put on Gender Equity Week.
The current Gender & Sexuality Programs Coordinator, T Wainman, spoke about preparing for the GERC’s Women’s History month. Celebrations occured both March 16, along with March 23-27 for gender equity week. Wainman said that “it was really focusing on the women’s history month celebration as a whole.” This includes things like “making sure we have things like Love Creamery, which is a local woman-owned business.” Wainman expanded further into the preparations for the event. They also worked in “contacting the Jim Dan Hill Library Staff to have a table of books, resources, videos… Like library literary resources around women in history. And just making sure that people know the historical significance of different individuals or different time periods or perspectives.” They said the celebration is “an academic service-learning project.” Wainman said students “create posters about women’s issues and then also present that during the day.”
The GERC also took opportunities to branch out and do events with other organizations on campus. A film screening of The Librarians, about librarians in Texas fighting book bannings, showed with the Jim Dan Hill Library. Also, with the Native Nation Student Organization, they brought in indigenous artist Jessica Gokey. She did an artist talk about her beadwork, and process of her art, along with what it means for her to be an indigenous woman artist.
Included in the GERC’s programming was their first Feminist Friday, “a time to get together,” Wainman said. “Have conversation around current issues or topics, and then also just take time for ourselves.” They spoke about how they hope the event becomes more regular. Hoping that the event can create a space where people “have self-care and have things that bring you joy. Not just talking about everything that is going on in the world, but how do we situate ourselves in a good way, and in right relationship with ourselves.”
More than just the events that they held in honor of Women’s History Month, Wainman said that the GERC’s preparations were “also thinking just about what we’ve been trying to set up as gender equity week as well.” This is the second year that Gender Equity Week has been hosted; the GERC plans to continually host this week of events near the end of March. Wainman said for those who missed out on the fun this year, “just make sure to check it out next year, because we’ll be back.”
