NEWS

Within Reach Campaign | March 17, 2018

Growing Minds and Changing Futures with Education, Research, and Service

An Interview with WCA Champion,
Dr. Sofia Jawed-Wessel

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Sofia is an assistant professor at UNO teaching an undergraduate
sexuality course for the Public Health and Women and Gender Studies programs.
She is also a researcher on women’s sexual health, specifically sexuality
and parenthood. She considers her research, teaching, and community service
to be indelibly intertwined.
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WHY DOES THE WCA MATTER TO YOU?
WCA and I have a natural partnership. I’m an educator who teaches about gender and women’s rights and the WCA takes care of women. We’re two ends of the same spectrum. We both have the same goals for women and girls to live safe, self-determined lives—to have agency in a world that wants to deny women’s autonomy and safety at every turn. We’re fighting for the same cause and it makes sense for us to hold hands in this.

I teach an undergraduate class on sexuality and in my culminating lecture we talk about violence against women. Highlighting the WCA is an important aspect of that final lecture and they learn how the WCA does that work: trauma informed, evidence based, careful and thought out. Otherwise we stand to put survivors in danger.

When I do this lecture I tell the students I’m holding extra office hours that week. Without fail I’ll have a line of students who are coming through who haven’t spoken up in class. They talk about their experience growing up and as teenagers, experiencing domestic violence and sexual assault and most of them had not heard of the WCA. I’m often the first person they’ve even talked to about this.

 

IN YOUR MIND, WHAT WOULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR OUR COMMUNITY?
Trusting women. Believe her when she tells you what happened, how it impacted her. Believe her expertise. Believe she knows what’s best for herself. I wish we gave women the same credibility we give others.

 

IF YOU WERE TO CHOOSE A PERSON TO HONOR THROUGH YOUR
PARTICIPATION IN THIS CAMPAIGN, WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY?
I think it would be all the young girls in our community who are coming up in a world right now. I’m thinking of my best friend Megan’s daughter, Alice, who is eight years old. She lives in a contradictory world, where she has a President who has been recorded speaking about the violence that he has done to women. At the same time, we have male perpetrators falling from heights, women speaking out and women supporting other women. We’re on two extremes that I’ve never seen in my lifetime. Women speaking out are being met with support instead of vitriol. It’s huge. Overall it’s working. Men high on the food chain are being fired. But we still have a lot of folks who have no qualms about saying disgusting things about women and committing these crimes. I want to honor these girls who are coming of age in these times and I’m sure are hella confused. I want to honor that unique experience they are in right now.

And a mom who reached out to me about her daughter who attends a local elementary school. The classroom was unattended for a few moments. A boy climbed under her desk and put his finger in this girl’s vagina. That is rape. But the school was not responding. They said he was curious and confused. Of course, he is also a child and we don’t want to ruin his life, so some of what they said was true. But this little girl’s story also matters. And she also deserves justice. Matt Lauer was fired. But this little girl has to return to class with her perpetrator. What a difficult time it is for girls coming up in the world right now.

 

HOW DO YOU SEE THE WCA’S NEW LOCATION IMPACTING THOSE
WHO RECEIVE SERVICES FROM THEM?
This building is right alongside banks and shops and restaurants. It says a lot about how we think about it. Yes, there is privacy in the building but we aren’t going to tuck survivors away in a dark corner to be alone. It’s important that the location is embedded in our community because the individuals who access these services are embedded in our community.

It gives me goose bumps to think about having every inch of the building devoted to her, built with her in mind. It says a lot to a person who has everything stripped from them. I think of how important that is to a domestic violence or sexual assault survivor. They’ve been told their pain, their life is not important—and we’re turning that on its head.

 

WHEN WE SAY THE WCA IS WITHIN REACH,
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN TO YOU?
We’re close. We are close to reaching out to one another and moving forward. We can work toward these goals if we work together.

Watch Sofia’s TedxOmaha talk.