In the four years since its inception, American University's Women's Initiative has gone from having no budget and very few events to being a thriving, visible, campus-wide organization. This year's resurgence can be credited to this past year's Executive Director, Jen Smyers.
Smyers, a junior in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Communication, has been a member of the Women's Initiative since her freshman year. Previous directors were plagued with inadequate funding and little support from Student Government.
"The first year that I was involved, we didn't have any budget at all, so we couldn't even afford to make copies and promote something, or ask for donations or anything," Smyers said.
"I really got involved with 'Vagina Monologues,' and from there became the Director of Breast Cancer Awareness, so I did Daffodil Days, which was a fundraiser for breast cancer, for two years," Smyers said, describing her initial experience with Women's Initiative.
Smyers said that because there was no pay for the director, there was little time devoted to the position.
Considerable changes have been made since Smyers became the director under the appointment of Student Government President Kyle Taylor in 2005. When Women's Initiative was founded, the goal was to advocate for a women's health center. Because of this limited goal, a budget was not provided. Now that there is a budget and a new reorganization, there are also new goals.
If Women's Initiative seeks to empower women, what does it mean to be an "empowered
woman?"
According to Smyers, it is a very self-defined characteristic: "All women who are empowered would define it differently. This is this whole debate on is an empowered woman still feminine, or is an empowered woman strong? To me, an empowered woman means choosing your destiny, and knowing who you are, loving who you are, and knowing that you should be treated with respect, with love, in all situations."
Describing herself as empowered because she is "very confident, intelligent, active and with it . I know who I am and who I want to be," Smyers clearly stated the most important characteristic in empowerment.
"I would say self-respect, because if you have self-respect, then you believe in yourself, you're confident, you aren't going to take people treating you poorly, you're going to view yourself as beautiful on the inside and out, and when you go to do something, you're going to make sure you do it with all you got and you're not going to let someone else bring you down," Smyers said.
Smyers said she's always been interested in women's issues, describing the inspiration behind her
work.
"My dad's in the Navy, so I've moved around a lot, and I've seen a lot of empowered women, and a lot of women who are not empowered," she said.
She stressed that every issue is an important one, but for her, there are three broad areas that she finds particularly important: health awareness, sexual assault and sexual exploitation being taken seriously. Smyers said women have to strive more to be taken as seriously as men are.
During her time as director, Smyers has created an infrastructure as a means of getting things done. The Women's Initiative is made up of 15 different issues, each with its own director.
"My directors do everything. I wanted to have a cabinet that was focused on issues, so people could do programming around body image, do programming about sex education," Smyers said. After naming all of the issue directors of the Women's Initiative, she added, "They're all my heroes. They all do amazing things"
