I recently got the chance to sit down with Mrs. Sarver, an English teacher at Dakota with a love for European history (I also had the pleasure of going on a school trip with her to London this past June), to talk about one of the many clubs she advises: Women’s Empowerment.

Women’s Empowerment is not only about empowering women, but everyone. They discuss women’s issues both old and new, and the things they have experienced as women. The club is predominantly women and more femininely aligned people but more boys have begun to join. I personally feel connected to the club because there’s an inherent acceptance and understanding that your gender doesn’t make you exempt from a women’s experience.

The executive board for the 2023-2024 school year consists of Amelie Rathnaw, Savannah Ferguson, and Emily Chavez-Martinez. The board includes sophomores and freshmen; younger students who can “carry the torch.”

Women’s Empowerment has been a club for a few years now, and so I asked how the club has changed since it first started. Sarver said, “I think we have gotten more focused since we started. You know, at first, it was a bunch of girls who were like “we want a space where we can talk about our issues and we want to feel like we have a voice in our school.”  

She added, “Since the club has started, we’ve gotten to work on different little advocacy projects and girls’ experiences around the school like putting the pads in the bathroom. We had a “teen violence in dating” guest speaker, and we did a fundraiser for domestic abuse. It started out as “Hey! We want feminism club” and now it’s gotten more defined, I would say.”

I then asked how the club started originally, and Sarver said, “Madison Singer – she was in my women’s history class the first time it ever ran in like pandemic times. And I think with nobody having interactions and everybody is kind of isolated, she [Madison Singer] was like “I want to do something. I want to do something related to feminism.”

Sarver then explains what happens in the club. “Each Tuesday there’s like a discussion prompt, a theme, or a big topic that is presented. Last year Madison was doing a lot of research and presenting on [women’s] issues and things like that. It was things like body image or dress codes or sexism or athletics. You know, have girls talk about things that affect their day to day in place where they feel like they have commonality.  

“Girls and boys and everyone in between,” Mrs. Sarver adds.  

I then asked Sarver what the club has done for students specifically. I explained that this was an important question for me to ask because I have the experiences of a girl despite not identifying as one. I mentioned how the pads and tampons saved me so much last year because my period would start unexpectedly. I know that this project helped many other people as well. This year, women’s empowerment has pads and tampons outside Sarver’s classroom (room) and Eovaldi’s classroom (room) to make these products more accessible to students. 

Sarver says, “I think… I think that giving girls, and anyone else who wants to come, a spot where they can feel safer. Where they can share things and say things without feeling embarrassed. I identify as a woman and a lot of my experiences are kind of seen as embarrassing or you don’t want to talk about them. Girls getting cat-called or girls getting their period in the bathroom. Things you don’t want to bring up because you feel like you’re going to get embarrassed or you’re going to get judged. I feel like it helps girls feel like they’re not alone in this. The problems that they are encountering are not individual problems. So, they know it’s more of a community or a social problem, and they are not alone. 

I completely agree with Sarver and it felt good to sit down and talk about Women’s Empowerment Club with her.