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Welcome! 

The Women & Gender Student Space is one of six student spaces within the Student Culture & Engagement Hub at the University of Arizona. They are located on the 4th floor of the Student Union Memorial Center in the 404 Suite.

We are open Monday through Friday from 9am - 5pm.

Our staff can be reached by calling (520) 621-4498 during business hours.

Follow us on our student-led Instagram @wgss_ua, or subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter: https://uarizona.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_26lOcOPYYy7Lp4y 

About us:

With a history of over 50 years, we have served students from all backgrounds. Today, we continue to work toward creating change on campus by addressing patriarchy and misogyny, engaging in feminist liberation efforts at the intersections of various identities such as sex, gender identity and expression, race, ethnicity and nationality, class, sexual orientation, and disability.  

We are a community of diversely feminist, social-justice oriented individuals. We work to enrich our communities through educational programming founded in a social justice framework and by nurturing holistic individual growth through organizing, event planning, student-led political education, and consciousness-raising engagement.

Our team strives to instill feminist values and goals in our programs and organizational structure. When we say “feminist,” we mean the liberation of all people of the patriarchal gender structure as it exists today–knowing that all people and identities are impacted by gender. We critically consider what it means to have patriarchy’s image of a “traditional” woman or man put onto us, and how that impacts every interaction we have with the world around us. 

We ascribe to a feminist ideology that centers Queer, Trans, Black Indigenous People of Color and their knowledge, and is explicitly trans* inclusive and gender-expansive. We are a part of a broader social movement that dismantles oppressive structures such as patriarchy, capitalism, ableism, xenophobia, racism, and heteronormativity, and unifies all people. We are a space for education, community building and friend making, and for both students, staff, and members of the larger Tucson community to develop their feminist consciousness to build a movement that expands beyond our space.

All resources and events are offered free of charge and are open to all students! Because we exist on a land grant institution, most of our events are also open to community members. For student club meetings, please contact the club itself about openness to non-students.

Frequently Asked Questions:

No, everyone is welcome. We strive to be a welcoming and safer space for folks of all genders while uplifting women, girls, trans*, nonbinary, and fem folks.

The Feminist Pharmacy is operated by our internship, FORCE (Feminists Organized to Resist, Create, and Empower) and provides free and accessible sexual health and menstrual products including tampons, pads, liners, condoms, and pregnancy tests. These items are always free and available for individual use for students, staff, faculty, and community members on campus to provide equitable access to sexual and reproductive health items to all folks. Items are individual needs-based, and while there is not a quantity limit, items are not to be taken and distributed in bulk to dorms or external organizations.

The Feminist Pharmacy is an initiative that was started as a result of student organizing and protesting dating back to the 1990s. It was originally started as a small operation over 10 years ago and has expanded to offer all of the supplies it currently houses.

Due to budget constraints and small staff numbers, neither organization has the capacity to fund or staff pharmacies outside of the one in the WGSS lounge. We do not make donations.

FORCE can accept unopened donations of menstrual and safe sex products. Please bring them to the front desk at the WGRC during normal business hours (M-F, 9-5) and a staff will help get them sorted.

You can also find free menstrual supplies (tampons and pads) in all of the restrooms inside the Main Library, Albert B. Weaver Science-Engineering Library, and Special Collections.

While we would like to respond to interviews from every student, our limited staff and hours limit such commitments. Requests to tour and inquire about our spaces are high as many of our faculty incorporate our resources into their curriculum. As partners seeking to support the needs of students, we ask that faculty work with our leadership before incorporating assignments that require individual or group time commitments of our team. While we cannot honor the interview requests, your students can find information on the website or by contacting leadership (Thomas Harris, Kenny Importante, and Dominique Calza). Students can also schedule appointments with staff or stop in to receive direction or support on issues related to their academic success. Again, our limited staffing resources precludes our ability to respond to interview requests on a scheduled or drop-in basis regarding services or information available on our website.

Additionally, guests and visitors to the space are asked to not photograph the space or anyone using the space without express permission. 

We appreciate your support of the space and encourage you to share our online resources with students enrolled in your class.

Contact staff to open a line of communication. Keep in mind we have only 1 full-time staff, so availability is very limited. Please reach out with specifics about what type of event you are hoping to collaborate on, what kind of budget you are working with, and what the ask is for our team.

What does collaboration mean to the team?

  • Intentional
  • Communal decision making from initiation through execution
  • Clearly communicated tasks and roles for shared work
  • Honest about capacity
  • Explicit communication around power/privilege, gender labor, and working across differences
  • Commitment to debrief

Nope! There are no medical staff on our team. No doctors. No nurses. No midwives. You would need to see a trained medical professional such as obstetrician-gynecologist for any of the following: 

  • Prenatal, pregnancy, and postpartum care
  • Reproductive system (think birth control)
  • Pelvic exams
  • Pap smears
  • Any and all medical advice

Please see our comprehensive list of resources & community partners by following this link: https://padlet.com/WGRC_UA/campus-community-resources-ttlwj04sos4pyabl 

Our Outreach & Assessment Graduate Assistant is who helps us manage all outreach requests. As an important note, we are open Monday-Friday 9am-5pm, so after-hours events are often hard for our team to accommodate. 

For collaboration, please reach out to our leadership (Senior Coordinator and two Graduate Assistants), who will then loop in the other appropriate staff members. Please keep these things in mind:

  • Collaboration requests must be made with a clear ask. Please know what you would like our support with (even a vague idea is helpful), have a date and time range in mind, and verify our availability by checking our events calendar - If we already have something booked, please pick a different day!
  • Please give our team at least 2 business days to respond - our graduate assistants only work 20 hours per week, so they need some time to read your message!
  • All events we participate in must align with our values of trans*/gender-expansive inclusion and anti-oppression. 
  • We have a very small budget compared to the demand of students we serve, so we do not often have capacity to fund large-scale initiatives. If you are hoping to partner with us financially please send a very detailed ask of your financial needs for sponsorship. 
  • We do NOT collaborate on any event that uses marketing made by generative AI/LLMs. All marketing and materials for any event we are a collaborator on must be made by a real person. Bad art is better than robot art! We also have a team that can support us with making marketing if you don't have capacity.