About Us

Education, Empowerment, Advocacy: UWM Women's Resource Center

About the Women’s Resource Center (WRC)

Our Mission

The Women’s Resource Center (WRC) is an open and safe space that focuses on empowering womenending gender violence, and establishing gender equity. 

We use an intersectional lens to advocate for the education, empowerment and agency of women-identified students. Our vision is equality for all students. 

What We Do

  • The WRC coordinates large and small programs related to women’s empowerment, raising awareness about gender-based issuesfeminism and social justice, with the goal of establishing gender equity for all. We partner with many offices/centers and student orgs on campus well as with our community partners.
  • We also coordinate the Ambassador Program, which allows students to develop professional and leadership skills, connect with the WRC and other students on campus, and learn more about how to apply feminism to their everyday lives! 

Services and Resources

a small, plush Pounce mascot posed on a table of free handouts, next to a basket full of free menstrual supplies

  • The WRC is an open, safe space where students can hang out, relax, study, and meet new people! 
  • We offer free safer sex supplies (condoms, dental dams, lube) and free menstrual hygiene products (pads, liners, tampons).
  • We have a Lending Library with hundreds of books and resources.  
  • We partner with the UWM Food Center and Pantry and can help students access the Food Pantry when the Food Pantry is open.
  • We also have access to the Lactation Room in the Student Union (WG23) for folks who are nursing/lactating. 
  • The WRC also connects students to on-campus and community resources, if needed. We also assist in supporting students who have experienced sexual violence. 

The WRC and Gender

  • We strive to create a space where everyone feels welcome and supported in the WRC!
  • All students are welcome to use our space and access our resources.
  • At the WRC, we work to avoid replicating systems and language that renders transgender and gender non binary folx marginalized and invisible. 
  • When we use “women-identified” this is including but not limited to: transgender folks, femmes, and non-binary/gender-nonconforming folks who identify with womanhood. ​There are many ways to express and embody femininity and that womanhood looks differently and means something different for everyone! 
  • The WRC efforts are not meant to be exclusionary, as our defining of “women” includes multiple identities (including but not limited to those who identify as women, transgender, femme, and non-binary and/or gender-nonconforming). We also understand that women experience gender-based marginalization, and that this marginalization is compounded by other intersecting identities. The WRC is intended for those who self-identify as women (cis and trans) and all who have lived experience of misogyny as well as non-binary people.

 

a group of people sitting in a circle on comfortable chairs in the WRC space

front page of the UWM Post with the headline Women's Resource Center opens with fanfare

 

a black-and-white photo of six people cutting a ribbon that reads Women's Resource Center

a group of people dancing in front of the WRC

Above are an image from UWM’s original UWM Post article about the opening of the center, an image from the official opening of the WRC and an image from the 20th anniversary of the WRC!