To create awareness for women in higher education and promote easier access to various opportunities and resources, the Maricopa Community College District Student Affairs Division has introduced the Women Rising Club in Maricopa colleges.

The main goal of the club is to engage young women by encouraging them to seek higher education while building up a sisterhood that encompasses the triumphs of past, present and future sisters.

However, Scottsdale’s Women Rising Club has not yet taken flight and remains in its infancy. Itzel Barrios Caire is an international student at SCC majoring in sustainability and industrial design. She is a member of the Artie of Community Service and Council of Student Leader, but her focus is trying to promote the growth of SCC’s Women Rising chapter.

“Women clubs are important in colleges and they help women to empower themselves but unfortunately women clubs are not active as compared to other clubs in SCC,” Caire said. “Women clubs are not active as active as they should be. As a member in Women Rising Club. I think two events in one semester is not very significant.”

The Women Rising Club was recently established, and that fact may contribute to its lack of membership and relative success around campus. There are also misconceptions regarding women’s clubs and staunch feminism, which Caire believes may be another factor.

“Another reason why it does not have a lot of popularity is because when you said it is Women Rising Club people think ‘oh, it is a feminist club, I don’t want to be part of it,’” Caire said. “But in reality people don’t know the meaning of feminist.”

Marli Mayon, the president of the Women Rising Club at SCC, defended her club and said that it is not true that this club is not active. It is more active as compared to other clubs, but no doubt it is a new club so it is not active like other clubs established in the years prior.

“It is the first semester as an officially ‘active club’ and I think it is a fitting time,” Mayon said.

According to Michelle Dew, the Program Advisor of Extra Curricular Activities, there is a strong group of women leaders in SCC’s Women Rising Club who are working hard to make the club more active and initiate more interesting activities and events.

“Women Rising Club still tries to figure out what it’s about, what they do,” Dew said. “So I think that might be a reason why as many people are not involved at the moment. I know Women Rising Club is a fairly new initiative, some people don’t know they exist and I do think they have a big challenge to just getting more students involved in this club.”

According to Dew, the club is sending a formal invitation to people in the program, as well as faculty members and female staff, to nominate students they feel would make an impact and join the club.

“For my suggestion as to how it gets to be active, first is publicity,” Caire said. “We have to find a way to reach students, try to concentrate one big event and also mostly the change the perception of women club.”