Celebrating Women's History and Empowerment Month 2025

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Department of Gender and Women's Studies, UC Berkeley | Decolonizing Gender and Sexuality Conference | March 10th and 11th, 2025

Decolonizing Gender and Sexuality Conference

Epistemes, Subjects, Relationalities, Artivisms, Practices, Movements

Arlene Blum's book and t-shirt

Going for the Gusto

Mountaineer, scientist, and environmental health advocate Arlene Blum has followed her instincts and curiosity to scale multiple summits

a collage with abstract design elements, 3 face figures, and poetic justice newspaper

Constellations of Black feminism project

Explore papers, poetry, photographs, and more

The archive of award-winning author Amy Tan is now part of The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. Among the materials are notebook

Amy Tan archive lands at UC Berkeley, offering a bird’s-eye view of a singular literary life

The Bancroft Library will house the extraordinary collection, which arrived in 62 boxes that include some never-before-seen writing.

Past and present women leaders of the Cal Band

Women hold up more than half the Cal Band

Barbara Hollimon Goodson ( ’81) on breaking the Cal Band barrier

Every March, we celebrate Women’s History and Empowerment Month, both honoring the historical contributions of all who experience life through the lens of "woman" in body, spirit, and identity (past, present, future, and fluid) as well as empowering women and reducing barriers to their advancement. This year's national theme is Moving Forward Together! Women Educating & Inspiring Generations.

Academic Centers, Departments, Taskforces, & Advisory Bodies

Faculty and Staff Resources

Student Resources

RISE: Celebrating Women, Community Love and Leadership

Please take the time to nominate a woman leader (community member, staff/faculty/visiting scholar/postdoctoral appointee and/or student) who has demonstrated strong leadership, care and love for the community, as well as, inspired and empowered other women. Please use one form per submission, self nominations are welcome. 

RISE! Leader Awards Nominations are due 11:59pm on Monday, March 31, 2025. Open to UCB and non-UCB women leaders. Awardees will be honored at the RISE! Celebrating Women, Community Love and Leadership event to be held on Fall 2025.

We welcome all who experience life through the lens of woman in body, spirit, identity - past, present, future, and fluid.

Topics

Berkeley Life Blog

A piece from from the Shah Garg Collection.

Museum Visit: BAMPFA featuring "Making Their Mark: the Shah Garg Collection"

Articles/Profiles

Jennifer Doudna, professor of molecular and cell biology and of chemistry.

UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna receives National Medal of Technology and Innovation

via Berkeley News

Christ speaking to reporters at a UC Berkeley press conference in 1993.

Carol Christ: Years of challenge, years of historic progress

 via Berkeley News

Claudia Sheinbaum spoke in Mexico City, Mexico, on June 3 after she was elected as the country's first female president. The decision is the latest example of women climbing the country's political ranks, a Berkeley historian said.

Claudia Sheinbaum just became Mexico’s first female president. It’s not surprising, Berkeley historian says

via Berkeley News

Blum helped fund the all-women Annapurna expedition by selling T-shirts.

Going for the Gusto

via Student Affairs

Women leaders of the Cal Band

Women hold up more than half the Cal Band

Via Student Affairs

Hellman Fellow Atreyee Gupta

Celebrate women’s impact at Berkeley, from an end to colonialism to antibiotic resistance

via Berkeley Inspire

Faculty and Research

Grace Lavery headshot in an oil painting filter

Grace Lavery's

Grace Lavery'swork addresses interpretation under capitalism, with a focus on the ascription of sexual meaning to flesh. She embarks from the psychoanalytic insight that flesh is both meaningless and the means by which meaning becomes possible. She also works creatively in prose as an author of autobiographical writing, generic and stylistic pastiche, and fiction, exploring alongside her critical work. She is currently completing a monograph about contemporary demonology and possession narratives, and two novels; one about constitutional law, the other about the West Midlands of England. 

Selected works:

1. Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques (Princeton UP, 2023)

2. Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis(Seal, 2022)

3. Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan(Princeton UP, 2019)

4. "Generic Deductiveness: Reasoning as Mood in the Stoner Neo-Noir,” in Feminism Against Cisness, ed. Emma Heaney (2024).

5. “Do the Hustle!,” The Chicago Review (January 2022)

Leti Volpp headshot

Leti Volpp

Leti Volpp is a scholar of immigration law and citizenship theory whose research examines how law is shaped by culture and identity. Volpp’s honors include two Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowships, a MacArthur Foundation Individual Research and Writing Grant, the Association of American Law Schools Minority Section Derrick A. Bell, Jr., Award, and the Professor Keith Aoki Asian Pacific American Jurisprudence Award. Volpp currently directs the Center for Race and Gender and is an affiliate of multiple programs. She is a core faculty member of the Othering and Belonging LGBTQ Citizenship Cluster and the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative.

A selection of her scholarly work:

1. “Protecting the Nation from ‘Honor Killings’: the Construction of a Problem” (Constitutional Commentary, 2019)

2. “Feminist, Sexual, and Queer Citizenship” (Oxford Handbook of Citizenship 2017) 

3. “Saving Muslim Women” (Public Books 2015)

4. “Framing Cultural Difference: Immigrant Women and Discourses of Tradition” (differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 2011). 

5. “Feminism versus Multiculturalism” (Columbia Law Review, 2001)

Women's History and Empowerment Month 2025

A message from leadership to the campus community.

Events 

Works from the Shah Garg Collection, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, October 27, 2024–April 20, 2025

  • March 4, 2025 from 12-1pm on Zoom: Inspiring LinkedIn Learning workshop with key takeaways from curated courses, leading to a certificate of completion for the PowerHER in Unity for Women’s History Month program. Together, we’ll explore how to harness collective strength, unity, and allyship across generations, identities, and geographies. Featured Facilitator: Deepak Sharma. UC Berkeley students and employees can access LinkedIn Learning via CalNET ID. Recommended by Cal Women's Network.
  • March 6, 2025 from 5:00pm-7:00pm at 2521 Channing Way: Thursday Theater, Waging Change with a Q&A from Rachel Wallace.

The Loft Hour with headshots of Rizvana Bradley and Roshanak Kheshti

40th annual empowering woman of color confrence interconnected histories empowered futures

book covers of Maurya Kerr, Vincente G. Perez, & D'mani Thomas

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