The Penn Association for Gender Equity is hosting its annual Gender Equity Week from March 23-28 — featuring a series of workshops, speaker events, and a film screening.
The week is comprised of nine events, many of which will be co-hosted by student groups and Penn organizations. Ahead of the programming, The Daily Pennsylvanian spoke to members of the PAGE team about their goals.
“Our goal is to get as many people energized as possible,” College junior and PAGE Chair Ashley Kim told the DP. “Gender Equity Week is really open to everybody and all lived experiences.”
Programming began on Monday with a zine-making dinner hosted in collaboration with the LGBT Center, followed by a Safe Sex Trivia Night co-hosted by PennFems and Penn Women’s Center. College first-year and PAGE Programming Chair Fernanda Portales said “it was really nice to see” people “willing to collaborate, start talking, and share about their lives” during the dinner.
Tuesday’s events included a Sustainable Period Workshop hosted with Penn Reproductive Justice — aimed at providing education on and distributing menstrual products — and a free Plan B distribution in partnership with the Women’s Center.
“Gender Equity Week is a great way of familiarizing yourself with the resources and the overall events that we try to have for the Penn community,” Portales said. “These events can bring you so much learning, whether or not you identify with the student body that we usually represent.”
Kim added that collaboration was a central focus in planning this year’s programming. PAGE partnered with multiple campus groups, including the Cultural Resource Centers and Penn’s minority coalition groups — commonly known as the 7B — to highlight various aspects of gender equity.
Wednesday’s programming will continue with a “Blind Date with Feminism” event at the Women’s Center, where students will select from a curated collection of fiction and nonfiction feminist texts for discussion.
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On Thursday, the Women's Center will host a “Body Neutrality” workshop with Penn Wellness.
Instead of listening to “what social media says,” attendees will be encouraged to concentrate on the idea of “being comfortable with the functions” of their bodies. The workshop will ask them to consider how that mindset can be beneficial for themselves and their “perception of others,” according to Portales.
Friday’s programming will feature a discussion with Classical Studies professor Emily Wilson — the first woman to translate both The Odyssey and The Iliad. The event will include a reading, conversation, and audience question and answer section.
“I really wanted to give her the space to talk about what it’s like being a woman translator,” College sophomore and PAGE Internal Chair Kaison Wills, the event’s moderator, said. “A lot of people have labeled her translations as feminist translations, but she doesn’t necessarily agree with that — she thinks that there should be higher standards for what people attribute to an actual feminist translation.”
Gender Equity Week will conclude on Saturday with a “Domestic Violence and Abuse Survivorship” conversation, hosted in partnership with the Social Equity and Community Fellowship Program.
According to College sophomore and discussion moderator London Haynie, the conversation is part of the program’s larger “survivor-centered” campaign. It will highlight the violence faced by children, marginalized groups, and individuals — including abuse that occurs outside of romantic relationships.
“The overarching goal for this workshop is to get the information out and to educate students,” College junior Tricia Tchamabo, another of the discussion’s moderators, said. “A lot of people are experiencing some sort of violence or abuse, but they’re not essentially wary of how it’s defined.”
The week will end with a movie night screening of “Ocean’s 8,” which College junior and PAGE Vice Chair Lucy Chamberlain said “illustrates how you can engage with gender equity movements in a lot of different ways.” The screening is part of effort to make Gender Equity Week “as impartial as possible” and “unite people who might not otherwise interact with each other.”
“Our goal is to educate people about the gender equity movement, but also provide hope about the progress that we’ve made so far, and where we see Penn going and see the Penn campus achieving some of the goals that PAGE aspires to accomplish,” she added.
