The Carolina Women’s Center contributes to making the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill a more inclusive environment by celebrating achievements towards gender equity and by ensuring there are no gender-based barriers to success. We serve the entire campus community of students, faculty, staff, and postdoctoral fellows.
What is intersectionality?
Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1995) work introduced intersectionality to bring visibility to black women’s positioning between traditional divides of race and gender in legal decisions and frameworks. Our approach to gender equity embraces gender with all its intersections, including but not limited to race/ethnicity, class/socioeconomic status, age, gender identity and expression, ability, parent/caregiver status, religion, nationality, and sexual orientation.
What is gender equity?
The World Health Organization provides a good explanation of the distinction between gender equity and gender equality: “More than formal equality of opportunity, gender equity refers to the different needs, preferences and interests of women and men [and other gender identities]. This may mean that different treatment is needed to ensure equality of opportunity. This is often referred to as substantive equality (or equality of results) and requires considering the realities of women’s and men’s lives. Gender equity is often used interchangeably with gender equality, but the two refer to different, complementary strategies that are needed to reduce gender-based health inequities.”
Vision
The Carolina Women’s Center will lead efforts and initiatives related to women and gender equity and will serve as a hub for all related activities, information, and collaborations. Through partnerships at UNC-Chapel Hill and in the community, we will promote and advance equitable safety, well-being, empowerment, achievement, and leadership for people of all gender identities.
Core Values
- Community: We value relationships and making connections. We work to create a space of support, belonging, and connectedness among campus and community constituents.
- Partnerships: We approach our work with respect for all people and seek to maximize our impact through collaborations and via convening individuals and groups to achieve common gender equity goals.
- Diversity: We work with people across all gender identities and the various intersections of identity.
Core Areas
We strive to fulfill our mission, achieve our vision, and demonstrate our core values for ALL campus constituents through these principal areas of work:
- Educating our community about the ways in which gender intersects with other identities, interacts with systems, and influences our experiences;
- Advocating for gender equity in all University policies and practices;
- Empowering individuals to thrive in their efforts toward personal, academic, and career success and leadership capacity building.
- Providing services to those who have or are experiencing gender-based violence or harassment, or are impacted by it;
- Contributing to education and awareness about preventing gender-based violence and harassment;
- Building community through collaborations and partnerships; and
- Providing support for campus caregivers in managing their work, education and family responsibilities.
We do care about all matters related to gender equity and women’s empowerment, so if you have a concern that does not fall under these headings please bring it to us.