Edition 40 | 2021
USASA Club: UniSA Women’s Collective Interviewee Shubhangi Chauhan (President) and Shivangi Singh (Treasurer) Interview Nahum Gale
What is the Women’s Collective and what is your purpose? The Women’s Collective is a community of women studying at UniSA. This club was crafted as a safe space with the key objectives of fostering equality, equity across all women issues, providing a safe environment for its members to share their experiences and cultivating a culture of inclusion and a nurturing women’s environment.
We have had a few bumps along the way, but that is only to expected when you have a new group of people with such strong views and values working together who haven’t found their groove yet. But they are absolutely amazing girls and we are so lucky to have them and a supportive system behind us in the form of USASA Clubs and everyone else who’s cheering us on from the side. We have not quite had the same challenges the University of Adelaide Women’s Collective has been facing. There’s been a lot of back and forth with their union, and they have actually had to fight for a place to be considered a club because they were told their initiative is just not important enough or exclusive enough and there were many groups on campus that were kind of vouching for the same thing. So they have had to find their way in the world, but those girls have absolutely smashed it out of the park.
Being a fairly new club, how has the Women’s Collective experienced their first semester at university? We have had a great run. We were fortunate enough to get in on the Mawson Lakes Campus Fair and got to interact with so many lovely people from the university, which kind of set the pace for us. It was absolutely heartwarming to see people respond positively to our initiative and they were so ready to be involved.
OUR AIM IS TO FOSTER A COMMUNITY-FEELING SO THAT WE CAN HAVE A SUPPORT SYSTEM...
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Photo Matisse Chambers Artwork Denali Wright
