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Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies is thriving at Simon Fraser University. We are committed to cultivating innovation, intellectual freedom, social justice activism, diversity, and transformative resistance to inequality.
We are building an environment that nurtures cutting-edge research, engaged teaching and learning, and meaningful community service.
Our community and supporters are crucial to our success and there are many ways you can support our work and our students. We invite you to partner with Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies as we continue to grow.
Make a donation to support one of our initiatives
Rosemary Brown worked tirelessly to address social justice issues in our society, and we are working to maintain her legacy.
Rosemary Brown Memorial Conference Fund
Event support
The conference was launched in 2014 as a means of bringing academics and students, service-providers, and the broader community together to speak on current issues of diversity, ongoing inequalities, and ways to create positive change.
Rosemary Brown Undergraduate Award in Social Justice
Undergraduate scholarships
The Rosemary Brown Undergraduate Award in Social Justice is given annually to a GSWS student who has made outstanding contributions to issues of social justice. This student award in her name is dedicated to inspiring and supporting students who aspire to a more just and equal world.
Rosemary Brown was an inspiring Canadian woman who advocated for marginalized groups and contributed a vision of equality and justice for all. A distinguished social worker and the first Black woman to be elected to a Canadian legislature, she was also a respected feminist and academic, teaching at SFU as the Ruth Wynn Woodward Professor of the Endowed Chair in Women's Studies.
The Meredith Kimball Endowment Fund was established at Simon Fraser University in 2002 by her friends and colleagues in the Department of Women's Studies (now the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies). Future gifts to the fund are welcomed.
Meredith Kimball Graduate Entrance Scholarship
Graduate scholarships
Since her appointment in 1976 as the first faculty member in Women's Studies, Dr. Meredith Kimball has made extraordinary contributions to building, sustaining and expanding the Department of Women's Studies at SFU. She coordinated the program for five and a half years and served as the department's chair from 1991-1993 and 1999-2003. Dr. Kimball facilitated the Ruth Wynn Woodward professorship and the introduction of the master's program in Women's Studies.
Dr. Kimball is a professor emerita and one of the founders of Women’s Studies in British Columbia. As one of the early members of the Women’s Studies department at SFU, Dr. Meredith Kimball taught psychology, science studies, and feminist theory, and published widely on feminist psychology and gender differences.
She received the Women and Psychology’s Distinguished Member Award from the Canadian Psychology Association.
Dr. Kimball's generous Endowment provides graduate scholarships to incoming MA and PhD students.
"The future is feminism and feminism is plural."
Meredith Kimball, interview with Psychology’s Feminist Voices Multimedia Internet Archive, 2009
Dr. Margaret Lowe Benston was a charter faculty member of SFU, and a founding member of the Women’s Studies department (now the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies).
She was a committed feminist activist and author whose academic career spanned the fields of chemistry, computing science, and women’s studies. A leading feminist intellectual, she helped found the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology in 1981.
Margaret Lowe Benston Lectureship Endowment
Annual public lecture series
The lecture series established in her name by her family, friends, and colleagues brings together the university and the community, and funds annual programming on topics connected to social justice.
Margaret Lowe Benston Memorial Endowment
Graduate bursaries
This award provides financial support for graduate students registered in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies with demonstrated financial need.
"Maggie stood for hope and change, and was a major force for the betterment of women’s lives everywhere."
Evelyn Fox Keller, Stanford University
In 1984, with a grant from Secretary of State and matching funds from private donations, an endowed chairship in Women’s Studies was established.
Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair Endowment Fund
Faculty support and outreach
The Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair enables us to make visiting appointments in innovative areas of social importance. It supports scholars who are committed to community engaged research and provides them with the resources to host conferences, workshops, and outreach events to address issues of current interest and concern.
For several years, the department offered Ruth Wynn Woodward (RWW) post-doctoral fellowships. Other programs funded by the RWW endowment include a traveling speaker series; local, national and international conferences; a bi-annual women’s studies retreat for instructors from colleges and universities in BC and the Yukon; and sponsorship and co-sponsorship of invited speakers on campus and in the community.
Established in 1984, the endowed chairship was named for Ruth Wynn Woodward, one of British Columbia’s outstanding women whose lifetime of public service and personal accomplishment demonstrated the importance of the work of women to Canadian society.