Women’s Leadership and Resource Center Annual Report 2021 – 2023
ABOUT
Mission
The mission of the UIC Women’s Leadership and Resource Center is to increase awareness of and affirm the diverse needs of woman-identified persons in higher education; provide opportunities to learn about the histories of and contemporary issues in feminist movements, activism, and scholarship, especially as they relate to white supremacy, ableism, heterosexism, transphobia, wealth inequality, et al; and promote gender equity, anti-violence, inclusion, and social justice on campus and in the larger society and world.
2021 — 2023 in review
WLRC offered a variety of programs that aimed to activate and expand our collective imaginations about issues of gender and racial equity. As the COVID-19 pandemic continued, we provided opportunities for communitybuilding and collaborations with units across the university, engaged in individual and institutional advocacy, and offered intellectual and social spaces for faculty, staff, students, and community members to engage in meaningful conversations around social justice issues. We hope that you continue to support WLRC, and connect with the messages of hope, resistance, and resilience that echo throughout this report.
Staff
Dr. Natalie Bennett, Director (2016-present) Ramona Gupta, Associate Director (2018-present) Dr. Kelly Birch Maginot, Assistant Director, Advocacy Services (2019-present) Jamey Arnold, Education and Outreach Specialist (2022-2023) Priscila Pereira, Graduate Assistant (2021-2023) Candice Gary, Graduate Assistant (2021-2023) Ari Kilgore, Graduate Assistant (Spring 2023-present) Noella Bonsol, Communications and Program Assistant (2021-present) Ana Pascual de la Trinidad, Communications and Program Assistant (2021-present) Sydney Wells, Program Assistant (2021-2022) Nell Arendt, CAN Intern (Spring 2022) Susan Cisneros, DCEP Intern (Spring 2023) Omar Limias Villa, DCEP Intern (Spring 2023) Shivani Parekh, CAN Intern (Spring 2023)
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS: COMMUNITY
Programs that bring people at UIC—faculty, staff, students, alumni, and broader community members— together through conversation, storytelling, learning, and expressions of solidarity to break down barriers, encourage relationship-building across difference, and provide mutual support
Welcome Programs: Events and workshops to help UIC community members acclimate to campus life: • Summer College Seminars: Speed Friending and Finding Your Feminist Community • Fall & Spring Open Houses • Fall Scavenger Hunt • Fall Welcome Tea
Community Building and Professional Development for Women and Nonbinary Faculty, Postdoctoral Scholars, and Graduate Students of Color: Opportunities to build community and support for historically excluded faculty and graduate students: • Speaking/Writing/Being: Centering Black Women’s Intellectual Production • Understanding the Teaching Experiences of Diverse Faculty • Write @ WLRC • Let’s Talk about Writing • All Employee Expo
The Breathing Room: Fun, interactive workshops, usually facilitated by WLRC’s student staff, for UIC community members to unwind and heal together: • Girl Interrupted • Crafternoon • Black Women Rock • Women and Gaming • We Can All Be Advocates • Just the Three of Us • Trick or Sheets • My Period, My Culture
Let’s Talk about Hangouts & Hookups: A Campus Advocacy Network workshop series for undergraduate students to explore connections between romance, sex, identity, and social justice:
• It’s My Body! Communicating Boundaries in Sex and Romance • Stigma, Stereotypes, and Stories of Domestic Violence in Black Communities • What’s in a Name? Exploring Our Identities
• The Love I Deserve: Unpacking Internalized Oppression in Dating • Tinder Swindling and Catfishing: Navigating Digital Safety around Dating • Talk It Out: Communicating with Our Roommates • Healing Mixtape: How We Move Beyond Violence • UNA(Poly)GETIC
Discussions about texts that expand our imaginations around feminisms. • Blind to Betrayal:Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren’t Being Fooled by Dr. Jennifer Freyd and Dr. Pamela Birrell • More than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say) by Elaine Welteroth
• The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
• Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color by Dr. Lorgia García Peña
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS: ENGAGEMENT
Programs that allow community members to learn about the work of feminist scholars, activists, and changemakers; that challenge invisibility, barriers, and stereotypes; that highlight voices rarely depicted in the mainstream; and that inspire further action and passion about the topic
Clothesline Project: Throughout its 32-year history, WLRC and CAN’s programming in April has engaged campus and community audiences in important conversations about gender-based violence. In 2023, we relaunched the Clothesline Project, hosting multiple opportunities across campus to share messages of resilience, healing, and hope for individuals and communities impacted by interpersonal violence and sexual trauma. Feminisms Lunch Lectures: Faculty, graduate students, visiting scholars, and activists present their projects, ideas, and works-in-progress on a wide range of topics and engage participants in lively and provocative discussion.
• Found Materials & Barren Spaces: Art Emerging from Border Regimes’ Erasures, Disappearances, and Displacements • “Hey Mami”: Latinas’ Experiences of Street Harassment in Chicago during College Year • Period Pain, Poverty, and Stigma • Gender Differences and Shared Patterns in WorkLife Balance, Coping and Productivity among Academic Faculty during the COVID-19 Pandemic • Travails of Traveling: How Does Gender Influence Public Transport Choices? • Forked-Tongues, Muzzles, Roars: Hearing Feminism at La QueBuena Radio • What is the Asian American Adoptee Diaspora? Heritage Garden: Each summer, WLRC hosts the UIC Heritage Garden interns for 3 days of learning about environmental justice through a Black feminist and reproductive justice lens. Sex & Chocolate (2022) / Candy & Condoms (2023): Pop-ups in popular campus spots featuring sexual health trivia and fun giveaways.
Spotlight on Reproductive Justice The center hosted a series of public conversations on the impact of the Supreme Court decision in June 2022 on the case of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Framed within a reproductive justice lens, each event introduced our audience to the historical, sociological, and health implications of denying minoritized groups the right to bodily autonomy and to make decisions about their own families. • Abortion Futures? Unpacking Access and Reproductive Justice in Illinois • Race & Reproductive Rights Post-Roe: A Discussion with Natalie Y. Moore and Chicago Abortion Fund • Disability & Reproductive Rights: Post-Roe Realities • Black Women and Reproductive Justice: Abortion and Life in the Post-Roe Era with Dr. Monica McLemore • Reproductive Freedom for All • Sovereignty Is in the Body: Indigeneity and Reproductive Justice
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS: ADVOCACY
Programs that explore the structures of inequality within the university that prevent women and gender non-conforming students, staff, and faculty from achieving mobility and success
Women’s History Month Keynote: Women in Health, Medicine, and Science: Challenges and Opportunities: Dr. Chiquita A. Collins, Vice President for DEI and Associate Professor, UT Health San Antonio, discussed the barriers women in science encounter in their paths to leadership. Student X Parent: An initiative to support pregnant and parenting students that features community gatherings with student parents and administrators, as well as policy research. Medical Colloquia: Facilitated conversations with first- and second-year College of Medicine students. • Racism in Medicine: Why and How I Confront It, with Dr. Vanessa Grubbs • Blind to Betrayal • Fatal Invention with Dr. Claire Decoteau • Gender-based Violence in Medicine
Undergraduate Student Government Bystander Intervention Training: Workshop co-facilitated with UIC student leaders on understanding genderbased violence and recognizing and responding to harm when it happens.
30th Anniversary Programs (Fall 2021) 2021 marked the 30th anniversary of UIC’s Women’s Leadership and Resource Center and Campus Advocacy Network. Throughout the year, we hosted events that expand on the anniversary theme, “Centering Care and Community: 30 Years of Resistance at UIC.” In the fall, our anniversary programming focused on the Campus Advocacy Network‘s efforts to end gender-based violence and support survivors at UIC. We explored institutional betrayal and institutional courage through a series of powerful events: • Keynote Lecture & Graduate Seminar with Dr. Jennifer Freyd • Feminist Page-turners: Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren’t Being Fooled • Unlikely Alliances: Partnering to Prevent Gender-based Violence and Support Survivors at UIC • Feminist Films: Athlete A
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS: COLLABORATION Programs that reflect WLRC’s collaboration with campus and external partners to create diverse opportunities for thinking and learning about gender equity and social justice
Global Youth Ambassadors Leadership Summit: WLRC partners with World Business Chicago / Chicago Sister Cities International to host an annual intensive leadership program designed to build the next generation of global leaders. It is open to teenage girls, ages 14–16, from Chicago and its 29 international sister cities. Since 2016, more than 500 girls have participated. Denim Day: WLRC partnered with Women in Engineering Programs, Equity in Engineering Program, Women in Computer Science, and the Society of Women Engineers to learn about gender-based violence and create a denim quilt honoring survivors. Feminist Films: WLRC screens films that center women and femmes, people of color, LGBTQIA+ communities, people with disabilities, Indigenous people, and other marginalized perspectives. Each screening is accompanied by a workshop, discussion, or art-making opportunity. • Athlete A • LFG • Soledad • “Ms. Marvel” Collaborations with Athletics: WLRC hosted programs with student athletes about gender equity and gender-based violence. • Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC): Worked with student leaders to develop strategies for increasing equity and advocating for themselves and their teammates. • CAN Student-Athlete Handbook: Created a handbook on healthy relationships, wellness, and survivor resources for student athletes and staff. • Screening and discussion of LFG, a documentary about equal pay for women athletes. Events we co-sponsored: • Beyond Binary: Genders in the Past, Present, and Future conference • Black Mental Health Matters! Resource Fair • Humanizing Afghans
• Symposium on Gender and Sexuality in the Middle East, North Africa, and Related Diasporas • Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism • The Popular Uprising Led by Women in Iran teach-in • Q&A with Iranian Students about Woman Life Freedom • VOICES: Aram Han Sifuentes • Engaging Pacific Island Feminism and Indigenous Feminism Artist-Activists Reimagining Justice A series of dialogues with artists, activists, and educators to inspire new ways to work collectively toward a better world and explore questions about using creative skills to bolster social justice movements and their role in the academy.
Aram Han Sifuentes and Lisa Woolfork
Quenna Lené Barrett and JeeYeun Lee
Sarah Whyte and Ashley Dequilla
Ashley Dequilla, Queen Hibbler, and Onyx
CAMPUS ADVOCACY NETWORK
CAN provides the knowledge and tools for understanding and eliminating gender-based violence and empowers the UIC community to build spaces and relationships for healing, resistance, and social change.
At the core of CAN’s work lies our concern for the safety of all community members at UIC. We seek to reimagine and reshape institutional practices, definitions, and perspectives on violence, especially as experienced by survivors from marginalized communities whose trauma is compounded by misogyny, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, classism, and ableism.
What CAN Clients Need
CAN engages the UIC community around genderbased violence (GBV) through education and outreach; activism; and advocacy at the individual, group, and institutional levels. As confidential advocates, we support survivors with crisis intervention, safety planning, resources, academic advocacy, and accompaniment. As educators, we develop programming and campaigns for students, faculty, and staff to prevent GBV and support survivors.
Mental Health Needs: Through the COVID-19 pandemic, survivors’ needs for mental health services have increased, and they have struggled to access affordable, trauma-informed, culturally competent long-term care. We partner with mental health providers to connect survivors with diverse mental health resources and self-care strategies.
CAN Services to Survivors Survivor Advocacy Academic Advocacy Crisis Intervention Legal Advocacy Funding Disciplinary Board Housing 0
20
40
60
80 100 120 140 160
Financial Needs: CAN clients face financial needs for housing, tuition, and medical and legal expenses. Establishing alternative avenues for financial support can be a crucial component of survivors’ safety plan and academic success. We connect clients with funding opportunities and provide small emergency grants.
Academic and Professional Needs: Clients encounter challenges in class and at work, including fears around safety, stigma, retaliation, and academic and professional success. They need flexibility and time for healing, regardless of whether the violence took place on or off campus. To assist clients, we liaise with instructors, academic advisors, faculty mentors, and student support units; develop individualized safety plans; assist staff who apply for leaves of absence; and advocate for institutional accessibility.
Forms of Violence
Sexual Assault
Domestic / Dating Violence
Stalking / Harassment
Other
Total
Current/former spouse or dating relationship
9
65
19
2
82
Family member
3
14
1
2
18
Acquaintance
18
2
23
3
45
Stranger
5
0
4
3
10
Unknown
7
3
3
1
11
Total
42
84
50
11
166
Totals vary, as clients report multiple situations of harm.
Gender
Affiliation
Race & Ethnicity Asian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander
23
Black
30
Latine
32
16
Middle Eastern
7
White
26
Alumni
3
Multi-racial
7
Other
1
Unknown
44
Other
4
Women
101
Undergraduate Student
82
Men
20
Graduate / Professional Student
57
Transgender, Non-binary, Gender Queer
9
Faculty / Staff
Unknown
24
No answer
4
Funding for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence
Program Highlights
WLRC was awarded a 2021-2022 $50,000 Violent Crime Victims Assistance Grant from the Illinois Office of the Attorney General, which provided support for 23 students in the form of emergency grants for housing, tuition, health, and safety, as well as anti-violence education and outreach.
Partnership with Fraternity and Sorority Life: CAN continues to strengthen our relationship with FSL by facilitating Campus SaVE Trainings, speaking and serving as advocates at fraternity and sorority events, and collaborating on additional programs.
Highlights
“Beyond Compliance” Trainings: CAN has developed a series of workshops for UIC faculty, staff, and administrators that encourage moving “beyond compliance” to integrate trauma-informed practices and protocols that support survivors and prevent violence.
June 2021 — May 2023: CAN served 148 clients, including 23 emergency grant recipients.
22
former clients returned to CAN or continued receiving services.
41 survivors had or were exploring a disability. 26 were pregnant or parenting. 17 took a leave of absence after experiencing GBV.
Don’t Cancel Your Class!: CAN works with UIC instructors to provide class presentations on topics such as healthy relationships, bystander intervention, advocacy skills, and sexual violence.
Program Partners
We are grateful to the partners who help us achieve our mission and vision. Campus • AANAPISI Initiative • Academic Advising • Applied Psychological Services • Athletics • Blood Buds • Campus Housing • Campus Recreation • Centers for Cultural Understanding and Social Change (African American Cultural Center, Arab American Cultural Center, Asian American Resource and Cultural Center, Disability Cultural Center, Gender and Sexuality Center, Latino Cultural Center) • College of Applied Health Sciences • College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts • College of Business • College of Dentistry • College of Education • College of Medicine • College of Nursing • College of Pharmacy • Commuter and Off-Campus Life • Counseling Center • Dean of Students • Dialogue Initiative • Disability Resource Center • Employee Assistance Program • Equity in Engineering Program • Financial Aid Office • Fraternity and Sorority Life • Gallery 400 • Gender and Women’s Studies • Global Asian Studies • Graduate College • Graduate Employees Organization • Graduate Student Council • Heritage Garden
• Honors College • Indigenous Graduate Student Association • Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy • Institute for the Humanities • Institute on Disability & Human Development • Latin American Recruitment and Educational Services • Law School • Library • Mujeres en Medicina • Muslim Student Association • Native American and Indigenous Student Organization • Native American Support Program • Office of Access and Equity • Psychology • School of Public Health • Self Defense and Assault Awareness • Sexual Health Awareness and Peer Education • Society of Women Engineers • Sociology • Student Legal Services • Student Nurses for Social Justice • Technology Solutions • Undergraduate Student Government • Urban Health Program • Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs • Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity & Engagement • Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs • Wellness Center • Women in Computer Science • Women in Engineering Programs • Women in Science and Engineering - Medicine • Women’s Health Initiative • Women’s Law Caucus
Community • Apna Ghar • Ascend Justice • Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition • Disability Lead • Greenlight Family Services • Illinois Attorney General • National Network of Abortion Funds • Planned Parenthood Illinois Action • South Asian American Policy and Research Institute • World Business Chicago / Chicago Sister Cities International
Women’s Leadership and Resource Center (312) 413-1025 wlrc@uic.edu wlrc.uic.edu
| uicwlrc
Campus Advocacy Network (312) 413-8206 can@uic.edu can.uic.edu | uiccampusadvocacynetwork 1700 Student Services Building 1200 W. Harrison St. Chicago, IL 60607