Feminist Hopes to Spread Awareness

Janelle Castillo is Mexican-American and a first generation senior at Fresno State. She is majoring in political science with a minor in women’s studies. Growing up she didn’t agree with gender roles she saw in her family.

“I don’t know how this relates in other people’s families but in my family, at parties, the men are all just sitting around and then the women have to serve them,” Castillo says. “I would always be like, ‘Tio, why can’t you serve yourself you have two working arms and two working legs?’ and I would get in trouble for that kind of thinking. But it’s like, that’s how I always saw things.” 

After taking one women’s studies course, Castillo became very interested and continued taking more. It was then she decided if she continued taking courses it was better off minoring in women’s studies. Castillo says she would have majored in women’s studies if she wasn’t so far along into her political science major already.  

“Finding women’s studies, it was like these are all the thoughts I have been thinking. These are questions I’ve already had,” Castillo says.

She says she enjoys the way women’s studies and the Cross-Cultural Gender Center at Fresno State focus on intersectionality, which is discussing how each person has a different intersect in life which affects the way they perceive the world and live in it. Coming from a Catholic family, Castillo says she feels like there are many traditions and expectations as a woman that go along with them.

“One thing I would say to women, especially to younger women in general, is to never stop questioning things,” Castillo says.

Through women’s studies, she has been able to be a part of many activist events at Fresno State that bring awareness on women empowerment. Some of those events include the Vagina Monologues, One-Billion Rising, and Take Back the Night.

Castillo plans on continuing her education in graduate school in women’s studies and reaching her ultimate goal of becoming predominantly an activist.