TO CELEBRATE Women’s Month, the University Gender and Development Office (UGDO), Sanggunian, and Loyola Schools (LS) Gender Hub launched a series of events and initiatives in promotion of gender equality, empowerment, and resilience.
As the events were rolled out, the LS Gender Hub released a statement on March 8 to commemorate International Women’s Day wherein they recognized the community’s grief and need for healing due to the struggle towards gender equality. The LS Gender Hub reaffirmed its commitment to gender justice and a gender-inclusive, gender-responsive, and gender-safe community.
Likewise, the Sanggunian Commission on Gender Equality (CGE) stood in solidarity with women, stating that “we must continue our fight until all women can enjoy the equal opportunity, representation, and safety that they deserve.”
CGE Co-Commissioner Althea Santos said that this year’s Women’s Month focused on educating and engaging with the LS community by spotlighting “less popular issues” like queer female relationships and trans students.
She cited two specific initiatives that tackled these topics, namely the March 16 Introduction to Ateneo Culture and Tradition (InTACT) Workshop on Consent and Boundaries, as well as the March 26 Sapphic Book Recommendation project.
Behind the scenes
The said workshop was a collaborative effort between the LS Gender Hub, InTACT program, LS Gender Focal Point (LS-GFP) Committee, Sanggunian Commission on Anti-Sexual Misconduct and Violence (CASMV), and CGE.
Santos shared that they have been working on the workshop and the accompanying InTACT module on safe spaces since February. She also mentioned that the module now includes Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression (SOGIE) concepts.
“We like reiterating [our support for the SOGIE equality bill] every now and then because people sometimes forget about it. […] We believe that it’s really important to have a continuing-on conversation about the SOGIE equality bill,” Santos said.
She highlighted the relevance of their Sapphic Book Recommendation project, claiming that women do not get the spotlight in both heteronormative and LGBTQ+ contexts. “When it comes to relationships of queer women, it’s not very widespread right now, so we want to highlight those relationships through book recommendations,” she said.
To better understand the views of the students, CASMV Co-Commissioners Michelle Go and Louise Sanchez joined Santos in the InTACT workshop. According to Go, the various support offices and student groups on board allowed for the delivery to be more mainstreamed and uniformed as prior feedback requested.
“Having the panel in the plenary we had is helpful because students got to hear insights from different perspectives such as the Gender Hub, student [representatives], the UGDO, and the Ateneo Legal. In a way, we are learning about this as a community,” Sanchez added.
Making a change
Aside from these two initiatives, CASMV partnered with the LS Gender Hub to give gender safe spaces training sessions to student organizations last April 1 and 8. The training tackled the basics of proper boundaries, online safe spaces, information on bodies that can provide support in the LS, and guides on practicing empathic listening for survivors of sex and gender-based violence (SGBV).
Go echoed the importance of changes in organization culture, saying, “A lot of people, CASMV included, saw the need to make our organization’s cultures and practices more sensitive to people’s boundaries and identities, so we wanted to have training where we could hopefully get to the heart of that.”
Go and Sanchez both hope that these Women’s Month events can be the foundation to help build a more gender-sensitive culture in the LS community towards SGBV victims. Additionally, Go said she wishes that the topics taught in these training sessions can emanate into all facets of LS organizations.
As for Santos, she noted that this Women’s Month reflected the unity within the LS community. “We collaborated to make these events […] and it shows that the admin and the students are united in this advocacy of Women’s Month and [in] creating safe spaces in Ateneo,” Santos shared.
Looking to the future
Santos revealed the few short-term and long-term events planned by the CGE for the upcoming months, most notably of which is the establishment of a helpline on faith and sexuality. This project will be in partnership with the Office of Campus Ministry and aims to help connect queer members of the LS community to their faith.
Santos also shared that the CGE has been sending out surveys and consulting with individuals who have had experience in opening sectors so that an LGBTQ+ sector can be formed.
As for Sanchez and Go, they shared that CASMV has begun a few minor arrangements for the face-to-face setup. Currently, they are preparing to capacitate their first responders to deal with on-site interactions.
