March is Women’s History Month, making it the perfect time to highlight, celebrate, and support work at the intersection of gender equity and the student experience. Gender plays a significant role in shaping students' experiences with higher education, especially in an on-campus environment. It can also impact a student’s access to basic needs like housing, food, and transportation. That’s why we’re going to be rolling out content on how to account for—and promote—gender equity in your student support services, with the goal of affirming a welcoming college experience.

We’ll touch on topics to help you understand gender equity, terms to know, how to design inclusive support services, and organizations and resources for students who identify as women. Hopefully, at the end of the month, you’ll have a new understanding of how to create a welcoming environment for women within your school’s community. And we’re kicking it all off with this list of strategies you can put into action to affirm gender equity on your campus.

One of the best ways to create an affirming, welcoming, and gender-inclusive student support environment is to emphasize the safety and comfort of students who are women. Let students know through your words and actions that you can be a trusted person to come to for help. Examples include:

Regarding issues of sexual harassment and other sexual misconduct, give individuals the option of:

Another resource you can use is the Safe Zone Project, which provides training to educators interested in being an ally to students. And if you’re interested in bringing this practice to your colleagues, they also teach professionals how to facilitate their own safe zone trainings.

In higher education especially, community events are a popular way to foster a learning environment and open conversations around important issues. However, ensure that events, workshops, and general support services are inclusive. For example, if you’re hosting a speaker panel, make sure you have speakers representing multiple genders. You can also utilize a moderator to ensure that speaking time is shared evenly and everyone’s voices are heard.

If you’re interested in inviting speakers to campus and don’t know where to start, here’s a short (but definitely not exhaustive) list of activists that speak on social inclusion, education, and gender through storytelling and teaching:

Beyond this, you should also account for students’ overlapping identities, which may span things like race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, and more. Each of a student’s identities might lead to unique differences in time, resources, and overall support. For example, responsibilities like childcare, housework, and grocery shopping often fall unequally onto women who are mothers and/or caregivers. Ask yourself — could we be providing child care during this event? Is it scheduled during dinner time or after-school hours? Considerations like these can have a big impact on how accessible your event is to women.

Sometimes, it can be hard to know which spaces and organizations are welcoming, safe, and supportive of women. If you know your campus and community well, consider making a map of trusted resources for your student. As a starting point, schools are increasingly adopting bathroom maps as a guide to all-gender, gender-neutral, or single-stall restrooms for students. You can go above and beyond that function by including which buildings have free menstrual health products, organizations that offer free or reduced-cost reproductive health services, or create a list of departments or student groups that advocate for & support women on campus.

A resource map could also include information on where to get support with basic needs like food, health care, and housing. Women and nonbinary students face higher rates of basic needs insecurity in higher education. Try giving your students a list of safe and inclusive organizations like food pantries, shelters, support groups, and medical clinics. We’ll also be doing a more in-depth post on this topic later this month, so sign up for our newsletter to get notified of that post!

If you’re interested in learning more about supporting your students' experiences throughout Women’s History Month, look out for our upcoming blog posts on resources and strategies you can use in your practice. We’ll be dropping new articles every two weeks — you can either check back here or sign up for our newsletter below.