Beginning today, the Panhellenic Council is hosting its annual Women’s Empowerment Week. The goal of this week is to raise awareness and provide a call to action for all women to stand up for themselves, especially women around the world who are denied freedom, voice, and opportunity.

The week-long event includes a panel discussion, a film about the women’s suffrage movement, a stand at Old Main, and a presentation from Nobel Peace Prize Winner Tawakkol Karman. The panel will feature notable Penn State community members Sue Paterno, Mimi Barash Coppersmith (the first female Board of Trustees Chairman), and Cheryl Knobloch (director of the Women in Engineering Program).

This year’s theme is “We stand today, for her stand tomorrow.”

“This year’s Women’s Empowerment Week is focusing on empowering the women of our campus, and beyond that, empowerment on a global scale,” Panhellenic Council President Meaghan DeMallie said in a press release. “The theme of ‘We stand today, for her stand tomorrow’ centers not only on today’s women, but the pathway to gender equality and human rights — past and future. Ideally, we will be able to enlighten women on these world-wide problems and motivate them to take a stand against them.”

The schedule of events is listed below.