Role of Gender Equity Work on University Campuses through Women, Gender, and LGBTQ+ Centers

by

David Powers Corwin, Holly Mason Badra

• LAST MODIFIED: 20 August 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756810-0322

Introduction

Gender equity centers’ work on college campuses began with women’s centers, which were established to provide much-needed spaces for women within academia and to fill gaps in university resources, support, and programming for women. Initial work focused predominantly on addressing sexism, sexual violence, harassment, and discrimination. These centers then became spaces where women students, faculty, and staff were celebrated, uplifted, and empowered. Moreover, with a focus on advancing women’s careers, these centers offer professional development and leadership growth opportunities. They provide community and network building. Unfortunately, early on, some groups were left out, such as women of color and the LGBTQ+ community, and that’s still an issue in identity-based centers, but many centers have made strides and intentional steps forward in making sure people of color and people of various genders and sexualities feel welcomed and supported. The rise of LGBTQ+- specific resource centers began in the 1990s and there was scholarship on this practice beginning in the 2000s. LGBTQ+ centers have also faced equity issues related to queer people of color, trans identities, and women. Although some of the services and practices of women, gender, and LGBTQ+ centers have shifted over time, many of the founding principles have remained. These centers were and continue to be spaces for activism, social change, and the nurturing of future agents of change. With gender expansiveness and intersectionality in mind, many centers have expanded their portfolios to offer education, resources, and community for all historically marginalized students on campus– and have becomes spaces that also explicitly address racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, classism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination. Although stereotyping and misinformation can contribute to false impressions, centers serve the entire campus, including (but not limited to) traditional and nontraditional students, students who are parents, allies, women in STEM, and the larger community beyond the institution’s walls. Some of the initial challenges of establishing these centers still remain today, including funding, staffing, resources, stereotypes, and administrative and political misalignment. Often it is through collaboration, coalition building, and community partnerships that many of these centers are successful in offering a multitude of effective services and learning opportunities for their students, faculty, staff, and communities. In thinking forward regarding feminist futures, gender equity campus staff need to continue on the path of inclusivity, engaging in more collaboration with campus partners with whom they do not traditionally work, such as male allies and nontraditionally aged students. This bibliography provides an overview of the work done in women’s, gender, and LGBTQ+ centers in unison due to the overlapping nature of the work, while also recognizing the stark differences in the work of each type of center. Furthermore, it is important to examine this scholarship through the historical evolution of the work, which comes through in our structuring of subspecialties in this area.

Roles of Women’s Centers

Bonebright, et al. 2012; Chamberlain 1988; and Gould 1997 offer information on the beginning of women’s centers as responses to larger societal movements for women’s rights and to gaps in university services that left women within the university without the support they needed. Davie 2002 and Lonnquist and Reesor 1987 explore one of the main gaps some of these centers sought to fill—namely addressing sexual violence and harassment, rape, and discrimination. Kasper 2004 and Kunkel 1994 unpack the technicalities that existed around getting a center started and how women’s centers have shifted their focus, work, programming, and missions over time. They also speak to strategies for sustainability.

• Bonebright, Denise A., Anitra D. Cottledge, and Peg Lonnquist. 2012. Developing women leaders on campus: A human resources–women’s center partnership at the University of Minnesota. Advances in Developing Human Resources 14.1: 79–95.

  DOI: 10.1177/1523422311429733

  The authors note the University of Minnesota’s women’s center as the oldest campus-based women’s center in the United States, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2010. The center was established in the 1960s for women returning to the university after having children. Between 1969 and 1980, the center’s work paralleled the women’s liberation movement (focusing on Title IX and the wage gap). The center, in connection with university offices, then focused on improving campus climate, diversity, and access.

• Chamberlain, Mariam K., ed. 1988. Women’s centers. In Women in academe: Progress and prospects. Edited by Mariam K Chamberlain, 83–106. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

  Chamberlain explores the history of women’s centers, beginning in the 1970s, in filling gaps in higher education institutions. Gathering information from twenty-five women’s centers, the author then looks at how higher education institutions have increased their services over time, which has, in many cases, shifted the work, focus, mission, and programming of many women’s centers.

• Davie, Sharon L., ed. 2002. University and college women’s centers: A journey toward equity. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

  Including chapters by multiple scholars and practitioners, the authors of this book delve into the roles women’s centers play in higher education institutions. As one of the first anthologies to demystify the work of women’s centers, chapters include topics on centers as spaces for equity; women’s transformation, education, and leadership; response to sexual assault; serving nontraditional students, lesbians, and bisexual women; responses to racism; housing; specialized libraries; and the technicalities of establishing a center.

• Gould, Jane S. 1997. Personal reflections on building a women’s center in a women’s college. Women’s Studies Quarterly 25:110–119.

  In this article, a founder of the Barnard College Women’s Center describes the history of the center, which opened in 1971 as a space reflecting a major social revolution for women in society. Gould describes the charter process and addresses why it’s necessary for a women’s college to have a women’s center. Gould also describes how the center grew and developed its internal and external programming.

• Kasper, Barbara. 2004. Campus-based women’s centers: Administration, structure, and resources. Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice 41.3: 337–499.

  Written at a time when research on campus-based women’s centers was sparse, Kasper includes information from a large number of centers at both public and private higher education institutions in the United States in 1999–2000. Pulling from surveys of seventy-five different centers, the data reveals information about resources and budget, administrative structure, center usage and programming, participation, internal and external relationships, outreach, and both challenges and successes.

• Kunkel, Charlotte A. 1994. Women’s needs on campus: How universities meet them. Initiatives 56.2: 15–28.

  Kunkel provides an in-depth look at the ways that women’s centers meet the needs of women in higher education. Moreover, being in conversation with various universities and centers, Kunkel offers a detailed account of the various shapes and functions women’s centers take. Arguing for the importance of these centers, the author offers suggestions for careful and considerate ways to start and sustain a women’s center.

• Lonnquist, M. Peg, and Lorraine M. Reesor. 1987. The Margaret Sloss Women’s Center at Iowa State University: A model. NASPA Journal 25.2 (Fall): 137–140.

  DOI: 10.1080/00220973.1987.11072042

  Lonnquist and Ressor look at the foundation, structure, and purpose of The Margaret Sloss Women’s Center at Iowa State University. The center was designed as a space of advocacy for women experiencing sexual harassment, discrimination, and abuse; to offer information and referrals; and to put on programming that reaches a variety of constituents on topics related to healthy relationships, sexism, assertiveness, homophobia, rape, violence, parenting, professionalism, and body image.