Gender Equity Center

Gender Equity Center Library

Provide a list of educational materials and resources

student at library

Articles to Read

Videos to Watch

Podcasts to Listen

Books to Read

  • Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands
  • Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider
  • Lola Olufemi, Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power
  • Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
  • bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
  • Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider
  • Combahee River Collective, How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
  • Mary Wollstonecroft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women
  • Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class
  • Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought
  • Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity
  • Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
  • Academic Journals:
    • Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

Films and TV Series to Watch

Organizations on Social Media

People to follow on social media:

More gender related resources to check out:

Glossary of Terms

The terms and definitions below should only be used as a general guide to your understanding of Gender. The terms and words we use constantly change and we are mindful of that with this list.

  • Ally: An ally is someone that aligns with and supports a cause with another individual or group of people. For example, a straight ally, more specifically, is an individual outside of the LGBTQ+ community that supports their fight for equality and rights. Or someone who identifies as white that supports the fight for racial equality and rights
  • Community: A community is a group of people with shared values, behaviors, and artifacts.
  • Consent: is an agreement that is willfully given without any external pressure or factors. Consent should be clearly and freely communicated. Affirmative consent is an agreement between participants to engage in sexual activity. A verbal and affirmative expression of consent can help both you and your partner to understand and respect each other's boundaries.
  • Education: is both the act of teaching knowledge to others and the act of receiving knowledge from someone else. Education also refers to the knowledge received through schooling or instruction and to the institution of teaching.
  • Discrimination: is the act of making unjustified distinctions between human beings based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, religion, or sexual orientation, as well as other categories. Discrimination especially occurs when individuals or groups are unfairly treated in a way which is worse than other people are treated, on the basis of their actual or perceived membership in certain groups or social categories. It involves restricting members of one group from opportunities or privileges that are available to members of another group.
  • Diversity: the characteristics and identities that are impacted by disparities, injustices and inequities – all the protected classes
  • Equality: Equality is about ensuring that every individual has an equal opportunity to make the most of their lives and talents. It is also the belief that no one should have poorer life chances because of the way they were born, where they come from, what they believe, or whether they have a disability. Equality recognizes that historically certain groups of people with protected characteristics such as race, disability, sex and sexual orientation have experienced discrimination.
  • Equity: The intentional creation of systems that provide a shift in the power dynamic from the dominant to the counter dominant culture to reconcile and restore the inequities for the groups that have been historically marginalized
  • Feminism: is a range of social movements, political movements, and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that societies prioritize the male point of view, and that women are treated unjustly within those societies. Efforts to change that include fighting against gender stereotypes and establishing educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women that are equal to those for men.
  • Feminist: is someone who supports or engages in feminism
  • Gender: One's innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.
  • Gender Expression: Is often, but not always, described using terms such as masculine, feminine, neutral, androgynous, conforming, or nonconforming. It is the way someone expresses their gender through behavior, mannerisms, interests, physical characteristics, or appearance. External appearance of one's gender identity is usually expressed through things such as behavior, clothing, haircut or voice, and which may or may not conform to socially defined behaviors and characteristics typically associated with being either masculine or feminine.
  • Gender Identity: This is the way someone experiences gender internally as part of their core sense of self. One's innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. Gender identity can’t be assumed based on appearance, anatomy, social norms, or stereotypes. Gender identity isn’t determined by assigned gender or sex, can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth. and often develops or changes over time.
  • Gender-neutral pronouns: These pronouns aren’t stereotypically or culturally categorized as male or female, masculine or feminine, or for men or women. Gender-neutral pronouns are used by both cisgender and transgender individuals to affirm and convey important information about who they are and how they want to be referred to. Examples include:
    • they/them/theirs
    • ze/hir/hirs
    • ze/zir/zirs
    • xe/xem/xyrs
  • Intersectionality: is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these aspects include gender, sex, race, class, sexuality, religion, disability, physical appearance, and height. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.
  • Inclusion: The space for others to be heard, counted, valued and regarded as necessary and essential, knowing fully that they matter as do their inputs, experiences, and points of views.
  • Menstrual Justice: “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, in relation to the menstrual cycle.” (Learn more about Menstrual Justice here, from The Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University.)
  • Misogyny: hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against women
  • Mujerista movement: In the 1980s, the advent of womanist (In her book In Search of Our Mother’s Garde, Alice Walker defined a "womanist" as a black feminist or feminist of color and mujerista (derived from the Spanish word mujer, or “woman” in English) movements and theologies spoke to African American and Latinas women who did not find their voices were heard or issues were being addressed within the feminist movement.
  • Reproductive Justice: “Reproductive justice is a framework conceived of by women of color, defined by the core belief that every woman has the right to decide if and when she will have a baby, to decide if she will not have a baby, and to parent the children she already has in a safe environment and healthy community, without the threat of either interpersonal or state violence.” Learn more from Against the Current.
  • Sex: Refers to a person's biological status and is typically categorized as male, female or intersex. There are several indicators of biological sex, including sex chromosomes, gonads, internal reproductive organs, and external genitalia.
  • Sexual Violence Response and Prevention website: Definitions related to sexual harassment, and sexual assault can be found by clicking on this link
  • Stereotype: Grouping races, genders, or individuals together and making a judgment about them without knowing them, this is an example of a stereotype. Racial remarks, sexual remarks, and gender remarks are the biggest stereotypes.
  • Womanism/womxnist: an extension to feminism that covers a respect for women of all races and classes. Having or expressing a belief in or respect for women and their talents and abilities beyond the boundaries of race and class.
  • Womxn/Womyn: is one of several alternative political spellings of the English word women, used by some feminists. There are other spellings, including womban (a reference to the womb or uterus) or womon (singular), and wombyn or wimmin (plural). Some writers who use such alternative spellings, avoiding the suffix "-man" or "-men", see them as an expression of female independence and a repudiation of traditions that define women by reference to a male norm. The term womxn has been used by intersectional feminists to indicate the same ideas while foregrounding or more explicitly including genderqueer individuals, two spirit people, femmes, non-binary people, transgender women and women of color. This term recognizes the history of feminism has included racism, transphobia and gender binary views.