Women & Gender Student Services

About Us

The Women & Gender Student Services (WGSS) at CU Denver provides advocacy, education, resources, and support for students overcoming gender-specific barriers to success. We are committed to ensuring students have equitable access to educational and professional opportunities regardless of gender, and we are particularly committed to supporting students who belong to our most marginalized categories, including:

Women and femme presenting individuals, with a specific emphasis on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) women
Women and femme presenting individuals who are international students or immigrants
Women and femme presenting individuals who are queer
Women and femme presenting individuals who are disabled
People who are pregnant, parenting, and/or lactating
Transgender, nonbinary, and gender expansive individuals

To learn more about the Women and Gender Student Services click through our office programs & events, resources & support, contact information or email our office at cii@ucdenver.edu.

Contact Us

Jill Rubin

Program Director, of Women & Gender Student Services
Pronouns: she/her/hers
jill.rubin@ucdenver.edu

CII Women & Gender Student Services Director Jill Rubin has been on a path of gender unlearning and reimagination in university settings for the past six years. A graduate of Florida Atlantic and Boston University, Rubin is passionate about disrupting hierarchies through lifting and centering student voices and ideas. With experience teaching women's studies and sexual health courses, collaborating with women's non-governmental organizations, and organizing women & gender programming, Rubin excels at making hard conversations accessible, necessary resources available, and gender education fun! When Rubin's not working, she enjoys cuddling her butterscotch pit mix, Maggie, trying new foods, and exploring the city.

Programs

This proven 4-hour program empowers women and non-binary students to:

Resist cultural pressures to accept the appearance ideal
Reallocate your valuable time to something other than striving for an unrealistic body
Increase confidence and body satisfaction
Bond with other like-minded students

What’s fun about The Body Project? The sessions break down our understanding of beauty standards and challenge how we see ourselves. The sessions are broken up into two 2-hour sessions, held one week apart. You will be part of a small group of women and non-binary students discussing the appearance ideal and how to fight back against it.

The proposed intention of this project is to begin a conversation around women and femme-presenting bodies and the rigorous expectations placed on them. Please be aware that stereotypically “feminine” pronouns are the default for this session, but extra accommodations have been made to make sure that basic information learned is applicable to all genders.

You can request The Body Project for you and your friends/organization by emailing us at cii@ucdenver.edu.

Please note: the Body Project is not group therapy or treatment for eating disorders. If you are concerned that you or a friend are struggling with an eating disorder, please call Counseling Center Services at 303-315-7270.

Celebrate Women's History Month (March) with us on the Auraria Campus by attending events and sessions dedicated to the past and continued success of ALL women and femme folks! This year’s theme of Women Who Advocate for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion "recognizes women throughout the country who understand that, for a positive future, we need to eliminate bias and discrimination entirely from our lives and institutions”

2024 WHM Theme - National Women's History Alliance

nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org

Importance & Value

Women's History Month is a celebration and time of intentional recognition of women’s achievements and historical significance. Recognizing the achievements of women—especially trans women, queer women, women of color, disabled women, and all other women whose experiences have been further marginalized within our societies’ narratives—can have a huge impact on the development and confidence of girls and young women. It is hard to imagine yourself in a career when you don’t see role models that live and look like you in the fields you dream of contributing to.

Moreover, when women are excluded from contributing to society it has devastating effects. For example, due to a lack of women in medicine it took decades to uncover that women typically experience different symptoms for heart attacks than men (something Dr. Nanette Wenger spent much of her career researching); due to a lack of women in engineering and STEM, we did not consider how seat belts may not protect feminine bodies the same way it does more masculine bodies (credited to Dr. Astrid Linder).

Since many of the achievements that women are responsible for are underrepresented and undervalued in our history books and literature, it is imperative that we spend time calling attention to what women have done and can still yet do to change our world!

History & Evolution

Started as a local celebration in California in 1978, the movement spread across the country as more communities became involved. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter declared the Week of March 8th (International Women's Day) as National Women's History Week, in response to lobbying by a determined collection of women/women’s groups. In 1987, almost a decade since the first celebrations in California, Congress officially designated March as Women's History Month.

For additional information and resources on this theme please check out our tri-institutional Women's History Month calendar and the resources below:

Resources

Events

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Tools

Resources

Schools & Colleges

Campus Affiliates

Center for Identity & Inclusion | Diversity, Equity & Inclusion