Role of Gender Equity Work on University Campuses through Women, Gender, and LGBTQ+ Centers
Authors: Powers Corwin David , Mason Badra Holly 
Published: September 2024

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.