Women's History Month

In celebration of March's Women's History Month, UC offers an annual series of programs and events to honor and celebrate the achievements of women at UC and beyond who have faced challenges, conquered barriers, and worked to improve the world for all women. Women's History Month coincides with International Women's Day on March 8.

The Black Feminist Symposium is dedicated to celebrating Black feminist thought, scholarship, and activism and to uplifting voices, forums, panels, and creative work led by students, staff and faculty at UC, in the Cincinnati metro community, and throughout the region. The Symposium works to unite Black feminist work both in and outside the Academy and to connect student activism with community work while supporting space that elevates the contributions of Black women, femmes, and gender non-conforming folks to achieving social justice.

This year’s symposium theme, “Building Our Own Table, Defining Our Own Terms,” explores the friction between working within oppressive systems (reform) versus working from the outside (revolution). For decades, the expression “having a seat at the table” has been used to gauge people’s access to power and decision-making in the workplace, in their communities, in political spaces – access often equated with their ability to wage change. Audre Lorde’s famous quote – “the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house” – calls us to interrogate how the systems and institutions we move through each day were built, what tools are used to maintain their power, and what a better blueprint might look like – one that centers the needs and joys of Black women, femmes, and gender non-conforming folks.

• Siri Imani, local activist, Hip Hop artist, and spoken word poet
• Ms. Geneva Miller, of UC Black Women on the Move
• Rickell Howard Smith, new CEO of the YWCA
• Khisha Asubuhi, owner of Originalitees 
• Karrington Rainey, Ms. Kuamka 2022, and Jaela Kennedy, Ms. Kuamka 2023 

This year’s program is expanded with 14 concurrent sessions, two afternoon networking sessions (a QTPOC Coffee Hour and a Black Women in Higher Education Networking event, and will again feature a self-care space with journaling, a massage chair, and more.

More details are forthcoming about this event!

Members of our local Ohio Lesbian Archives will share stories of discovery, spotlight some of their collections, and highlight this unique source of local women’s and queer history in Cincinnati. The Ohio Lesbian Archives of one of only a handful of such dedicated archives in the U.S. Ohio Lesbian Archives has been collecting materials by and about Lesbians and Greater Cincinnati LGBTQ+ communities for more than three decades. They are open by appointment for students, researchers, or anyone curious about lesbian culture, wanting lesbian empowerment, or who wants to learn more about histories of local LGBTQ+ communities, movements, and individuals. 

Loretta Ross serves as this year’s Women’s History Month keynote for the Women’s Center and the Taft Research Center, and is the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies’ (WGSS) Distinguished Lecturer. Her visit is a collaborative effort by partners across UC who recognize the importance of promoting conversations about reproductive justice in this critical moment following the overturn of Roe v. Wade. In addition, the Taft Research Center’s goal us to promote social justice oriented and public-facing research and programming.

Reproductive Justice moves beyond choice and access to abortion. The term was coined by African American women, including Ross, in 1994, following the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt. It is a broader term that uses a human rights framework and also looks at reproductive oppression, sterilization abuse, immigration restrictions, gun culture, rape culture, the prison-to-school pipeline, etc. This presentation covers all aspects of Reproductive Justice which is  becoming the primary framework new voices in the movement are using to move beyond the paralyzing debates of abortion politics.

• UC Women’s Center
• Taft Research Center
• Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
• Department of Africana Studies
• College of Law
• Nathaniel R. Jones Center for Race, Gender and Social Justice
• WGSS Graduate Student Organization
• Fellows of the Graduate School
• Graduate Student Government
• UC Generation Action

Join Women’s Center staff for an afternoon of collage-making and other crafts! Created by WGSS Graduate student Abby Hobbs and Womens’ Center student staff, Amaya Boyd.

Space is limited. Registration required via CampusLink (link coming soon).

Register to attend this workshop intended to provide space for Black women to write poems about the body, sexuality, womanhood and empower Black women participants to make strength training a part of their self-care practice. In the first half of the workshop, participants will read and discuss poems by Black women poets that explore autonomy, sexuality/sexual relationships, the body, race, and womanhood. Facilitators Simone Savannah and Morgan-Allison Moore will lead a writing activity to help participants generate one poem to share at the end of the workshop. In the second half of the workshop, participants hear stories about the facilitatorsʼ body and fitness journeys. Following their presentations, participants will learn and practice the best exercises to grow the glutes and strengthen the legs and hips. Participants will also have the opportunity to share their personal stories, and ask questions related to the body and taking up space in the gym. The workshop ends with an open mic session where participants may share the poem written during the first half of the workshop. This fitness-writing workshop is inspired by Lucille Cliftonʼs poem “homage to my hips” where she the speaker defines her body on her own terms – each line celebrates womanhood and honors her “big” and powerful hips. Participants will each receive a collection of poetry. Co-sponsored by UC Women’s Center and the Taft Research Center.