When junior math major Rachel Keels first came to Cal Poly, she felt she needed a place to be heard. Roe v. Wade was in the process of being overturned, and it was weighing heavily on Keels. As a woman in STEM, it was difficult for her to find a comfortable place to discuss the issue.
“I really wanted to talk to someone but no one was really saying anything,” Keels said. “My woman in math club or like any of my math classes.”
Keels was a member of multiple feminist clubs in high school, and she wanted to find a similar group on campus. That search led her to Women Empowered. The club was formed in the 2020-2021 academic year to highlight feminist topics.
“It was everything I had dreamed of,” Keels said. “It was just a really fun place to connect with people and talk about things I don’t talk about every day with my friends or like in classrooms.”
However, this space didn’t last long for Keels — Women Empowered disbanded early in 2022. Senior mechanical engineering major Madeline Xiong, the DEI chair for the club, said there was instability in the officer positions.
Now, co-presidents Keels, senior electrical engineering major Kaylen Schwartz and DEI chair Xiong have revived the club.
Talks of restarting the club began this last fall quarter when Keels reconnected with Xiong at the club fair. As they were catching up, they both said they wanted to bring back Women Empowered. After selecting communications professor Megan Lambertz-Berndt as the adviser, they debuted the new version of the club winter quarter. Schwartz said this was a special moment after months of hard work.
“It was really cool to see people that just came that we didn’t know that just heard about it and were interested in it enough to come to our first meeting,” Schwartz said.
According to Keels, Women Empowered meetings, or “talks,” start with a presentation on a specific feminist topic. This ranges anywhere from reproductive rights to relationships to intersectionality in feminism. Topics are selected by the committee but are influenced by what members are interested in. These topics are researched in-depth by club board members for the presentations.
“These are facts and I need to present them correctly and also catch all of the nuances,” Xiong said.
From there, the team presents about five thoughtful questions on the talk’s theme, focusing on general thoughts on the topic or how member’s lived experiences relate to it. Members then break off into small discussion groups with one board member as a facilitator. After 15 minutes, attendees can share interesting ideas brought up in the conversation.
According to Keels, the club has discussion guidelines that keep the conversations respectful. Attendees are only allowed to speak for themselves and are discouraged from speaking on behalf of others.
Though there are many women-based clubs on campus, a lot of them are centered around majors or careers. Women Empowered brings social justice and academic conversations into a social sphere.
“The things that we talked about in our club, you only see them in a class,” Xiong said. “You only see them in [women’s, gender and queer] studies, things like that. You don’t see that as a recreational social thing.”
Schwartz said these conversations also bring members together.
“I really liked that community and I liked talking with other women about women’s issues and learning from each other,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz said she hopes to integrate a talk around international feminism outside the U.S. and Xiong said she would like to see a talk on disability within feminism.
Recently, the club has sowed the seeds for collaboration, for example, by doing a presentation on intersectionality with Cal Poly’s Multiracial Students’ Association. They also hosted a panel focusing on women in the workforce with multiple career-based clubs. Keels said this is to help with their current goal of reaching more people and expanding the club.
“We’re trying to reach our arms out to these other clubs that kind of have the same goal as us as well, just like maybe more niche because I’ve noticed there’s a lot of women in certain majors, but not like women altogether,” Keels said. “So that’s what our club is and then we’re trying to like get those groups of people who you know might relate.”
As of now, Keels said there are about 32 members of Women Empowered. Xiong said the club is in a “rebuild” phase, as it has only had about six meetings so far this year. Though Women Empowered is focusing on the talks, she said that as it grows, the board would like to incorporate old traditions, like fundraisers for local non-profits and mentor/mentee programs.
Schwartz said that the talks by themself prove to be beneficial to attendees.
“We feel like we’re educating people and like we’re all educating each other in our discussion and it’s just like an opportunity for everyone to learn,” Schwartz said.
Women Empowered meets every other Monday from 6 to 7 p.m. inside the Business Building (Bldg. 3). The club is open to people of all identities. To learn more about the club, visit their Instagram @calpolywe.