UMSU Womyn's Centre

The Womyn’s Centre is a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space for all folks who identify as womyn, queer, trans, two-spirit, gender fluid, and non gender conforming. The Womyn's Centre is dedicated to challenging racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and other forms of oppression that can affect how certain groups of people access post-secondary education, and perpetuate inequities in society based on gender, race, socioeconomic status, (dis)ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, citizenship status and other factors.

The Womyn's Centre is represented in UMSU by an elected Women's Representative, who chairs meetings of the collective and acts as a liaison between the Centre and UMSU. The Centre is also supported by a hired Community Groups Coordinator, whose purpose is to help the UMSU Community Groups maintain day-to-day operations, plan and organize events, budget, and more.

Why the Y?

Language is very powerful and carries more meaning than we often stop and think about. In changing just one letter in the word ‘women’ your curiosity peaks and challenges you to think outside the box. This is exactly what we are trying to do! We want to draw people’s attention to what the word ‘woman’ historically means and its implication.

The word ‘woman’ refers to ‘of man’ implying that a woman’s identity is inherently reliant on man. We believe that womyn deserve an identity of their own which is why the Womyn’s Centre embraces and celebrates a women-centred culture.

In spelling womyn with a “Y”, we recognize that womyn have diverse and different identities and roles which are not all defined by a relationships to men (or dictionaries!).